The Tab Cambridge Fresher's Edition 2016

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

Freshers’ Edition

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The Tab comes offline for this special occasion

Article - Page 7

Tuesday 4th October 2016 The Tab Cambridge thetab.com/uk/cambridge

BAKE OFF’S ANDREW: OXFORD STUDENTS KNOW HOW TO PARTY More on Page 15

TIT HALL’S NIGHTMARE!

CANTABS WHO TAKE

DRUGS

FIRST

ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET A

The results are in from our CAMBRIDGE DRUG SURVEY, and they’re shocking (well, some of them are. Some are fairly unsurprising really).

The results are in from our Cambridge Drug Survey, and they’re shocking. (Well, some of them are. Some are fairly unsurprising really.)

Overall, 64% of Cambridge students have tried drugs at least once. 18% of those that had tried drugs never went back after that first time. A majority of drug-taking students only take them socially, with only 17% saying they got high weekly and 6% saying they were daily drug-users.

Students generally saw their experiences as positive, with 61% of those who’d tried drugs describing their experience as “good”

and 24% as ‘meh’. Only 5% told us drugs were “awful, would never try again” and 8% said “couldn’t live without them”. In a similar vein, 7% of those who’d taken drugs said they needed them to have a good time.

Whilst most felt their drug experience was ‘meh’ ‘okay’ or ‘good’, there were some startling responses. In true Cambridge style, one disgruntled respondent was distressed after having smoked weed, because they ‘had to buy more cheese as I ate it all. Thus, not worth the bother’. Another claimed they had experienced what The Tab can only explain as a scientific oblivion, saying that weed made them feel like they’d ‘grown an

exoskeleton that shatters every time I move, so that’s not so good’. Agreed.

42% of those who had taken drugs said they would continue them after uni, with most people saying ‘fun’ was the answer. One respondent recognised that selling your soul for a grad contract in London would probably mean they ‘need study drugs to help in my career’. Others saw drugs as a way to unwind after the stress of a working day - ‘a joint at the end of the day can be as nice as a cold beer or glass of wine’. [from front page] Of course, we couldn’t

Continued inside

CLASS LIST CHAOS Hannah Dawson Deputy Editor

A lot of moaning people pissing a lot of other people off.

A further example of Cambridge students caring way to much about menial things that have no difference in the real world. And people say it is a bubble here...

One very important thing you learn during your time at Cambridge is that when people have opinions, they are strong opinions. The atmosphere of a university-wide debate is akin to monkeys flinging shit: they don’t care where it lands as long as it hits something and gets their point across.

A story of doddly old Dons, the majestic governance of CUSU and an appearance from the innovative titled ‘Save the Class Lists’ has led to a confusing situation. So where do we currently stand?

Way back in 2015 the ‘Our Grade, Our Choice’ campaign wanted to transform the public display of Class Lists into a system over which students possessed increased autonomy. Priscilla Mensah took this idea under her wing as CUSU Pres and CUSU council voted in Michaelmas last year for the abolition of class lists. Whilst this got some reaction (and provided excellent fodder for writing opinion pieces) the debate largely remained understated until April this year.

Continued on Page 6

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The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

YOU’LL COME YOU’LL SEE YOU’LL FALTER Oliver Yeates and Shani Wijetilaka Editors-in-Chief

“What happens when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?” is an even more wanky paradox than asking whether a tree falling really makes a sound if there’s no-one there to hear it. The English student will question the question, the philosophy student will monologue at you about nothingness and the physicist will puff their chest and attempt to crack out the theorems.

We just presume the result is a total cataclysmic-inexplicabletrainwreck-mess of nothingness.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Freshers week.

With an unstoppable schedule of meeting, drinking and learning things you’ll never remember the names of, colliding with your now immovable position as a Cambridge student, the whirlwind of Freshers puts you at the centre of this paradox. But to your long-term Cambridge life, it will mean next to nothing.

In fact, it’s with the glory of hindsight that looking back on your first Michaelmas term shows just how at odds your first few weeks really are with your settled, downthe-line Cambridge self. By the end of your first year, Cambridge will look nothing like how it did when you started. Friends by proxy are replaced by friends with mutual interests, rushed vodka-cokes give way to a balanced gin and tonic, and anxious social paranoia welcomes just a more welldisguised uncertainty.

As an all too self-aware English finalist who’s not as ironic as he thinks he is (Oliver) and a nightmarishly overcommitted second-year lawyer (Shani), we’re speaking from hard-won experience when we say that Freshers’ Week is curl-up-ina-chair-and-hide insane, but not at all a good indication of what Cambridge is actually like.

