GUM Issue 1 2014/2015 by Glasgow University Magazine

FEATURES POLITICS CULTURE STYLE BUSINESS & ECONOMICS SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Contents

Glasgow University Magazine

FEATURES / 04-10 The Bard Today Hamlet Emoticons Breaking Rhythm Having a Laugh Mental Health on Campus In or After a Night Out?

POLITICS / 11-16

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EDITOR

Daniel Patterson

DEPUTY EDITOR Abbey Fleming

POLITICS EDITOR Sophia Gore

CULTURE / 17-22

Mashal Aamir

Lisa Monozlai

STYLE EDITOR Anne Devlin

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Stephanie Scullion

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jessica Taylor

PHOTO EDITOR Aidan Morrissey

Every Blooming Thing - KellyDawn^Riot Are Fashion Weeks Relevant? Vestiare pour Deux: Androgyny in Fashion Love Those Lashes Glasgow Independents

PROOFREADING

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / 30-34

COVER DESIGN

The Business of Charity Why Can’t We Just Print More Money? An Interview with Principal Muscatelli Living Faster than Food

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / 35-39 Ebola Explained Exploring the Cosmos Mission to Mars Popular Science: Why It Matters

/ 40-42

Living with Disability What’s On In Glasgow CONTRIBUTORS:

James Reynolds, Paul Butterfield, Anna Jedrzejczyk, Isla Cunningham, Eilis Slater, Fred Melnyczuk, Liam Doherty, William Monk, Youngwon Do, Jasmine Riggs-Bristow, Jack Hanington, Meredith Stewart, Lisa Feklistova, Ruben Rodriguez Cubiella, Arnaud Brebion, Anne Devlin, Erika Koljonen, Cesar Imbert, Jasmine Wilson, Rebecca Richardson, Josh Stevens, Petko Nekezov, Mashal Aamir, Mehman Ismayilli, Isabel Gordon, Mathew Oliver, Theodora Varelidi Strati, Sine Harris, Marcia McSwegan, Joanna Velikov.

The views articulated in this publication do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Students’ Representative Council or the University of Glasgow. Glasgow University Magazine, John McIntyre Building, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ editors@glasgowuniversitymagazine.co.uk

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The Fleeting Hour Daniel Patterson

Paul Butterfield

CULTURE EDITOR

STYLE / 23-29

Glasgow University Magazine

FEATURES EDITOR

Labour’s Calvary Glasgow’s Ukrainians and Russians Speak Out Trap of Sympathy: Saving the Developing World from Stereotypes A Mother of a Debate Pope Francis and the Freegans Messianic Rituals Banned Books and the American Censorship Movement Inside Stan’s Studio Love Is Strange An Interview with Submotion Orchestra

The Fleeting Hour

Calum MacRae

EVENTS & PR

Alice Healy-Smith

Alekss Levsunovs

ILLUSTRATORS Zidan Chen Meredith Stewart Ben Carollo Zoe Williams

GRAPHIC DESIGN: Jessica Taylor Jessica is GUM’s Graphic Designer and is responsible for producing the entire magazine. If you are interested in working with her or would like to see more of her work please get in touch. jessicacora.creative@gmail.com www.behance.net/jessicacoracreative

Omar Arshad Omar is a Dundee-based Graphic Designer and Illustrator who created GUM’s new logos. If you like his work, get in touch to discuss opportunities to collaborate.

GUM is back with the first issue of the 14/15 academic year. We’re showing off the best Glasgow has to offer so you’ll find a diverse range of talents and ideas throughout. Starting with Features, we’ve got perspectives on Shakespeare’s relevance today and a renewal of GUM’s historical commitment to creative writing. Since its launch in 1889, GUM has been a platform from which students at the University of Glasgow can express their opinions and showcase their creative endeavours. This year, along with commentary pieces and articles on current affairs, you’ll come across a short story, poetry and illustrations by students.

Finally, I’m thrilled to introduce columnist Marcia McSwegan who shares with us the challenges she faces as a disabled student. She reminds us that everyday tasks and experiences can be uphill battles for those suffering from chronic illnesses and disabilities. I hope that you find as much pleasure in reading GUM as we found in making it.

In the Politics section, we reflect on September’s independence referendum, explore the Ukraine conflict through the eyes of Ukrainian and Russian students at Glasgow, tackle two of the problems that persist in patriarchal societies here and abroad, and consider our responsibilities as consumers. Arts and Music has been replaced with a Culture section that will allow students to explore a wider range of topics. We’ve got pieces on censorship and Glasgow’s first donations-only cafe, as well as an interview with Submotion Orchestra and reviews of Ron Athey’s extreme performance art and the film Love is Strange. This year marks a turning point for the Style section. Male fashion is often approached with a sense of tokenism so we decided to feature menswear exclusively in this first issue. You’ll find KellyDawn^Riot’s nature-inspired creations superbly captured by Jodie Mann. After 125 years, we decided now is the time to introduce GUM’s first-ever Business & Economics section. I’m delighted that Principal Muscatelli has marked this occasion by speaking to GUM and answering questions submitted by Glasgow students. Our Science & Technology section breaks down everything we need to know about Ebola and explores two very different missions into space. Addressing topics in business, economics, science and technology allows us to better represent the interests and ideas of students at the University of Glasgow.

omararshad0@gmail.com http://omararshad.tumblr.com

Illustration by Zidan Chen

Features

Glasgow University Magazine

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Features

The Bard Today

Sir John Gillert

Paul Butterfield

There’s no doubt that Shakespeare’s language has survived to the present. The words he employed have carried us through the centuries. Shakespeare is responsible for a plethora of English words, and though some have been reduced to the status of historical oddities, there are others that we couldn’t survive without today. For everyday words such as ‘uncomfortable’, we remain indebted to the Bard. If that wasn’t enough, the term ‘swagger’ was also coined by Shakespeare. Not so old and stuffy now!

‘It’s a funny grey area,’ says Peter Drew when I chat to him about the graffiti he posted last year in Glasgow. He’s not referring to the city itself, but the legal status of his work. A somewhat well-known figure on the streets of his native Adelaide, Peter has no concerns about posting his art in broad daylight there, and has even been commissioned by the state-funded Adelaide History Museum for a promotional installation. There, as in Glasgow, he’s technically breaking the law when he posts his art, but he’s yet to be arrested for vandalism.

“We use his language, become entangled in his plots, and meet his characters every day.”

‘These days I stick up everything during the day. These days people know who I am, and I have a pretty good relationship with the city council here [in Adelaide]. I never really got in touch with the council in Glasgow, although I imagine they must’ve known about it. In most cities, they like to see spontaneous art popping up. Sometimes that means that that art is illegal, but as far as I’m concerned, engaging with the media has never been a problem.’

In addition to Shakespeare’s continuing influence on our vernacular, his plays are crucial in highlighting themes that transcend the boundaries of time. From heartbreak to betrayal, Shakespeare covered all areas of humanity with depth and emotion. The didactic undertones act as the eternal teacher, giving us the moral before we meet the conflict or make the mistake, and so hopefully avoiding the terrible end of so many of his protagonists. Admittedly, witches and sorcerous ex-dukes are a thing of the past, but these things continue to be powerful metaphors in the modern age. Prophetic witches, then, become those people who are always right, annoying as they are; magical dukes, manipulators that must be overcome. We tread the same paths as these protagonists. Only the solutions differ (murder is not always the answer). Shakespeare’s archetypes, too, have preserved their roles in our own lives. If we apply archetypes today, we’re surrounded by tragic heroes and femme fatales. Not only does Shakespeare detail these forms, but the unravelling of each play reminds us how to deal with them. True, each individual has their spin on their Shakespearian doppelganger, but the model remains an extension of a very specific literary lineage.

It probably helps that Peter is doing something other than writing his name on walls, and that he’s using wheatpaste adhesive and paper, rather than aerosol paints (‘I like wheatpaste: you can put pieces up in the day, and it’s easier for people to remove them if they really want to’). In our city last year, this meant the charming but all-too-brief appearance of Drew’s ‘Hamlet Emoticons’, a puzzling set of posters taking inspiration from the second act of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

“The idea was to take the importance of language and see what happens when you reduce it to the form of a text or a Tweet.”

The work consisted of sixteen separate pieces dotted around the city, and split a powerful soliloquy from the play into bite-sized snippets, robbing it of all its thought-provoking power and literary grace. If you were in Glasgow last year, perhaps you caught sight of Peter’s Pixelface character contemplating ‘this brave, o’erhanging firmament’ between Ashton Lane and Byres Road, or solemnly bemoaning that ‘the earth seems to me a sterile promontory’ underneath an M8 overpass. If you’re anything like me, the reference will have sailed over your head. ‘The idea of Pixelface was to take the structure of a classical portrait, and make it as reduced and pixelated as possible,’ Peter told me. The box-headed protagonist of interchangeable emotions was, in that sense, a mirror of the attitude that informed the piece generally. As an artist, Peter is keenly aware of the limitations of modern forms of entertainment and communication. ‘The idea [with Hamlet Emoticons] was to take the importance of language and see what happens when you reduce it to the form of a text or a Tweet. Having Shakespeare there was to illustrate the absurdity of that.’ ‘I’d pick spots where people are going to see it, but those are generally spots where the artwork won’t last very long. So I deliberately picked a few spots where it’ll last as long as possible. And maybe less people will see it, but it’s nice to have it somewhere where it’ll last a long time.’ We’ll be keeping an eye out.

So, before poor William is resigned to the top shelf gathering dust, we must recall all that he has contributed: new words, life lessons and people skills have all originated from his works. We use his language, become entangled in his plots, and meet his characters every day. Don’t ignore Shakespeare. Look past the antiquity and read or watch him to see parallels with your own life. Leave the modern prose of the Booker Prize; it’s time to brush up on your Shakespeare.

Benjamin Smith

Peter Drew offers a thoroughly modern take on Shakespeare with (perhaps the city’s first) Hamlet-inspired street art. Paul Butterfield talks to him about the craft.

James Reynolds considers William Shakespeare’s continuing relevance to modern life and literature.

With the creativity of teenagers progressing at a rapid pace, novel words and phrases appear regularly and are readily accepted, with some even occupying a space in the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Hamlet Emoticons

James Reynolds

Before bondage fanfiction and sparkling vampires, it was the words of the Bard who inspired readers; from the poor to the nobility. Even today, no Literature class can escape Shakespeare’s archaic yet artful prose. We have forgotten the pure poetic power of Shakespeare’s words and the connection between his world and reality. Critics often discuss the relationship between life and art, but with Shakespeare it’s too clear to ignore. From the tragic to hilarious; language, themes and characters have filtered down from Shakespeare’s mind to the present. It’s just a case of knowing where to find them.

Glasgow University Magazine

Peter Drew

Features

Glasgow University Magazine

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We drift through tall wooden doors and into a dining room. She leads me toward the table by the window where a milky curtain softly sways. She limps slightly. We are about to sit down when a deafening trumpet sounds, followed by the racket of metal stalls all bursting open. Startled, she grabs onto the table; black tresses spill across her face. A portion of the racetrack passed just beneath the old hotel. There was something about the race in the paper last night: somewhere between caffeine cups, the silent room, and the veins rippling through my eyes. ‘How did you sleep?’ I ask. The waiter brings us a pot of coffee. She regains composure when suddenly a maddening roar breaks through. Two-dozen hooves beat, furiously, down onto the earth. The floor vibrates; painting frames knock against the walls; silver spoons clink against teacups. Seconds later: silence. ‘Coffee.’ She holds up her cup. My hand quivers, and the pot steams and trembles. ‘How did you sleep?’ I ask again. Black liquid misses the cup and spills onto her hand. ‘Steven!’ A faint pulse passes through the chairs. ‘Sorry. I asked-’ Thump-thump, thump-thump: closer and closer. ‘I slept fine! Okay?’ She yells. ‘Miriam, don’t…’ Thu-thump, thu-thump: louder and louder. One moment a dozen beasts pound into the ground, the next all is silent again. She looks up. I peer into her dim eyes, and she looks down. I want to kiss her, to kill her, to scream.

BREAKING This year GUM renews its long history of showcasing students’ creative writing, beginning with a powerful short story by Anna Jedrzejczyk.

Anna Jedrzejczyk

Features

Glasgow University Magazine

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‘I can’t take this anymore!’ I stand up, knocking the table over. Croissants leap into the air. Plates shatter. Coffee spills across her white dress. A waiter runs at us waving a piece of cloth overhead. She smiles, ‘I’m sorry- my husband is a little tired.’ ‘Long night?’ the waiter winks as he kneels down. ‘He’s not tired,’ I snap back. ‘Et voilà! Just wait here, and I’ll reset the table,’ the waiter walks away. We stoop over the barren surface. ‘Can you tell me why you didn’t get back last night?’ I finally manage to ask. The room begins to quiver. Lamp crystals clink together. Wooden floorboards groan beneath our feet. ‘I had to do something… after the meeting,’ she replies. Horses come around the bend. Rhythmical thuds fill my words to the brim. ‘Do what?’ I yell. Their bodies charge through the air. The hotel rattles. Guests begin to stand up and run towards the windows. ‘I went to the hospital,’ she replies. I realize: the noise resembles a quickened heartbeat. ‘Did you do it?’ I ask. The palpitating noise becomes unbearable. Suddenly the guests burst; screams, laughter, and applause fill the room. ‘Did you?’ I scream, and my words overflow. She looks out towards the window, and as her lips begin to part in response, the crowd roars. Illustrations by Meredith Stewart

RHYTHM

Features

Glasgow University Magazine

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Features

Having a Laugh

Glasgow University Magazine

If, like me, you worked on GU Mental Wealth’s stall at this year’s Freshers Fair, you might have found it an eye-opening experience. It would be abundantly clear that despite the University of Glasgow being second in the UK for Psychology - surpassing Oxford1 - and having been commended for research in this area, there has never been any platform for students to raise awareness of an issue that affects 92% of those in higher education2 – mental distress. It was incredible to see how many students expressed support for our fairly new society (this being our second year) and how many were genuinely surprised about these statistics.

Do you get heckled very often? PM: It’s hard for someone to really take the piss out of you when you’re taking the piss out of yourself, because the joke is that on stage, I’m meant to be pathetic. But sometimes that can be a problem, because people think the jokes are bad and that’s it. They sort of go, ‘that doesn’t work’ and you’re like ‘no, no, that’s the point, that’s what I do!’ At the Edinburgh Fringe, people walk out of shows. That takes a while to get used to. How do you deal with people walking out?

You have quite a polite style of comedy in that you don’t make fun of anyone but yourself. Do you think comedy is getting nicer? PM: People were getting sick of cruel comedy. You kind of get yourself into a corner – you can only be so cruel and shocking and then you can’t really go anywhere with that. I don’t really like that kind of humour. I would feel bad about making fun of other people; I feel like I don’t really have the right to. What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking of doing comedy? PM: Just get through the first, maybe, twenty gigs. Don’t even worry about them. Just keep going. You don’t really know what kind of act you’re going to be after your first gig, or even after your first twenty. It takes a while to find what works for you. Sometimes, jokes that someone else can say sound a bit silly coming from you, because it doesn’t really ring true.

Eilis Slater Eilis Slater takes stock of the challenges and opportunities facing the University’s mental health society, GU Mental Wealth.

Since taking a six-week course in Stand-Up Comedy at Glasgow University (‘I was bored of my job and had nothing to do in the evenings’), Paul McDaniel has been making a name for himself on the Glasgow comedy circuit. There is a rougharound-the-edges feel to his set, and the clumsy naivety of his stand-up persona instantly puts crowds at ease. I saw Paul at the Stand, before meeting him for coffee a few days later on Byres Road, where we discussed self-awareness, hecklers, and his cat.

PM: This Fringe I tried leaving long pauses between each joke. Before I rushed through it to try and keep them there. But if you say to yourself ‘right, I don’t care, some people aren’t going to like it no matter what’, usually you get a better reaction. But sometimes it can be really tough when you leave pauses and they’re not going for it at all and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘wow, this is really painful’.

Mental Health on Campus

Isla Cunningham Isla Cunningham shoots the breeze with local stand-up comedian Paul McDaniel.

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Paul McDaniel

You have to be quite self-reflective and think about what other people think of you. Also, record your gigs. It’s horrible to watch yourself, obviously, but you have to know what people are looking at. I remember once, watching myself back and realising, ‘of course no one’s laughing!’ It looks completely different to how it sounds in your head.

There is not yet a suitable forum to discuss mental health, and students who will shape the future of our country are making a key transition in their lives within a society where there is seldom any discussion about this. From a young age, we are taught how to maintain a healthy body, but not how to maintain a healthy mind. Efforts are focused primarily on illnesses that can be seen and as a society we seem to be blissfully ignorant to ailments hidden beneath the surface. Students in particular are struggling with their mental wellbeing, with 26% currently experiencing a mental health problem. Yet only one in ten uses counselling services provided by their university3.

“We work with Student Minds to raise awareness of mental health issues, eliminate stigma and raise money for mental health organizations.”

What are your goals for the future? PM: Be more outgoing. I‘ve kind of found ways, subconsciously, to be around less people. Comedy can really burn you out. You get a buzz when it goes well, but when it doesn’t go well it can be draining; getting up the next day for work can be difficult. When someone asks you ‘what did you do last night?’ or wants some banter with you, you feel like you’ve done your performing for the night. You can feel like you just want to be on your own. If your house was on fire and you had to grab one thing what would it be?

People are suffering in silence, fearing that others might belittle or reduce what they feel or tell them that they are being melodramatic and should ‘get over’ whatever they are battling. University life is a dramatic change for everyone. While some adapt, others become homesick and anxious about their workload, socialising or other challenges that higher education brings. Consequently, what starts as acute stress can quickly become depression.

GU Mental Wealth is here to spread the word. We work with Student Minds to raise awareness of mental health issues, eliminate stigma and raise money for mental health organizations with events such as film screenings, talks and bake sales. GU Mental Wealth will be joining forces with other societies to speak up for students like Manvir, who feel overwhelmed and alone. If you want to get involved, follow us on Twitter at @GUMentalWealth and ‘Like’ us at www.facebook.com/GUMentalWealth. Let’s work to move our University forward and make use of our reputation as a highly successful institution to push for better mental health resources. Let’s spread the message that we are on your side and we are here for you.

English Courses We have some great courses, classes & workshops available to help you achieve your personal language goals. We offer 15hr intensive & 7.5hr semi-intensive day courses, as well as 3hr part-time evening classes. If you’d just like to practise your speaking, then try our social English workshops every Tuesday evening.

Paul’s Glasgow Comedy Festival show, Worp In Krogress, is on at The13th Note on 24th March 2015.

- IELTS 6.5 - IELTS 7+ - IELTS extra Attending work or University? Try our general English courses:

- intermediate - upper intermediate - advanced

www.languagewithin.com hello@languagewithin.com t: 0778 629 6229

Taken from the Guardian’s 2015 University League Tables for Psychology

According to a survey conducted by the National Union of Students

PM: My cat. [I laugh.] What? You weren’t expecting that? What’s he gonna do, just run out by himself!?

Get your IELTS with our preparation courses:

As reported by the Guardian with statistics from the National Union of Students

0.1 GUM Ad TA 141014.indd 2

16/10/2014 19:24:40

Features

Glasgow University Magazine

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Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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Labour’s Calvary

In or After a Night Out?

Liam Doherty

Liam Doherty shares his thoughts on the steps the Scottish Labour Party must take if it is to survive post-referendum.

Fred Melnyczuk

I dunno, it’s not enough man, I want people to know. To know know my love know my hate hear my music feel my soul; Place their pulse on my living tune Be there when the beat drops be there at the climax and the crescendo, the rising of strings. The mad glorious angelic conductor and the tears that bring Music music the only So many thousands of instruments a dozen orchestras, a soundtrack to my days. Born with me and dying too, I dunno, I wish I could open myself to the world, let them enter, Like animals to the ark and the ark to the sky and the sky to the stars Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh I mean it These nights are a search For the key To unlock

this ribcage

Scotland may have rejected independence but these remain fascinating times for Scottish and UK politics. The political landscape of post-referendum Scotland is one in which uncertainty prevails. Questions persist over when Scotland’s new devolved powers will reach Holyrood, and more importantly, what these powers will be. Yet from this constitutional confusion, another pertinent uncertainty has emerged: the state of Scottish Labour. The authority over Scotland’s future rests where we voted to keep it: Westminster. However the authority over Labour’s future in Scotland is solely in the hands of the Scottish people. Regardless of what comes of our new powers, the question at the forefront of Scottish politics is this: what next for Labour’s future in Scotland? Around 40% of Labour voters in Scotland voted ‘Yes’. The Labour heartlands of North Lanarkshire, Glasgow, and Dundee (aka Yes City) all voted for independence. After their loss in 2007, and humiliation in 2011, losing these areas should sober Labour into recognizing the need for a major reinvention. Margaret Curran has already spoken of launching a Labour regeneration project in the hope of reclaiming her party’s lost voters. Labour dominated the Better Together campaign. It had to. Strategists recognised that the Tories are toxic north of the border and that the Liberal Democrats are increasingly a flaccid non-event. Historically, Labour has been Scotland’s perceived instinctive party of choice and this determined their leading role in the Better Together campaign. But the campaign was a step toward their undoing. The core arguments presented by Better Together were the usual impersonations of old ‘socialist’ Labour. Jim Murphy pointing at the NHS and the Welfare State shouting, ‘That’s what we did!’ Murphy, like the rest of his colleagues, celebrated in the early hours of the morning as councils declared their results. However, the victory came at a price. Tired rhetoric celebrating the working man and woman might have made the wealthy liberal nod, but not Scotland’s poor. The country’s most disadvantaged areas voted Yes, despite their mother-party coming home to care. For too long Labour has arrogantly assumed that governing Scotland is its birthright. This attitude has anchored the party’s strategy and performance for at least the past eight years. In light of the referendum, they must abandon their pathological revulsion of the SNP and stop propounding the one-dimensional argument that nationalism is bad for Scotland.

Labour ought to give credit where it is due. Their crowd-pleasing rhetoric that associates them with the NHS and the welfare state must also stop. These no longer belong to Labour, especially given shadow chancellor Ed Balls has announced that if returned to government, Labour will retain the Coalition’s benefit cap while planning real-term cuts to child benefit and the winter fuel allowance.

“The introduction of single transferable votes (STV) in council elections saw Labour go from holding 37.6% of councils to 6.3%.” Scottish Labour should differentiate from Ed Miliband. Balls seems to have matched the Conservatives by announcing an economic strategy not too dissimilar from George Osborne’s, while proposals for the wealth tax by Glasgow’s own Greg Philo remain quarantined. Balls’s plans are counterproductive for Scottish Labour. Labour has failed to acknowledge fundamental changes in Scotland. Trade union membership, council housing, Roman Catholic partisanship and Labour’s ‘dominance’ in council elections were once important aspects of a strong ‘Scottish Labour’. The introduction of single transferable votes (STV) in council elections saw Labour go from holding 37.6% of councils to 6.3%. Trade unionism has declined rapidly since 1980, as has council housing and the Roman Catholic vote. For a party that has never won a majority of the vote and has only been the fancy of particular areas, it is peculiar how it has maintained its image as Scotland’s intrinsic politic. Change won’t come soon. Scottish Labour needs to resolve its identity crisis and decide the sort of party it wants to be. It cannot survive as a reactionary to the Conservatives and the SNP. This change requires new talent. Lamont and her colleagues were the most unimpressive and inarticulate demagogues to have graced Holyrood. Lamont’s recent departure, however, was accompanied by the most apt complaint of her career: that Westminster treats the Scottish party ‘like a branch office’. Who should the party turn to now? So far it has been to those at Westminster. Just like Lamont’s leadership election, it’s slim pickings once again. The party is most likely to suffer dearly in 2015 and 2016. Whether this spell in no man’s land is used to appreciate the reality of our changing Scotland may well determine Labour’s survival. If Lamont’s successor does not purge the idea that Scottish and ‘Westminster’ Labour are better together, they will continue to bear the cross to Labour’s Calvary.

Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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Ukraine: Glasgow’s Ukrainians and Russians speak out. William Monk William Monk talks to Ukrainian and Russian students about how the conflict in Ukraine is being portrayed in the media.

As the bombs continue to fall in eastern Ukraine, we hear about the escalating conflict though a complex myriad of mediums. Politicised social media and increased scepticism towards the mainstream press have led to impassioned commentary and streams of misinformation. I set out to discover what Ukrainians and Russians living in Glasgow make of the conflict and how they perceive its representation in the Western media.

Of those I interviewed, several were unwavering in their belief that the United States is to blame for the situation in Ukraine. Some students claim the crisis is part of a grand strategy to export the American democratic model, including to Syria and Hong Kong. ‘American democracy is great, but they are trying to spread it in an illegitimate, non-democratic way. And a truly democratic country cannot have an illegitimate government,’ said Darius.

‘I could talk for hours about that’, sighed a Russian friend from the city of Samara. Asked if he thought the media was portraying the situation fairly, his answer was categorical: ‘Absolutely not. No media is portraying it fairly, not Western, not Russian, not Arabic, none’. Darius, a Baltic Russian from Lithuania, was even more critical: ‘There is no such thing as a free media, at least in the mainstream. They’re all connected to government’. Kseniya, a Russian postgraduate student at the Adam Smith Business School, was equally sceptical. ‘Your media only tells one side of the story’. She believes that several parties need to take responsibility for the situation in Ukraine and observers need to stop ‘[categorically blaming] it on Russia’. Kseniya was quick to point out the perceived biases in the Western version of events. ‘The way they got rid of Yanukovich, who was democratically elected; that wasn’t democracy’. Similarly, other interviewees argued that ‘the Crimea referendum in March was more legitimate than anything that happened in Kiev’.

Of the Russians I spoke to, only one, Dr. Shamil Khairov, a lecturer in Russian who has lived in Britain for fifteen years, offered an alternative perspective. He saw no such bias in the Western version of events. ‘I think the BBC are quite balanced’, he said, adding, ‘I certainly don’t trust the official Russian media. They have lied so many times in the past’.

В.Власенко

George Kennan – an American diplomat during Stalin’s Russia – once referred to ‘the age-old insecurity of a sedentary people reared on an exposed plain, in the neighbourhood of fierce nomadic tribes’. I think Kennan’s words aptly capture the current crisis in Ukraine. I noticed that the Russians I spoke to tended to view Ukraine as a piece on a chessboard; a new Cold War plot to bring down Russia. ‘It’s not about Ukraine. The West doesn’t care about Ukraine. It’s about Russia’, one insisted.

Ukrainians are thinner on the ground in Glasgow and those I did speak to were understandably reticent about the fratricidal conflict rocking their country. When asked about the media, those I spoke to generally felt Western coverage was fair. The British media is a lot more professional than the Ukrainian or Russian’, Yelizaveta, a postgraduate student from the Ukrainian town of Khmelnitsky, told me. ‘They aim at balanced coverage’. She cited as an example how the BBC described the fighters in the East of the country as ‘proponents of secession’. This she considered more neutral than the ‘rebels’ and the ‘terrorists’ of the Russian and Ukrainian media respectively.

“Ukraine’s territorial integrity cannot be compromised. I would like to see an end to Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs.” When asked what they hoped would be the outcome of the conflict, Ukrainians wanted Crimea to be returned and for Ukraine to emerge stronger and more prosperous. ‘People are terrified... they want stability and sustainable political and economic systems’, said Lera, from Dnipropetrovsk, a city in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian prognosis was different altogether. ‘The East will probably go independent’, claimed one. Pavel, from Nizhny Novgorod, thought the same: ‘Donetsk and Luhansk will probably go the way of Abkhazia and South Ossetia [de facto independent regions of Georgia, over which the 2008 Russia-Georgia war was fought]. It’s reached the point of no return. Putin cannot back down now, and how can Poroshenko ever govern there now?’ Another replied, ‘The US will tire of Poroshenko, as they did with Yushchenko and Saakashvili [former, pro-Western leaders of Ukraine and Georgia respectively]. He will fall and Ukraine will come back to us’. Dr. Khairov condemned the actions of the Russian government: ‘Ukraine’s territorial integrity cannot be compromised. I would like to see an end to Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs’. However his outlook for Ukraine’s future was bleak, predicting that ‘it will become a chronic conflict, like Israel and Hamas’. There was one encouraging consensus. Almost everyone I spoke to, whether Ukrainian or Russian, agreed that the violence must be brought to an end as soon as possible. As one Russian commented, ‘It doesn’t matter what flag is flying over your head, as long as you are alive’.

Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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Trap of Sympathy: Saving the Developing World from Stereotypes Youngwon Do

Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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A Mother of a Debate Jasmine Riggs-Bristow

Jasmine Riggs-Bristow discusses the limitations of the Liberal Democrats’ pledge to extend paternity leave entitlement to six weeks.

Youngwon Do explores the hypocrisy surrounding Plan Norway’s #StopTheWedding campaign.

In Norway on October 11th 2014, guests and protesters applauded as 12-year-old Thea nodded her head at the wedding vows and made her way down the runner. This seemingly real wedding ceremony of a child bride was a provocative marketing stunt organised by Plan: one of the largest non-profit international organisations to protect children’s rights. According to Plan, 39,000 girls around the world are forced into marriages every day. For many, this means being pulled out of education and having adolescent pregnancies; a related problem that can cause long-term health issues for these young mothers. Plan’s idea to adapt the story of child brides and turn it into a marriage of a young Norwegian girl worked brilliantly in terms of raising public awareness internationally. Thea’s story began with her ‘wedding blog’ and soon spread globally, starting the #StopTheWedding movement and engaging 3.5 million people on Facebook. Calling for action against forced child marriages, ‘people now no longer want to sit idly by and watch’ says National Director of Plan Norway, Olaf Thommessen. ‘All the forces of good unite in the fight against child marriage and on behalf of girls’ rights.’

“Standing against the objectification of developing countries, movements to promote true understanding of the needy are drawing attention to the complex cultural relationships that cloud this area.” The enthusiastic public response to Plan Norway’s campaign suggests a double standard in our approach to social and cultural issues. The truth is that while one Norwegian girl’s blog moved millions of people, the real life struggles of 39,000 girls each day in developing countries have been neglected. The public seem to care less about human rights abuses in countries where they occur consistently. Perhaps constant images of poverty and disease in developing countries have led people to consider different standards of dignity for themselves and others.

In August the Liberal Democrats announced their pledge to give fathers an extra four weeks’ paternity leave – a 200% increase on the current two weeks afforded to new fathers. While a step in the right direction, the pledge is inadequate in overcoming the patriarchal assumptions that continue to shape our society. Plan Norway

Provoking sympathy is an extremely effective way to motivate donations so it is unsurprising that upsetting images dominate fundraising campaigns. However, it is debatable whether these ‘poverty porn’ campaigns actually serve the long-term interests of people in developing countries. Rather, they seem only to reinforce the rich-poor schism and encourage the idea that poorer countries are dependent on western aid. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I am unintentionally contributing to objectifying children in poverty and promoting harmful stereotypes about developing countries,’ says Kim Hee-kyung, director of advocacy for Save the Children Korea. Standing against the objectification of developing countries, movements to promote true understanding of the needy are drawing attention to the complex cultural relationships that cloud this area. The ‘Plan’ media campaign arguably highlighted the potential for cultural insensitivity. SAIH - Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund - created a short yet effective film about a fictional campaign where Africans donate radiators to Norwegians who are freezing to death, implying how wrong biased images can be. Similarly, Jessica Jackely, co-founder of microcredit-based developmental organisation Kiva, has delivered a Ted Talk on the importance of listening to local entrepreneurs in order to plan regionally appropriate aid. Human rights advocacy and foreign aid must respect developing countries as equal members of a global society in which there is no place for double standards. People in the developing world are entitled to be free from stereotypes as well as deprivation. We need to learn to stop producing stereotypes and save ourselves from the trap of sympathy.

“Recent research discovered that around 40% of men take no paternity leave at all because of attitudes toward the idea (Guardian, 2013).” Current legislation dictates that after two weeks, a man cannot take additional paid paternity leave if the mother remains at home. This leads many, including employers, to perceive a newborn child as a mother’s responsibility first and foremost. Women are assumed to be the only parent requiring substantial leave. Furthermore, due to the escalating cost of childcare in the UK, many women have limited options when they want to return to the workplace.

Patriarchy is detrimental for both sexes. Socially ingrained perceptions of gender roles also hinder men across the UK. Recent research discovered that around 40% of men take no paternity leave at all because of attitudes toward the idea (Guardian, 2013). Many men remain disillusioned and feel pressured to believe that they cannot stay at home to look after their child without compromising their career and finances. This cements the assumption that women should assume responsibility for a newborn child’s care. A couple are currently granted two weeks’ paid leave to take together before one parent must resume work. Unfortunately many men decline to take the brief leave they are entitled to for fear of failing in their socially constructed responsibility to be the ‘breadwinner’. Women often find themselves in a position where they have little choice but to care for their child alone and this perpetuates their economic dependence. Even before the child is born, patriarchal assumptions permeate the legislation that affects new parents. At present, a man can take time off work to attend just two antenatal classes. Women are expected to attend the remaining sessions alone, despite the fact that pregnancy is a joint venture. Once again, current legislation subordinates women but celebrates the stereotypical male breadwinner. This also prevents fathers from engaging with their newborn. Men may feel inadequately prepared for parenthood because their opportunities to attend antenatal classes are limited. Our current laws deem a man’s bond with mother and child less important than an extra hour in the office. The Liberal Democrats’ pledge is a noble attempt to correct patriarchal structures in the UK. Yet it calls our attention to the fact that the social attitudes that inform legislation on matters such as paternity leave are still far too traditional. Even if paternity leave is extended to six weeks, it is unlikely that this will be sufficient to challenge the patriarchal values holding our society back.

Politics

Glasgow University Magazine

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Pope Francis and the Freegans Jack Hanington

Jack Hanington suggests how we can curb our shocking culture of food waste. It is time to look to the global south and learn from their initiatives.

Three whole peppers, five strands of bacon, three pieces of chicken, a full lettuce and molding party rings. That was my food waste for the week. A more creative chef might have concocted a decent meal out of it. Instead, it rots in a black bag, soon to be dumped in a landfill. It is troubling to see so much food go to waste but it is soon forgotten when the next weekly shop comes around. Yet my refuse is miniscule in comparison to the vast quantities discarded by supermarkets each day. Various projects across Britain have emerged to improve supermarkets’ currently lamentable use of food. For instance, in north Birmingham, Sainsbury’s has attempted the world’s first energy sustainable supermarket. It runs on unsold food alone using a process called anaerobic digestion. Meanwhile, following Tesco’s admission that it wastes around 60,000 tonnes of food each year, the company has decided to alter the size of their pre-packed salads. Radical. Initiatives such as these seem to be mere public relations exercises. While Tesco, M&S and others strive to protect their images, they continue to bleach unsold food to deter ‘Freegans’- those who search in supermarket skips for unsold, supposedly ‘expired’ food. Meanwhile, World Food Day passed insignificantly on October 16. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the focus of this year’s milestone was on family farming and recognizing ‘the important contribution of family farmers to world food security’. While the event generated little attention from the mainstream media, leaders such as former Ghanaian President Kufuor and the Holy Father himself, Pope Francis, did mark the occasion. Kufuor argued that by creating a stable and rewarding environment for family farms (agriculture that relies on non-wage family labour), the developing world could take a significant step towards reducing poverty.