Whether you hate it or love it, it’s only a snippet of your time here.

Don’t expect the people who you meet on your first day to be your best friends for life. Some will, most won’t. If you’re really lucky, you might be able to tolerate one or two of them by week five and in Lent you’ll have a nodding acquaintance when you pass them in the hallway.

The more unlucky among us are faced with inexplicable hatred and

mortal enemies who you don’t even know you had until you overhear a hushed conversation in the college library.

SHANI WIJETILAKA Editors-in-Chief

You’ll feel like missing a night out was like sleeping through the apocalypse when you wake up the next morning to find the group chat name has been changed six times, four people you’ve never heard of have been added and Dan from down the hall now has a smirk emoji as his name. When you finally learn to push aside the FOMO and greet your friend known as sleep with open arms, you’ll find Cambridge that bit more bearable.

Freshers is also the time for getting a taste of the three lives you’ll have to balance during your Cambridge life: your social life, something called a degree, and extracurriculars in a desperate attempt to make yourself more employable.

The latter is a huge double edged sword. It’ll enrich your time here hugely, but also doesn’t go too hand in hand with seeing the inside of Cindies past 1am. We get it, the overwhelming abundance of the freshers fair got to us too and we both made the (laughable) decision to get into rowing in Michaelmas.

People who can kill it on Lola’s psychedelic dance floor at 3am, wake up for a 6am session on the river and then make it to 9ams, we salute you. For everyone else who isn’t Captain America, don’t worry.

You’ll survive Mich - maybe with no voice and mysterious bruises and by the end of the year the only remnant of that bad life choice will be the emails that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t escape. If only life’s other bad decisions were as inconsequential as a mailing list.

This isn’t to say that Freshers is pointless. Good god no. A tolerance for Prosecco by the bottle and 50/50 G&Ts doesn’t build itself, nor will you learn how to blag your way through a supervision with increasingly less preparation out of thin air. Practice makes perfect on your way to conquering student life and Freshers is training ground for doing so. After all, how else would you learn to down Moët by the glass in May Week? In sum, freshers will have read that “Mo-wey”, and anyone with a shred of Cambridge experience will know that it’s “Moett.”

OLIVER YEATES

HANNAH DAWSON Deputy Editors RORY SACHS

BEN BROWN Cartoonist

CAM ANDERSON News Editor

CHARLIE GLADSTONE News Editor

LIA JOHANSENVILLANUEVA News Columist

RHIANNON SHAW Opinion Editor

EDDIE SPENCE Opinion Editor

ELEANOR TOAL Opinion Editor

RANDEEP NAG Features Editor

DANI CUGINI Deputy Features Editor

ALICE CATTLEY Chief Features Writer

LEYLA GUMUSDIS Lifestyle & Fashion Editor

ALEXANDRA SIVE Deputy L&F Editor

CAITLIN MCCARTNEY L&F Photographer

MEG HONIGMANN Fashion Columnist

JAMES HAMILTON Interviews Editor

JACK BENDA Investigations Editor

EMILY BURROWS Music Editor

DAN EDWARDS Theatre Editor

HOPE MCNULTY Theatre Editor

JACK LEWY Tab TV Presenter

JOSH ELLIS Tab TV Presenter

ROBERT SHEARME Tab TV Presenter

MOLLY O’CONNOR Michaelmas Columnist

EVE MAIR Michaelmas Columnist

PHOEBE GARGARO Michaelmas Columnist

HOLLY SMITH Michaelmas Columnist

DAVID GROUNDS Michaelmas Columnist

ANIA MAGLIANOWRIGHT Michaelmas Columnist

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

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Lia Johansen-Villanueva News Columnist STUFF & THINGS Impressionable freshers, bleary-eyed second years, panicking-about-the future third years, welcome (back) to the bubble. The hallowed library halls, Sainsbury’s, and Van of Life all welcome you with open arms. Whilst the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia are still firmly in place, we’ll give you a rundown on everything that has happened in our beloved Cambridge whilst we’ve been gone. (Surprisingly, the place doesn’t grind to a halt when we’re gone!)

HOW (NOT) TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS If the Financial Times is any indication, you shouldn’t get a first from Cambridge. In a personal advice column written to answer the desperate pleas of office managers and execs who are at a loss, the FT soothingly explained that “arrogant graduates” from Cambridge are common, and must be taught to find new skills that aren’t writing essays. Perhaps this manager should have just hired a Mathmo.

bookies’ favourite, and also reported to have, as one viewer said, “A smug face”. His ambitions, apparently, include baking a bread version of Concorde. We hope Smyth will share some Cantab #banter with Mel&Sue, who probably had some wild nights at Cindies. We’d include tasteless puns in the vein of those Varsity did in their reporting of Smyth’s rise to baking success, but we’re a classier institution, and respect the print medium.