“We are more likely to utilise and appreciate the food we have put work into cultivating than a rootless packet from a shelf.” This is on the grounds that family farming creates jobs, increases food security and strengthens communities. The message of World Food Day was that countries across the developing world increasingly rely on family farming for their survival. Can’t we learn something from poorer countries’ agricultural methods in dealing with our own crisis of waste? World Food Day celebrated the family farmer and the shortening of the food production process and can serve as a lesson for everyone. We are more likely to utilise and appreciate the food we have put work into cultivating than a rootless packet from a shelf. In bypassing supermarkets, our relationship with food can change. Family and cooperative farming projects are sprouting up across the UK. In Glasgow alone, community projects are thriving. Urban Roots is an organization that promotes green living. One of their most exciting projects is called ‘Grow Your Own’ - a course dedicated to teaching would-be farmers about propagating, cultivating and composting. The Woodlands Community Garden has also provided Glasgow with a sanctuary to communally grow crops and within our university itself, the GU Food Co-Op organizes weekly grocery shops sourced from sustainable farms. All of these projects are creating a powerful bottom-up movement away from the systematic wastefulness of supermarkets. They encourage us to engage with our food, to understand its production and to fundamentally change our relationship with it. Not to mention the nutritional benefits of reducing our processed food intake. It’s time to put down the artificially coloured party rings and pick up a spade.

Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

Messianic Rituals Meredith Stewart Ron Athey maims himself onstage and presents to us an important question: how far are we willing to go to create art?

In November, American performance artist, Ron Athey, came to The Arches to perform his solo piece entitled, ‘Messianic Rituals’. Athey’s performance was no comfortable, amusing family drama for all ages. Instead, audiences witnessed him initiating many shocking and often terrifying acts, consisting of maiming, stretching, mutilating, injecting, and distorting his own and others’ flesh. For years, Athey has worked on developing terrifying pieces of theatre that convey themes of masochism, self-mutilation, S&M, HIV and religious references, all tied into one performance that will have the audience embraced in a brutal struggle between horror and curiosity. But Athey is relaying a larger picture here - a picture of the implications of the human body and the constant presence of death. ‘Messianic Rituals’, part of Athey’s Incorruptible Flesh series that has been running since the mid-90s, was originally a joint collaboration with artist Lawrence Steger, who died of AIDS in 1999. Athey and Steger collaborated during a research residence at the CCA Glasgow in February 1996, where they also studied religious topics such as the lives of saints and the associations of relics. They noticed the ‘incorruptible’ quality of many of the saints they encountered, who were encased in wax with their real corpse hidden inside. It was a stark contrast to their own ‘corruptible’ bodies, as they were both battling HIV. Almost 10 years after the death of Steger in 1999, Athey presented his first solo show: a six-hour long piece at Artists Space in New York City, N.Y. In this piece he drew up the images of the saints he encountered with Steger, presenting his martyred body, suffering in pain on a rack. Athey’s childhood also has a play in the way he has crafted his work over the years. He was born in 1961, into a Pentecostal household. In an interview for The Independent in 2012, he described the atmosphere of his childhood as ‘Southern Fried gospel’. In his parents’ home, cult behaviour such as ecstatic rituals, was the norm. He was said to be a child of prophecy. He was told that a spirit had entered into his soul and he spoke in many tongues.

CC Taz Sporkist

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Ron Athey - Glasgay

“I just turned 50. It’s like a cruel joke. Suddenly I’m an old man and I thought I was going to die when I was in my twenties” This generated a considerable amount of attention in the local community and may well have informed the kind of material he includes in his performances today. Around the age of 15, Athey started to question the environment he was living in and, along with his sense of glossolalia (speaking in tongues), he eventually lost his faith. These themes of cult behaviour and the unnatural within the human are prevalent throughout his work and are among the most disturbing aspects of his performances. However, his battle with HIV also informs much of the content. Athey was diagnosed with the virus at 26, at a time when there was very limited treatment for the condition. He has since gone on to give performances that have been influenced by his experiences of living with HIV. ‘I just turned 50. It’s like a cruel joke. Suddenly I’m an old man and I thought I was going to die when I was in my twenties’, Athey told The Independent. Athey does not hold back when he creates art. His performance is an outstanding piece of theatre that pushes the boundaries of today’s contemporary shows. If you go and see him, be prepared; you will witness a poetic and brutal spectacle that makes you cringe in terror, but it will be brilliant.

Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

BANNED BOOKS WEEK AND THE AMERICAN CENSORSHIP MOVEMENT Lisa Feklistova Banned Books Week is an annual event protesting censorship in US schools and libraries. Its effort is certainly commendable yet the issue of censorship in schools is not as clear-cut as it seems.

‘It was a pleasure to burn’. So begins Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1953, the novel depicts a dystopia where independent thought is seen as a threat to the social order, and a group of ‘firemen’ are charged with the task of burning books. The novel treats the freedom to read as a right of paramount importance, while book banning is presented as something atrocious. By 1967, this outspoken condemnation of censorship was being widely read in high-school lessons across the US. The irony lay in the fact that the version these students were reading was itself a censored one.

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Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

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Unbeknown to the author, Bradbury’s publisher marketed a new edition of Fahrenheit 451 to schools specifically, in which all instances of the words ‘damn’, ‘hell’, and ‘abortion’ were cut out. By 1973, the censored version was the only one available for sale to the general public. When Bradbury himself became aware of this six years later, the ensuing scandal took the literary world by storm. The American Library Association (ALA) began to investigate how widespread censorship at American schools really was, and found that Fahrenheit 451 was far from the only awardwinning novel to have been modified. That was in 1981. A year later, in association with the ALA, Banned Books Week had its debut. According to their website, Banned Books Week is ‘an annual event celebrating the freedom to read’. Each year during the last week of September, supporters are encouraged to read a challenged book in order to raise awareness of ongoing censorship at American schools and libraries. Information on which titles were removed from the shelves of which institutions, and for what reasons, is provided. The aim is clear—like Bradbury, the organizers of Banned Books Week advocate that access to literature should be unlimited, regardless of the content or the readers’ age.

Illustrations by Ben Carollo

The issue of censorship in schools, however, is not as straightforward as the organizers of Banned Books Week suggest. Few, after all, would advocate that individual liberty to act be absolutely unrestrained. And while it is true that books are not acts—they are ideas—ideas nevertheless have power to prompt acts. A valid argument can therefore be made for restricting children’s access to harmful ideas. But what exactly is ‘harmful’ and who gets to decide?

The more people read, the more they learn how to question the world view they take for granted. Critical thinking ability is the best antidote to dogma. Much of the US censorship drive, however, is being led by the religious right, which has a tendency to take the Bible literally and wants kids to follow suit. Thus, among the top ten most challenged books of 2013 is The Hunger Games trilogy, with a ‘religious viewpoint’ cited as the principal cause for objection, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, due to its depiction of homosexuality.

“The more people read, the more they learn how to question the world view they take for granted.”

It is crucial, however, that controversial books have a place on school curriculums. Learn to identify racist undertones in Gone with the Wind as a child, and you will recognize racist undertones in a politician’s speech as an adult. Children need to learn that words themselves can be problematic. Yet according to the Banned Books Week website, not only is Gone with the Wind frequently challenged, but so are Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. The latter two explore the devastating effects of racial inequality, and are removed from classrooms for being too violent. It seems that the solution of US censors when it comes to dealing with racism is to simply pretend to teenagers that it does not exist.

While Banned Books Week operates under the assumption that nobody should have the right to limit others’ access to books, there is undeniably such a thing as a harmful text. Extremist literature, for instance, that urges its readers to commit hate crimes, should not fall into the hands of those who will accept the words on the pages unquestioningly. Children who have not yet developed the skills to critically examine texts fit into that category, and withholding certain reading material from them is not an inherently bad thing. Movies, after all, have a ratings system. Why shouldn’t books? And yet, as it stands, the current US censorship drive, which it is the aim of Banned Books Week to combat, harms children far more than it protects them.

Were the US censorship movement to have its way, judging from the works most frequently challenged, teenagers would never develop critical thinking skills, which would leave them all the more vulnerable. And so, despite its ideological flaws, Banned Books Week is an event to be celebrated.

Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

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Inside Stan’s Studio Rubén Rodríguez Cubiella

Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

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Love Is Strange Arnaud Brebion

Directed by Ira Sachs Starring Alfred Molina & John Lithgow GUM talked to Sarah Stanley, a Glasgow-based artist and the owner of Glasgow’s very first PWYC (Pay What You Can) café, which is home to more than good coffee- it houses art, guitar tuition and events.

On the ground floor of a building along Alexandra Park Street is Stan’s, a cozy little café which, despite having opened just two months ago, has attracted a lot of attention. Owned by Sarah Stanley, an established Scottish artist, this café is a reflection of her multifaceted nature. Because of its popularity, GUM had to go and meet the woman who made this happen. What has led to you setting up a donation-based café? SS: Making art is still my main thing but, since the income can be quite unsteady, I’ve always had to find things that facilitated having a studio as well as flexibility. While working at a gallery in Aberdeen, we fell on hard times and I decided to change it up by opening a donation-based café over there. I didn’t actually create the concept of this type of café, I must have seen it somewhere... However, I felt this sort of place might have been too progressive for the cultural void that is Aberdeen. Then I decided to move to Glasgow, rent the cheapest studio I could find and bring my project to life in a place that would understand it. It’s set up on a basis of mutual respect, and I’ve seen that, as long as you provide good food, people will willingly pay you.

Presented in advance screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part of Glasgay on 24th October 2014.

How do you go about your music tuition? SS: I mainly teach guitar and I don’t ever teach written music. I like to find out how people best learn. You might make a great pianist sometimes but get caught up in some theory aspect. I really focus on intervals and getting a feel for the regularities within music. I really love music theory, but it’s totally boring if you just learn it like that. The popularity of Stan’s makes a compelling case for this type of hospitality. Whether other cities are ready for it yet remains to be seen, however it certainly appears that Glasgow is realising the benefits of the unconventional yet generous framework behind a PWYC café.

Aidan Morrissey

How has the response been, both online and offline? SS: Quite nice, actually. I knew it would be something Glasgow would like, whereas in Aberdeen it just felt like some weird novelty. We’ve held some events, like the Ginger Ale Cocktail nights or the Goose Flesh exhibit, that have created hype. I really don’t want it to become as busy as Starbucks, but I definitely felt welcome despite only doing B60 and Aeropress. As far as my online presence goes, I really like Instagram because of its interface to share stuff.

“This refreshing cocktail of emotions exists as a result of the tremendous work of duo Alfred Molina and John Lithgow.” The plot in itself won’t drastically change storytelling: a couple of lifelong partners, Ben and George, decide to get married in their old age. All goes well up until George loses his job, depriving the couple of their main income. Forced to sell their flat, they will have to live apart from each other, sleeping on the bunk beds and couches of friends and family.

The design is quite unique. Did you have any specific concept in mind? SS: Sort of, yeah. Soon after I got the place, I discovered a lot of roof space, so I decided to build the mezzanine. I kind of made it up as I went along, but you obviously have to make it all structurally sound. Even though I had a friend help me in the beginning, it was mostly a one-woman job. As for the materials, OSB (Oriented Strand Board) is super cheap but looks very cool, so people assume you chose it for the coolness when I actually just had a very finite budget.

Love is strange; or is it? If we believe the growing fuss around ‘gay’ movies, that’s the question gnawing at Hollywood. One can assume that the gay movies trend reached its climax when Blue is the Warmest Color received the Palme d’Or at Cannes Festival in 2013. My opinion is that it won’t be long before gay movies will be totally assimilated into more classic genres. Why is that? Simply because Love is Strange is not a gay movie. Love is Strange is above all a movie about tenderness, comprehension, and love, while gay movies usually focus on cruelty, alienation, and – let’s say it – sex.

Aidan Morrissey

You probably got by now that this movie’s strengths are not in fascinating plot twists. But it finds its purpose in a much greater way: the perfect combination of comedy and drama. Love is Strange is a film where the audience can genuinely conceive that the laugh does not harm dramatic depth. This refreshing cocktail of emotions exists as a result of the tremendous work of duo Alfred Molina and John Lithgow. More than a form of complicity, their couple on screen really feels true, warm, à propos. Whereas television shows such as Modern Family depict gay men as overly feminine, and academy-favourite motion pictures such as Brokeback Mountain focus on repressed feelings from hard-raised men, Sachs chose to tell the story of regular gentlemen living their love like everybody else would. Other questions raised here concern friends and family. Could you feel alienated from your own friends if you are not sharing these moments with your lover? How long can a family accommodate an uncle crashing on the couch who does not realize the hassle he is? The film delivers its own answers through quite deadpan maxims: ‘When you live with people, you know them better than you care to’, and ‘I just guess gay means stupid nowadays.’

Sony Classics

If almost all the characters are artists, the film is far from being an arty one. Where the young Coppola’s generation can sometimes grow tired of too much extravaganza, Sachs kept it simple. The mise-en-scène is classic but still proposes clever tricks. Each character is well-defined, well-interpreted, and their interactions are meaningful. New York has always been a perfect place to shoot. From Manhattan to Once Upon A Time in America, every cinema enthusiast could draw a map of the Big Apple. Yet, this year’s ‘independent batch’ of movies, amongst which is the charming Begin Again, is showing us hidden and lovely parts of New York. And what more could you ask than to have a late-night chat with your soul mate walking the streets of New York one summer evening? Oh yeah of course: having Chopin playing his Berceuse throughout. Well, Love is Strange provides this as well. Sometimes the most complex feelings can be transcribed in the simplest way. That is what Sachs understood with his film Love is Strange, and certainly what Mickey & Sylvia (back in 1956) meant when they sang Love, love is strange / Lots of people take it for a game / Once you get it / You’ll never wanna quit. Love is Strange – UK Release 6th February 2015

Culture

Glasgow University Magazine

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SUBMOTION ORCHESTRA Meredith Stewart

Could you tell me your role in Submotion Orchestra? TE: I’m the drummer, and I also compose a lot of music. I started the band with Dom Howard; he’s the producer and engineer for Submotion. I kind of do a bit of everything. I understand one of your own projects is Gentlemen’s Dub Club (a British dub band). Is this one of a number of side projects you’ve got going on? TE: For me, Gentlemen’s Dub Club and Submotion Orchestra take up a lot of my time, and they’re kind of even for me in terms of priorities. They’re both pretty well established bands, and I write a lot of the music for both of them. I do lots of other stuff as well, for example at the moment I’m in the middle of composing for Rambert Dance Company, and I do lots of writing sessions as well involving song writing for different acts. I also do a lot of teaching; you just end up doing loads and loads of different stuff, which is great. I get bored quite quickly so I think doing lots of different styles of music is very important. So how did that evolve to starting the band? TE: Me and Dom (Howard) started writing some stuff, and we were like, ‘Ok, let’s actually try and do this, let’s get some guys together’. I knew loads of musicians from gigging and playing and college and so on, so I was able to put together the core of the band. A few of us just started jamming together; we realised that we needed a singer, because it was all instrumental, but we didn’t really know how to approach it. I had known Ruby from college, but I’d never actually heard her sing, and she commented on something on Facebook of mine. I started thinking, ‘Ruby would be a good person to have!’, and I literally asked her to join the band without having heard her sing before. But anyway, it worked out all right. Submotion Orchestra - Alium

Glasgow University Magazine

Every Blooming Thing

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“KellyDawn^Riot admits her latest collection has a ‘feminine element’ and argues that she is responding to the newfound confidence and daring with which men approach style.”

- KellyDawn^Riot

Tommy Evans talked to GUM about his side project, how Submotion Orchestra found their vocalist, and why their gigs are ‘a massive jazzy mess’

Submotion Orchestra is a musical collective hailing from Leeds. Over the past five years they have released a number of EPs and two albums. They are currently touring with their third album, Alium. Meredith Stewart talked to Tommy Evans, one of the seven members of the band, about their new album.

Style

With your new album, Alium, which is coming out soon, how would you say the sound has changed since your first release? TE: ‘I don’t know’ is the answer to that. I think it’s an extension of the last album; the bits from the last album that were quite produced. We have even more production based on some tunes on this album, and even more acoustic and kind of spacey sounds, so it’s a really diverse album. There are tracks that are fully studio-produced tracks, and others where it sounds almost like Bon Iver - it’s a really varied album. It still walks this line between acoustic and electronic, which is the kind of area that we’re trying to explore. What can we expect from the live show? TE: Similar to the album, the live show has moments where it’s very electronic, and very kind of digital, and other moments where it’s a massive jazzy mess! We try and keep it quite improvised, but structurally things can change, and we try and have a conversational kind of feel to tunes by not making it too formulaic. We try and make sure that every gig is different, and we try and challenge each other in every gig. It’s a lot of fun; just because you don’t know what you’re going to get. It’s also much more intense; one of our viewers said that, ‘You don’t go to Submotion to listen to the music, you go to experience it’, and I think it is more than the music; it’s the whole thing. The bass is overwhelmingly loud, and it really does draw you in. It’s quite a powerful thing, which seems to be the impression. It’s gonna be great.

Submotion Orchestra’s new album, Alium, is out now.

Anne Devlin Style Editor Anne Devlin presents designer KellyDawn^Riot. Featuring the Every Blooming Thing menswear collection shot by Scottish photographer Jodie Mann.

There is definitely something flourishing in Glasgow right now. Creatively, the city is going from strength to strength with exhibitions, conventions, fairs and a burgeoning fashion scene. Home to the prized Glasgow School of Art, our city is creating the creatives. KellyDawn^Riot is a perfect example. Having just completed her Masters in Fashion Design and Textiles, KellyDawn^Riot is busy promoting her stunning SS15 Menswear collection Every Blooming Thing, beautifully photographed by Jodie Mann for GUM. It is easy to identify influences from 1980s aesthetics – a time she argues men could really be comfortable exploring their style – and Leigh Bowery, a muse whose ‘outlandish style and florals’ provided inspiration throughout her working process. This collection was motivated by the designer’s own fascination with nature as a child, clearly reflected by this shoot’s striking white shirt complete with an intricate insect pattern. Visiting aquariums, galleries and museums, she sourced naturalist imageries to inspire her designs. Hand-painted illustrations (with a box of paints her grandmother gave her at five years old) were digitally arranged on Photoshop and printed by The Centre for Advanced Textiles here in Glasgow. The collection challenges the conventions of high street fashion. Having spent her career designing exclusively for men, KellyDawn^Riot admits her latest collection has a ‘feminine element’ and argues that she is responding to the newfound confidence and daring with which men approach style. The collection can be understood as a comment on gender aesthetics and stereotypes. The straight coats and necklines convey a sense of masculinity that is reconciled with unmistakable flamboyance, something that is creeping back onto the high street with the occasional floral print or splash of pink.

As a fan of the likes of Meadham Kirchhoff and Walter Van Beirendonck, KellyDawn^Riot is embracing the revived aesthetics of menswear. Born in Kent, raised in Limerick and having studied in both Galway and Glasgow, KellyDawn^Riot has seized on the creative energy at work in Scotland right now and will continue doing what she does best. Passing on job offers and internships, she is building her brand and working hard to put together a new collection to be released in the not-so -distant future. Keeping in mind what her granddad used to say, ‘The clothes make the man’, it is safe to say that where KellyDawn^Riot is involved, men will be dressed to impress.

Email: kellydawn.mcgrath@gmail.com Website: http://kellydawnriot.wordpress.com

Style

Glasgow University Magazine

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Style

Glasgow University Magazine

Photography: Jodie Mann Style Assistant: Jeannemarie Hamilton Model: Ryan Hughes (Model Team)

Photography: Jodie Mann Style Assistant: Jeannemarie Hamilton Model: Ryan McMahon (Colours Agency)

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Style

Glasgow University Magazine

Photography: Jodie Mann Style Assistant: Jeannemarie Hamilton Model: Sam Bowden (Model Team)

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Style

Glasgow University Magazine

Photography: Jodie Mann Style Assistant: Jeannemarie Hamilton Model: Ryan Hughes (Model Team)

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Style

Glasgow University Magazine

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Style

Glasgow University Magazine

Are Fashion Weeks Relevant?

Love Those Lashes

Erika Koljonen challenges the idea of Fashion Weeks, asking whether we still need to be told what to wear.

Jasmine Wilson was lucky enough to trial the West End’s new eyebrow bar Love Those Lashes.

Jasmine Wilson

Erika Koljonen

With social networks like Tumblr and Instagram and the growth of fashion blogging and vlogging, there is a continuous stream of style ideas posted online - be it look books, outfits-of-the-day or street style snaps. Most of us are finding our inspiration outside the catwalk - and so are the designers. You need look no further back than Chanel AW14 to see how significantly street style has influenced haute couture. This leads me to question the relevance of Fashion Weeks in setting new trends. Do designers merely mimic what is already out there? In an interview for i-D Pre-Fall 2014, designer Christopher Shannon explained that much of his work is based on what the London boys are wearing. Similar influences can also be seen in Astrid Andersen’s collections. Designers including Lagerfeld and Hedi Slimane have also been influenced by street style throughout their formidable careers. Should you see anyone who is not a 5’11”, size 4 model wearing Lagerfeld’s designs from Chanel AW14, you could be forgiven for passing them off as a chav. At the other end of the spectrum, Hedi Slimane’s collection for Saint Laurent AW13 is a personal favourite of mine despite there not being anything particularly innovative about a girl with messy makeup, a tatty dress and combat boots. These collections amounted to little more than expensive interpretations of charity shop ensemble.

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The same applies to the designer trainer combined with office wear. This combination that has been sported by businesswomen for so long has emerged as a new trend. With everything now available at the swipe of a finger, it can be difficult to pinpoint where trends originate these days. Fashion Weeks are live streamed, collections go on sale immediately after the show and major brands collaborate with bloggers to promote their pieces. While their days setting trends may be numbered, Fashion Weeks do energize the industry and give trends context. They may not be as influential as they once were but it is safe to say that they aren’t going anywhere soon.

Since the ‘Eyebrow Revolution’ began, girls have been making their eyebrows a top priority. After an unfortunate incident with some tweezers aged twelve, it’s safe to say my eyebrows never quite recovered. I’ve spent years frequenting eyebrow bars in the hope of one day achieving brows like the fashion princess herself, Cara Delevingne. Love Those Lashes is a newly opened salon on St. George’s Road, specialising in eyelashes and eyebrows. A short walk from university, it was inevitable that my brows and I would visit. Intimate with a cosy ‘bedroom’ vibe, Love Those Lashes offered something different to other salons I’ve visited. On arrival I met Gemma, the co-owner with her sister Erika, who explained the treatments to me. First, a brow threading and tint, at £18. Next, the classic silk eyelash extensions - pricier at £70. As a newbie, Gemma explained the treatment and attached an extension to each individual lash. Unlike most quickie threadings, Gemma threaded my brows carefully and then tweezed. She applied the tint cautiously, avoiding the awful stained-skin situation I’ve often experienced.

Fashion Week

Illustrations by Zoe Williams

The salon was warm with cheerful music and a relaxed atmosphere. Next came the extensions. This takes a good hour and a half so it’s important to be comfortable (the fur blanket did the trick). The treatment is completely painless with superb results. Being cursed with short and fair lashes, my transformation was remarkable. You have a choice of effects – I opted for natural and long. I would highly recommend the treatment to anyone, whatever look they’re going for. I will definitely be returning to Love Those Lashes. Gemma delivers quality and expertise and the 10% student discount certainly helps. With a fantastic salon now on our doorstep, there is no excuse for having bad brows!

Glasgow Independents

Vestiaire pour Deux: Androgyny in Fashion

Glasgow has a range of independent clothes stores that inspire the eclectic styles we see on our streets. Rebecca Richardson shares her thoughts on the best of Glasgow’s independents.

César Imbert takes us through a brief history of androgyny in fashion, from Gaultier to the modern day high street.

Rebecca Richardson

Vintage Guru is a Byres Road store that is always well stocked with accessories of all kinds. It is the perfect place to source affordable one-offs to make your outfit truly unique. Also focussing on vintage – as the name suggests – is Glasgow Vintage Co. The shop hosts staple pieces from faux and real furs, to classic sheepskins and biker jackets for both men and women. For those uninspired by the high street’s winter coats, Vintage Co. offers some fantastic alternatives for wrapping up during the harsh winter months. Chou Chou Couture is a Glasgow-based label specialising in luxury hoods. Though their pieces have previously catered for a niche, Chou Chou’s latest collection marks a shift toward more broadly appealing collections that include dress designs. Chou Chou presents a series of bodycon offerings in pastel hues and contrasting metallic prints. Not for the fainthearted but definitely worth a look for disco-inspired pieces for day or night.

Cesar Imbert

For the guys there is W2. Stocking menswear only, W2 is a converted nineteenth century cowshed where you can browse pieces by Comme des Garcon and others that you would struggle to find elsewhere in Glasgow. The concept of W2 and its setting make for a unique shopping experience.

Ozlem Tas

In 1984 when he created a skirt for men, Jean Paul Gaultier was one of the first designers to question gender identity and style. A year later, he created what he termed a ‘garde-robe pour deux’, literally ‘a wardrobe for two’ putting transgender and androgyny in the spotlight. Thirty years after his debut, Gaultier decided to discontinue his ready-to-wear collections for both women and men this season. For me, this announcement marked the end of an era. While looking at the menswear collections I couldn’t help but wonder, what is left of Gaultier’s ‘vestiaire pour deux’ in the creations of today’s young designers? As one of the leading designers of the twentieth century, Gaultier’s influence is clear in many shows. The skirt, worn as a kilt, was seen in an Alexander McQueen show this fall. By featuring this piece, Sarah Button paid tribute to both the androgynous fashion of Gaultier and McQueen’s Scottish roots.

Bethany Black

Like Gaultier in 1985, several designers such as Guillaume Henry for Carven or Steven Cox and Daniel Silver for Duckie Brown used female models in their menswear shows in order to emphasize the similarities between male and female wardrobes. Yet young designers have adopted a more subtle approach. Today’s androgynous style may have been influenced by the minimalistic trends of the nineties, which celebrated sharp cuts and plain fabrics. The Swedish brand Acne Studio or the mass-market brand COS both create large coats, pullovers and trousers. Because they erase the shapes of the body, these voluminous items can be worn by either men or women – offering a fresh take on the ‘garde-robe pour deux’.

Business & Economics

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Josh Stevens

Petko Nekezov

Businesses and charities are often seen as opposites but perhaps they have more in common than we might think.

In both cases, the primary objective is to make as much money as possible in a competitive market, especially during a sluggish economy. The difference is in how this is achieved and the way profits are invested. As in business, the more established the charity, the more corporate its operations become. The organizational structure of a charity can be very similar to that of a large business with an elaborate hierarchy led by a Chief Executive and with activities overseen by a board of directors. A further parallel between businesses and charities is the continuous pressure from stakeholders to see clear results, in areas such as profit, growth and public awareness. The key distinction is that charities must prove their results to their donors and the general public rather than to directors and shareholders.

“More than a thousand charities have incomes in excess of £10m with a total income of £35.9b.” There are however some crucial differences between the two. Charitable status brings various perks unavailable to businesses. For instance, a charity can be exempt from paying Value Added Tax (VAT) on certain expenditure, such as advertisements or efforts to make goods and services accessible to disabled people. Nevertheless, a charity’s accounts must be transparent so that the public can see how much money is coming in, where it is coming from and where it is being spent. Businesses on the other hand still manage to reduce their tax bills either illegally through tax evasion or legally through aggressive tax avoidance at the hands of clever accountants. For example in July 2008 a high judge ruled after a lengthy case that Pringles (a brand managed by Procter & Gamble until its sale to Kellogg in 2012) should be considered potato snacks instead of crisps, thus exempting them from paying VAT (17.5% at the time). Just nine months later this decision was overruled and resulted in Pringles having to pay back £100m in tax and £20m each year subsequently.

Glasgow University Magazine

Why Can’t We Just Print More Money?

The Business of Charity It’s not often that charities and businesses are compared, due to the fact that one is not-for-profit while the other is driven by capitalist aims such as profit maximization. However when looked at more closely, it is easy to draw parallels.

Business & Economics

Petko Nekezov explains why we should not appeal to a seemingly simple solution.

We are used to charity workers carrying buckets for meagre donations but don’t let that fool you into thinking they can’t generate money as effectively as businesses. In 2013, the Help for Heroes charity’s income was £29.5m, with £25.9m coming from donations alone. £24.9m was subsequently invested into other charities and organizations through grant schemes. Similarly, Unicef UK generated £79.1m last year, with 70% of that going towards projects to support child welfare (notably in Syria) while the remainder was earmarked for fundraising and administration. In the 2013/2014 financial year, Oxfam raised a total of £389.1m however unlike Help for Heroes and Unicef UK, the majority of this came from government bodies. More than a thousand charities have incomes in excess of £10m with a total income of £35.9b. Given the scale of their operational and financial infrastructures, it is common for these larger charities to subsidize smaller ones and help them to achieve their objectives. As with a business, marketing is a critical function for any charity. Members of the public want to know how their money is being spent so people tend to donate only to those charities they recognize and whose reputations they are comfortable with. In contrast to business, this aspect is probably more important for a charity. While some consumers may wish to shop locally in independent stores to help small business owners, lesser-known charities often face similar struggles but cannot rely on the same support from communities. Charities expend huge amounts of money and resources in order to raise their profile. As a result, they often end up with similar marketing objectives as businesses, diligently pursuing increased brand recognition, ever-appealing logos and memorable slogans. The UK has a huge range of charities that do a lot of valuable work and make an enormous difference in our lives. Each one of them operates in a highly competitive environment in which donations are scarce and public support is hard-won. The sphere in which charities operate is very similar to that in which businesses work and in order to succeed, charities are increasingly seeking inspiration from the private sector. However as well as supporting the leading charities, I urge you not to forget smaller non-profits, which despite extensive hierarchies and marketing budgets, have managed to serve people for generations with little reward.

Issue 1

“Only through responsible policymaking and a healthy economic climate can money have real value.”

One of the most common concerns for this generation is that of wealth. We are coping with the consequences of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and, as a result, we have less spending power and there are fewer jobs available to us. How can we lead a happy life if we do not have enough money to pay the bills or cover even the most basic living costs?

The Zimbabwean government began printing money to finance its spending as early as the 1990s. However, the detrimental consequences of this practice were felt most severely between 2006 and 2009, coinciding with the stock market crash in the USA. At the height of hyperinflation in 2007 the inflation rate was close to 1281%.

We all want money - it is a universal truth as ancient as time itself. It’s almost a guarantee that if you were handed one million pounds right now it would increase your happiness. So if money gives us such pleasure, why don’t we just print more of it? Concerns about taxes and the escalating cost of living would be replaced by a life of luxury. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it?

Zimbabwe went through several currency changes and banned businesses from adjusting their prices in an attempt to combat inflation. The consequence of this was the abandonment of the Zimbabwean dollar and its substitution with either gold or foreign currencies such as the US Dollar and the Euro. Printing money led to the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and a sharp decline in living standards. Zimbabweans were starving because printing money caused prices to increase to the point where even an enormous box of money couldn’t cover the costs of a loaf of bread.

In reality, it isn’t that simple. What is often misunderstood is the fact that printing money has dire economic consequences so it isn’t a wise decision to let the printers have a field day. There are two basic things that have to be taken into consideration – inflation and goods.

The conclusion that can be drawn from Zimbabwe is that when we artificially increase the supply of money, we erode its value and reduce the consumer’s purchasing power. Another example of inflation caused by printing more money was George Bush’s reaction to the first wave of the 2008 recession. The then American president sent every household a cheque to pay for expenditures and to combat the initial effects of the market bust. By supplementing the amount of money in circulation with capital that didn’t have any real value, Bush undermined the spending power of US citizens. This was clear in the way the free market responded because as soon as the cheques, essentially ‘fake wealth’, entered the economy, oil prices rose to combat the shock.

James Cridland

In economics there are numerous schools – the Austrian School, the English School, the German School and so on. Since 2008 we’ve had the Zimbabwe School of Economics and unlike most, it advocates the printing of money and hyperinflation. The case of Zimbabwe shows how unfettered government spending is able to bring an economy to ruin; compromising the country’s standard of living and devastating the Zimbabwean dollar, a currency that was considered one of the world’s most valuable when it was introduced in 1980.

When I say ‘fake wealth’ I mean that the currency that was injected into the economy was not backed by finite resources. Goods – economic production that comes from a country’s manufacturing base – give a currency its value. For example, a strong economy that is based upon heavy industry and electronics may have a strong currency. Only through responsible policymaking and a healthy economic climate can money have real value. Unfortunately, printing more money means less spending power, less wealth and lower living standards. I would encourage you to take a vacation in Zimbabwe if you would like to see the effects of such a reckless policy first-hand. Just don’t forget to buy some gold before you go – you might need it.

Business & Economics

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Interview With Principal Muscatelli Mashal Aamir We are celebrating the 125th year of Glasgow University Magazine and for the first time we have introduced a Business & Economics section. There was no question of whom best to welcome readers to this section other than Principal Muscatelli (LL.D) himself. He was Head of the Department of Political Economy at Glasgow and has been an economic adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland and the House of Commons. Professor Muscatelli is the Honorary President of the David Hume Institute and a Knight Commander of the Republic of Italy for services to Economics and Higher Education. Here he speaks about our diverse campus and what the future holds for the University of Glasgow. You have been at this university within the field of economics since 1980. What convinced you to remain in this field and at this university? PM: To some extent it was not really planned. I actually began studying physics at another university but after a few months I knew that it wasn’t for me and I started being interested in social issues. This was around the late seventies, which were difficult economic times for the UK so I became actively interested in economic and social issues. I was driven by my interest rather than by an aptitude. Why did I stay here? Basically I enjoyed it very much and I enjoy doing research, I was still research active until very recently and I always enjoyed teaching. For me it was a gradual move. I found some great colleges to work with. It really wasn’t planned, there were a couple of occasions where I nearly moved away but Glasgow retained me and I stayed as an economist for all of my career.

In terms of changes for the future we will be looking at similar targets and making sure they are ambitions to continue to drive the university upwards. We will want to look at what we can do to encourage more ideas to come forward around the things students want to learn and researchers want to fund. These are around major challenges like disease eradication, issues around development and major technologies. How can we best harness the skills that we have at the university and the ideas of our academics but how can we also bring together the best that we have to provide stimulating courses for our students. There is a big difference between now and five years ago and reshaping the estate will be key in the future. When the university first came here in 1870, there was a development of the university between the 1870s and the 1930s with new facilities that attracted some of the best talents to Glasgow. We need to do the same and now have a fantastic opportunity to develop our physical infrastructure.

“We are a local university at one level but we are a global university at another and we are able to combine those two in a great way.”

How is the progress toward Glasgow’s 2020 vision developing? Are we to expect any changes in the future? PM: We’re about to embark upon the next phase of our strategic development because in 2010 we had adopted Glasgow 2020 which is a five year plan in the first instance. It is going well in the sense that we set ourselves 15 academic targets, 5 key performance indicators and 5 performance targets. We are pretty much meeting most of them. If I had to highlight how much we progressed I would look at our student experience where we have the highest satisfaction rate in the National Student Survey at 91%. We are more international in terms of our student composition and now we have a structure of a university that would be much more familiar in terms of one of the top universities in the world. We have the largest research portfolio that we have ever had and a lot of this was built upon major changes in our academic structures back in 2009.

Business & Economics

Glasgow University Magazine

In 2013 there was a class that graduated in Masters of Science, Banking and Financial Services that was entirely one nationality. As these were international students, they came to Glasgow to mix with a diverse range of people. Though they excelled academically they are not allowed to remain in the country. What benefit is it to the university to educate students to such a high level? When there is a class of just one nationality, have we attained the right balance? PM: Firstly in terms of immigration policy I have been very open about this. I do believe strongly that we should reintroduce what was eliminated four years ago, which is the right to stay and work post study for two years. I thought this was a brilliant and beneficial scheme in the UK and frankly a lot of the students who stayed and worked had no intention of staying in the UK forever. They wanted to come and get work experience then often they would go back to their own country and use that experience positively. So I think it is a real pity that the UK has taken such a tough stance on post study work. I think it needs to look at that again because as a country that has always benefited from attracting the best talent and from being part of the world economy, it makes no sense to keep our borders closed in that way. They should be kept open to always attract talent. The issue of international students having more access to post graduate taught courses is a real issue for the UK as a whole and the Scottish government has done quite a bit in this area. I would certainly argue that all students in the UK regardless of their background and economic means should have access to postgraduate study. We try to make sure all our courses are diversified in terms of background because part of the learning experience is meeting people from different countries. It’s not easy because currently 40% of all students going into higher education anywhere in the world are from one country – China. Increasingly, we will see that from other countries that are going through this demographic phase. What we are trying to do is balance it. I know the business school is making sure that they offer scholarships across different intakes. This year was the first year the business school adopted new application procedures and I hope that that will continue in the future. The students applying vary according to the sub-discipline and to some extent it is actually partly due to the demand of skills in certain countries. However we do have to work on making sure we diversify our intakes, definitely. We have international partnerships - SIT in Singapore and UEST in China but is it likely that the university will ever have overseas campuses? For example in Beijing?

Aidan Morrissey

Issue 1

PM: I think it is likely we will continue going down the partnership route. We have benefited hugely from the collaborations so I am not ruling it out but I do think the partnership mode has worked best for us and it also has another benefit which is that we are using existing facilities as opposed to duplicating facilities so we can invest here without having to divert resources, especially when there are partners or potential partners willing to work with us.

Aidan Morrissey

What advice would you give to students pursuing your field of study? PM: It’s always difficult to self assess but what I would say to any student in whatever discipline they study that it is important to strike a balance. Though academic achievement is important and often a prerequisite to getting employment - it is also about using the time at university to pursue other interests. It is easy for me to look back and wish I had taken more opportunities. One thing I didn’t do as a student is take a period of study abroad and I wish I had. I look around and see how many opportunities our students have and what I would say is take advantage of all your opportunities. Maybe I’m beginning to sound like an old person but when you look back you realize what you wish you had done as a student – so that is the only advice I would dare to give!

Special thanks to Peter Aitcheson, Director of Media and Public Relations. Full interview online.

Business & Economics

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Science & Technology

Living Faster than Food The leader in the fast food industry is the American giant McDonald’s. Offering cheaper meals than most competitors, its gross sales increased to £2.3b worldwide in 2013. Greggs and Subway came second and third respectively. The competition among them is cut-throat and customers benefit from this close race. Hence why fast food restaurants have introduced various innovations to the market including home delivery and smart phone applications. This has helped takeaways boost home deliveries by more than 40% over the last five years alone.

The fast food industry was well developed before the global financial crisis hit. Millions of families revised their budgets, cutting back on luxuries such as meals in restaurants and substituting them for cheaper alternatives. Consequently, the fast food trend started to increase. Current research indicates that today in Britain, the fast food industry is worth approximately £30b, an enormous amount. Britons spend one third of the money they set aside for buying food, on fast food. Despite the fact that the amount people budget for food has shrunk by nearly 10% since 2013, the average person still spends £110 per month on fast food. In London, the amount spent on takeaways (£221.63 per month) is five times more than what is spent in rural areas and smaller cities (£43.19).

Factors such as age and gender inform distinct purchasing patterns. Men tend to have nearly 200 takeaways annually compared to the 100 consumed by women. In addition, people aged between 25 and 30 state that their main reason for eating fast food is their lack of time to cook a healthy meal. The younger generation has been a growing market for fast food which is represented in the increased advertisements large food companies use to target them. Eating habits have evolved over the years; nowadays people are more immersed in their work and often find themselves eating on the move. Even when they have free time, many households get fast food delivered at home instead of spending time preparing a meal. Unsurprisingly, laziness is another factor driving people toward fast food. One in four Britons cites laziness as the main motive for their takeaway habits.

Isabel Gordon The outbreak of Ebola has dominated the news in recent months yet most of us know very little about the disease. Here Isabel Gordon gives us the lowdown on what the virus involves, how it spreads and what the international community must do.

Mehman Ismayilli analyses if the food market is keeping up to speed with our busy lives.

“One in four Britons cites laziness as the main motive for their takeaway habits.”

Issue 1

Ebola Explained

Mehman Ismayilli

Walk down any street in Glasgow and you will see a multitude of cafes, fast-food restaurants and takeaways all brimming with customers. The situation brings to mind philosopher Stanley Paskavich’s quote: ‘I often find human behavior amusing. Like having a full refrigerator of food to eat yet buying fast food instead. If you learn to conquer the two big “N” words - Niceties vs. Necessities, you might actually have some funds for the hard times that come.’ How much does this quote apply to us nowadays? Not much at all! Let us take a brief look at the fast food industry in the UK.

Glasgow University Magazine

Ebola was first discovered in 1976 and since then there has been a succession of outbreaks of varying severity. Taking the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example, in 2008, 32 cases of Ebola were reported with 14 deaths. In contrast, the previous year saw 264 cases reported with 187 casualties. The chronology of previous outbreaks doesn’t seem to point to any real pattern. There have been isolated outbreaks of various strains of the virus (there are five strains, the current one being ‘Zaire’). However, there have been more deaths from the 2013/14 epidemic than from all the previous outbreaks combined. The mortality rate in primates is very high; 25% of the chimpanzee population in the Ivory Coast died in an outbreak in the 1990s. Since such high death rates occur in monkey populations it is unlikely that they harbour the virus in the wild between outbreaks among humans. Bats are widely regarded as the ‘reservoir species’ for the virus. Research conducted by the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin investigated the outbreak’s origins in December 2013 and concluded that migratory fruit bats are likely to have caused the epidemic. What does the virus do?

Jeff Poskanzer

From the viewpoint of market analysis, the fast food business is in the ‘growth’ stage of the industry’s life cycle in which returns for investment are quite high so more businesses enter the market to try to capture a share of the profits. This is reflected in the upsurge of small businesses with unlimited liability trying to get a foot on the ladder. More than ever before, fast food has been incorporated into our lives. It has become an extension of our daily activities, such as having a meeting over dinner or catching up with someone in a coffee shop. As people continue to be more stringent with their time, it seems that food service will have to get faster and faster.

Ebola’s attack on the immune system is so varied that it is very difficult for the body to develop a response capable of fighting the infection. There is a mechanism that stabilises the interaction between the virus and its receptor and increases the likelihood that the virus will become attached to target cells. Normal communication pathways are disrupted by the virus and so when the immune system does kick in, it is delayed and underprepared. When faced with an immune system that is not putting up a fight, the virus can replicate without interference. In turn the suppression of the immune system causes the production of vast quantities of cytokines, which are proteins responsible for signalling information around the body. These signalling proteins modulate the body’s humoral and cell-based responses to viral invasion. As the body does not know when to stop producing these cell-signalling proteins, the inflammatory immune response goes into hyperdrive.

According to The World Health Organization, under half of patients display this symptom and those who do are unlikely to survive. How does it spread? The Ebola virus is spread through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. Direct in this instance means via broken skin or mucous membranes rather than skin-to -skin contact. Contaminated objects such as syringes can also spread the disease. It can also be transmitted by consuming or touching infected animals. How should we respond? There is a great deal of advice circulating in the media on how to protect ourselves from Ebola. There are already screening measures in London airports before any cases have been reported in the UK. While these precautions may be useful in preventing the virus from spreading further, the real problems are the poor medical services and lack of funding in West African countries. As well as the risks Ebola poses to us, unless the international community takes swift and unified action, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone could suffer enormous economic and human costs. Panic buying has led to inflation of food prices and families are struggling to keep up. Humanitarian aid should be increased, more health workers need to assist the region, and universal protocols must be applied. According to the World Bank, the short-term impact for the three worst affected countries has been £225 million this year alone. Increased support from wealthier countries would help to stabilise these already volatile economies and allow the prospect of an efficient and effective care programme to be realised.

What are the symptoms? Ebola causes an extreme fever and the build-up of dead immune cells, which take the form of pus. The virus distributes itself around the organs and prevents them from functioning normally. It disrupts normal clotting functions and reduces the platelet count of our blood and as a result, patients can suffer internal and external bleeding.

Cargado por Discato

Science & Technology

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

EXPLORING THE COSMOS Mathew Oliver Mathew Oliver explains the aims behind the recent Rosetta Mission to Comet 67P.

The Rosetta Spacecraft was launched in March 2004 with the goal of studying the physical properties of a comet in more depth than ever previously attempted. The International Rosetta Mission, which began in November 1993 landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12th 2014. The journey saw Rosetta travel around the Sun four times - a total distance of over six billion kilometres - all to reach a comet less than a billion kilometres away. This immense journey was necessary because no rocket has previously had enough power to reach the comet. As such, Rosetta had to use the gravitational pulls of both Earth and Mars to do so.

“It is widely believed that comets brought the majority of liquid water to Earth and possibly even provided the organic compounds that led to the creation of life here.” The main aim of the mission is to determine how the solar system evolved. This can be achieved by studying comets that are believed to date as far back as the rest of the solar system and have changed little since. They are also comprised of some of the same materials as planets when they formed so studying them could allow us to learn more about what planets were like in their early stages. It is widely believed that comets brought the majority of liquid water to Earth and possibly even provided the organic compounds that led to the creation of life here. This idea is known as ‘comet seeding’, a term that relates to the idea that billions of years ago, thousands of comets struck our planet. This hypothesis requires water to have been present on virtually every planet and large object in the solar system, as well as proof that the solar system was once far more turbulent than it is today. We know that water currently exists on Mars in an ice and vapour form, and that there was once a ‘great bombardment’ with many comets and asteroids hitting our moon’s surface. В.Власенко

Since the two planets we have checked have water in some form, it is perhaps reasonable to presume that there is more water throughout our solar system. It is also plausible that if our moon was bombarded, then so too was the Earth which is much larger. These two ideas give weight to the idea of comet seeding. Due to this, the Philae Lander was looking at many things during its time on the comet, most notably water. It was also conducting chemical analysis of the comet to search for organic molecules, minerals and other compounds. How can we confirm that water on Earth came from comets? This can be explained by studying the importance of hydrogen. When this element was first formed, just after the big bang, there was more than one type produced. Hydrogen in its most common form consists of a proton in the nucleus, while deuterium (sometimes known as heavy hydrogen) contains both a proton and a neutron in its nucleus. As result of this there is a fixed relationship between how much of each we find in the universe. This relationship, although applicable throughout the whole universe, does vary from place to place. It is also understood that water consists mainly of oxygen and one of these two forms of hydrogen. Given there is a presence of water on both comets and planets, if the ratio of these types of water on comets and the ratio in the Earth’s oceans are found to be similar we may be able to deduce that some of the water on Earth could have originated on the comets. While the Philae landing will not definitively prove that Earth’s water came from comets, it can provide a large amount of valuable data about the chemical make-up of comets. While the results of the Rosetta Mission are still being collected and analysed, it should prove to be one of the most exciting unmanned space missions in history.

Science & Technology

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Science & Technology

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Mission to Mars Theodora Varelidi Strati

Theodora Varelidi Strati considers plans by private enterprise Mars One to send humans to the Red Planet with no ticket home.

“The concept of this mission is not merely to land on Mars but to stay there permanently.”

‘If sport is violence by other means, then reality television is cruelty, envy, spite and group hate…by exactly the same means. The Hunger Games is an exciting dystopian fantasy-thriller of this theme, taking place in a world of circuses but no bread.’ Reality television is appealing and this is what the private enterprise Mars One is counting on. The manned mission to Mars is planned to launch in 2025 and will be funded primarily by investments from those keen to watch such things. The concept of this mission is not merely to land on Mars but to stay there permanently.

The costs involved in running a project of this kind are enormous. When NASA eventually launches its mission, the costs could reach $50b However, private enterprises are looking for ways to finance a trip for as little as $5b. Efforts to reduce the cost include planning a one-way journey only and putting the crew in stasis, which would save money as well as space inside the craft. With the astronauts in deep sleep, less water, food and exercise equipment will be needed on board. This could reduce the baseline mission requirements from 400 tonnes to just 220 tonnes.

The NASA Curiosity rover mission to Mars in 2012 was a major step forward that provided scientists with an abundance of useful information on the Red Planet. Now an even more ambitious mission has been planned not by NASA but by the private firm Mars One. Sending humans to Mars could give scientists unprecedented knowledge about space. Private sector firms claim this could be achieved in just eleven years however NASA scientists doubt this, arguing that it would compromise the safety of the astronauts. They are aiming for 2035 instead.

If public and private space agencies cooperate and the best engineers work on this mission, it is possible that solutions could be found to the obstacles that have arisen so far.

Whether it is 2025 or 2035, the risk of this mission is considerably greater than when astronauts set foot on the Moon in 1966 because of the conditions on the Red Planet. The Martian atmosphere consists of 95% carbon dioxide and gravity is around 50% of that on Earth. The absence of magnetic fields makes solar radiation a major concern with scientists uncertain of the exact effects it would have on astronauts. The current proposed solution is to create a shelter with 25-40 cm of water that could protect the astronauts from radiation. A crucial question is how the astronauts would react during this mission? Eight months living aboard a spacecraft, unable to shower or eat anything besides dried food. Mars One has already called for applications to participate in this project. Six groups of four people will be selected for a seven-year training programme, after which the groups will be sent separately to Mars. The public response has been huge, with more than 200,000 people having made online applications. Some have questioned whether the majority of applicants would actually be prepared to go to Mars and never return. John Traphagan, a professor at the University of Texas, said ‘You know that the year is going to end. But on Mars, it doesn’t end. There is no way to simulate going somewhere and never returning’. Mars, Phil Plait

If so, Mars One might just beat NASA and put humans on the Red Planet by 2025. If they get their way, we could all be watching it on television in a real-life ‘Hunger Games’.

Science & Technology

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Popular Science: Why It Matters Sine Harris Sine Harris explains we could all learn something from her favourite science texts.

Some say science is the new rock and roll. While scientists don’t have screaming teens chasing after them, the idea has some merit. It is evident in the fact that popular science is everywhere. We have Brian sexy-voice Cox on our televisions, Dara O’Briain on our radios with Science Club, and the shelves of Waterstones are filled with quirkily titled books on everything from plants in drinks to the importance of sodium chloride. Science writing for the uninformed masses is important. The quote ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’ holds true here as readers often accept the author’s views as fact instead of drawing their own conclusions from the body of evidence. For instance, from the Enlightenment until the 1930s many people believed it had been scientifically proven that some races were intellectually superior to others. The ‘evidence’ cited amounted to skull shapes or arbitrary cultural differences and this was then twisted to serve illogical conclusions that supported pre-determined racist agendas. These ideas have been used to justify everything from imperialism to the Holocaust, and you could even argue that they still linger, as Nicholas Wade tries to use genetics to explain the world’s racial inequality. Bad science reporting is rife - reports and data are routinely twisted to make sensational headlines. This not only compromises the integrity of research but puts scientists under too much pressure to try to make their work newsworthy in order to attract funding.

This makes it all the more important that the public have basic scientific literacy. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, ‘to be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of shit.’ Great, but where to start? To make things easy for you, I’ve selected a few of my favourite science books… Cosmos, Carl Sagan. Basically, Carl Sagan is the sage old scientist that Brian Cox would go through a black hole to be. Philosophical, fascinating and beautifully written, this book never fails to put your life into perspective. Sagan knows what makes a good quote and you may recognise some phrases from Tumblr. You can also watch the television show which is pretty good and features his dulcet tones. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson, one of the first modern environmentalists, discovered and published on the dangerous effects of the organochloride DDT. She had to fight big industry and institutionalised sexism to be listened to, and is a worthy role model to many female biologists. For those interested in marine biology her book The Sea Around Us is excellent. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins. Whatever you may think of Dawkins as a man, he writes with precision, clarity and energy. This is an absolutely pivotal work and serves as a great introduction to evolution and its impact on animal behaviour. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson. Does exactly what the title promises. As a witty and curious non-scientist, he writes as if you’re learning together, rather than as if he’s the teacher. A gentler way to learn about, well, everything; from physics to chemistry to biology and everything in between. Bonk, Mary Roach. The only book on this list that will make you laugh out loud, Roach’s dry humour would tickle anyone’s funny bone. Jam-packed with bizarre and intriguing information about everything below the belt, you will feel compelled to share this book. And the stories of sex investigations (it’s science, I swear) should make you realise how onerous, and occasionally pleasurable, research can be.

Living with Disability

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Living with Disability

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

Living with Disability Marcia McSwegan

Marcia McSwegan explains the challenges she faces as a disabled student at the University of Glasgow.

Post Procedure Selfie

Mornings are tough. It can be near impossible to drag yourself out of bed at the best of times. And everyone knows that Monday mornings are infinitely worse. The weekend has just been and nothing can prepare you or wake you for that 9am lecture. Well, now imagine that every day is a Monday. Only multiply that feeling by about a hundred. What you are imagining is life with a number of chronic health conditions.

I have a peg-j tube surgically implanted to feed me directly into my bowel, and have a stomach pacemaker (yes, that’s right, a stomach pacemaker. They are not just for the heart these days!), which attempts to stimulate my stomach muscles. To give some perspective, before having the pacemaker fitted, I vomited around 120 times a day. Now, I am ‘only’ sick around 60-80 times a day.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Marcia McSwegan, I am 19 and I am a second year Biomedical Engineering student. I suffer from conditions known as hypopituitarism, gastroparesis, psychogenic-non-epileptic-seizure disorder (PNESD) and autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysfunction. You are probably wondering what these conditions are. So let me explain.

Thirdly, PNESD is basically exactly what it sounds like. There are 2 different seizure types; grand-mal and petit-mal seizures. The seizures are just like epileptic seizures, only they are not caused by electrical disturbances in the brain. During a petit-mal seizure, which I take at least once every day, I will stare off into space, completely unaware of what is going on around me. These tend to last 5-10 minutes and I have no recollection of them afterwards. The grand-mal seizures are somewhat more dangerous. In these, I ‘fit’ violently, shaking all over and completely losing consciousness. These seizures can last up to an hour and often require administration of diazepam to calm the fitting, especially as I am prone to pulling on my feeding tube.

Hypopituitarism is the under-production of hormones by the pituitary gland. This gland is supposed to secrete hormones that control and regulate the body and it is often referred to as the ‘master gland’. So I am sure you can imagine the inconvenience when it does not work properly. In order to regulate my blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and to stop myself from falling into an adrenal coma (as I have twice before), I have to take steroids. I also receive hormone replacement therapy. Now on to the gastroparesis. Gastroparesis is the paralysis of the stomach, or delayed gastric emptying. This means different things for different people, but for me it means that I cannot eat even the smallest bite without being violently sick. I also suffer chronic stomach pain, bloating and electrolyte imbalances as a result.

The last (but by no means least) of my conditions is ANS dysfunction. This causes a whole host of nasty symptoms. The autonomic nervous system controls all of the involuntary things that keep our bodies functioning – the things most of us just take for granted. Let’s start from the top and work our way down the body. My eyesight is rapidly deteriorating and on occasion, I have losses of peripheral vision. My sinuses are constantly on high alert, causing my nose and eyes to run like crazy.

My oesophagus (food pipe) has a lax lower sphincter and often goes into spasm; making swallowing even saliva difficult. My heart rate is usually high – especially at night – and often rises to around 150bpm. As already mentioned, my stomach does not empty normally and neither does my bladder, meaning I have to self-catheterise and suffer a large number of UTIs. Furthermore, my bowel is also sluggish and I sweat at odd times, even when I am cold! To give some idea as to the impact this all has on my life, I will take you on a tour of a ‘normal’ day for me. My mum wakes me at 7am. Somehow, I pull myself out of bed, exhausted from having been woken through the night no less than 18 times by pain and nausea. Still half asleep, I switch off my feeding pump, disconnect myself and flush through the tube with sterile water. Next comes the task of measuring out all 19 of my liquid medications and slowly flushing each through my feeding tube (not the easiest thing to do at 7am). A whole hour after waking and it is time to get dressed. As I am attached to my feeding pump again, I have to negotiate with all the wires, making sure I do not get tangled up. Then it is time to head off to university. It is only 8.15am and already I am tired, sore and ready to give up. Starting at 9, I have 2 hours of lectures (thankfully in the same room; I am far too tired to journey across campus) and I struggle to stay awake. In the two-hour break that follows, I head (with my support worker) to the Anatomy Museum to complete my assignment for biology. By the time I am finished, it is 12.30pm, I have a lecture at 1pm and I have no idea how I am going to make it through the rest of the day. Somehow, I manage, but embrace my warm, cosy bed the second I get home.

I have another medicine round at 3.30pm, maths homework to complete and a tutorial to prepare for. At 10pm, I take my final meds of the day before falling into bed, drifting off whilst wondering how on earth I manage to do this every single day. I suppose the lesson I want people to take from reading this is that even people who look ‘normal’ are not always so. If you walked past me in the street you would never guess what I go through each and every day. You would never guess that only two years ago I was critically ill, weighed under six stone and spent my entire final year of school in hospital. You would never guess that I collapse frequently, suffer agonising pain and breath-taking nausea, and rely on a tube and medication to keep me alive. So please, do not make snap judgements about those around you. And try to show consideration for what people might be hiding. Because we never know what someone is going through. I may not look disabled, but I am. But this will not stop me from being the person I want to be. Being a student is a challenge in itself, but being a disabled student is a whole different ball game. Over the next few months, I hope to relate to you exactly what it means to be a disabled student through a series of columns giving you an insight into my academic life.

Written in loving memory of a fellow gastroparesis warrior, Samantha De La Querra, who sadly passed away on October 11th 2014. Rest in peace Samantha. Gone but not forgotten.

What’s On In Glasgow

Glasgow University Magazine

Issue 1

What’s On In Glasgow Joanna Velikov

Glasgow Christmas Market

What’s On In Glasgow

Glasgow University Magazine

Alasdair Gray: Spheres of Influence II November 22nd - January 26th Glasgow School of Art

If you’re a fan of the work of this remarkable Scottish poet and artist, you will definitely enjoy this exhibition. The interesting thing about this work is that it provides the public with an in-depth view of Gray’s visual work through other artists’ creations. The School of Art event is a part of the Alasdair Gray Season with other exhibitions taking place in the Kelvingrove and the Gallery of Modern Art.

November 14th - December 21st Argyle Street Free If you love a bit of festive spirit the annual Christmas market is the place to be! It starts on November 14th and will continue until December 21st. This year the market will be located on Argyle Street. The event is fully booked and more international than ever! A great mix of Spanish chorizos, German hotdogs, French pastries and Swedish chocolate is waiting for you! You can also enjoy a pint of continental beer or a glass of mulled wine in the seating areas. Can’t wait! Marketplace Europe

December 31st Ashton Lane

December 6th The Briggait, City Centre

£25 Don’t know what you are doing for New Year’s Eve yet? Look no further! The Ashton Lane party promises to be cracking. Fireworks, champagne, good company and live music - what more can you ask for?

On December 6th Glasgow’s first coffee festival will take place! New and unique, this festival will include a film about coffee, a barista competition and a huge exhibition from the biggest names in the business. As if this is not enough, throughout the day there will also be master classes in Espresso-making and Latte Art. Everybody at the event will get the chance to taste the coffee and tea. Better get those tickets in time!

Alasdair Gray - Chris Close

Ashton Lane Hogmanay Street Party

Glasgow Coffee Festival

£9 + Booking Fee

Issue 1

Ashton Lane

Glasgow Coffee Festival

Glasgow On Ice

Hinta Masuri Japanese Spring Festival

November 27th - December 31st George Square

February 28th Kibble Place

£4.50 - £12 It’s ice skating time again! Scotland’s biggest ice rink returns to Glasgow - right at George Square! It’s fun for kids, for adults, and for students too! The Magic Mondays offer allows students to skate for just £4.50 – an excellent deal to suit a tight budget. Every day of the week has a different theme - Music From The Movies, Throwback Thursday and DJs Saturdays! Note - it is unlikely that Calvin Harris or Afrojack will show up but fun is still guaranteed.

Glasgow on Ice

This festival is an unique opportunity to taste, smell and feel the beauty of Japan. Explore a country so mesmerizing and colourful, without even leaving Scotland. This celebration of Japanese culture and customs includes tasting traditional sweets, practising origami and even browsing through the latest Japanese fashion trends. Undoubtly, the Spring Festival is the place to be!

Japanese Spring Festival - Tomomarusan