Pretentious? Nous?

As hallowed and grandiose as always The search for the new Vice-Chancellor, set to replace Prof. Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, will not be conducted through a rigorous application process and a selection by committee. Supposedly the university has received over 100 applications and nominations to consider for the role. Once the candidates’ have achieved the required A-level results and their personal statements have been thoroughly picked apart, they will be interviewed about books they have only pretended to read, so that it can be decided whether the Vice-Chancellor is likely to thrive in Cambridge’s unique academic system.

In the slow news days of the summer, Cambridge appeared in many a list, to the satisfaction of it’s gloating student body. We discovered that we produce the second most millionaires of any UK university, according to a report commissioned by Spear’s Magazine. Oxford beat us there, but we came out as the best university in the UK according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Now you can tell all your friends back home that you are more likely to become a millionaire than they are thanks to your world class education they will take it with good humor and not think you’re an insufferable snob.

HOMERTON’S BIG PLANS Homerton announced their plans to replace their old Great Hall, where students and fellows dined, with a brand new, £7m development. Supposedly the original hall will continue being used for performances and “group activities”, which, as it’s Homerton we’re talking about, is bound to be far less sordid than it sounds.

(Maybe college-wide trust falls? Teddy bear sharing circles?) This new development is reportedly being designed to reflect Homerton’s “sociable and friendly atmosphere”, so we can safely assume that there will be plenty of opportunities for Homerton students to get their Bops banned due to an excess of “bodily fluids” once more.

PUNTING HEROES More commonly berated for their awful tours of Cambridge, punters became the heroes in the tale of the rescue of two men from a fire. A pair of punt workers broke through the windows of the upper floors in a restaurant with their poles, after noticing the flames.

The rescue attempt was helped by passers-by who were playing Pokemon Go. Neither of the two men rescued were injured, and both punters and Pokemon Go players got a chance at heroic validation. A happy ending for everyone!

BRIDGE OF PIES Andrew Smyth, an Engineer who graduated from Sidney Sussex in 2013, was announced to be competing in this summer’s Bake Off. At the time of writing we don’t know how far he got, but he is reported to be the

Swoon worthy quiff volume aside, is that cake batter made of Smurfs?

INVAZTIGATION Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East, resigned on September 6th after allegations from the Sunday Mirror insinuated that Vaz had engaged in activity with male prostitutes. The paper also accused Vaz of claiming that he would pay for cocaine if they wished to use it. Vaz studied law at Gonville and Caius, and his son graduated from the same college last year. Mr Vaz said in a statement he believed he had been the victim of a sting operation, saying: “It is deeply disturbing that a national newspaper should have paid individuals to act in this way.”

EVERYONE’S LEAST FAVOURITE STUDENT UNION According to the National Student Survey, only 37% of Cambridge students described themselves as “satisfied” with CUSU, making it the third worst student union in the country. 38% of those surveyed said they were “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”. Only the Oxford and Durham Student Union came out worse in the survey.

Honestly, after the year CUSU had, that should be cause to celebrate.

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The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

....continued from front page

resist the temptation to break down our results by college, year, gender and exam result to generate meaningless correlations between one characteristic and the other (yes, for all you wannabe mathmos, we are aware correlation is not causation. In other news, grass is green). Now we’ve got rid of the Tompkins Table, we’re naturally grasping for another arbitrary way of comparing students.

Queens’ tops the league in this regard. Its students are the most likely to have ever tried drugs - a fact no doubt precipitated by their need to block out the depressing thought that their college is slowly sinking into the Cam. Homerton tops Kings, showing that apparently a large population of education students with time on their hands wins out over wavey garms and a reputation for being #alternative. At the other end of the scale, surprisingly, Petreans were the least likely to have tried drugs, though perhaps that’s because they’re all too busy being seduced by aging fellows in secret all-male dining societies.

In terms of colleges where students only took drugs socially, Trinity students lived up to every stereotype about fun-hating, awkward mathmos and were the least likely to take drugs socially. Queens’ and Homerton once more came top in the social stakes, proving that, despite all the jokes, it really doesn’t matter how far your

64% OF CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS HAVE TRIED DRUGS AT LEAST ONCE

college is located from the centre of Cambridge.

Unlike the pay gap, the ‘drug gap’ (as it will henceforth be known) in Cambridge was fairly insignificant with 66% of self-identifying men having tried drugs compared to 61% of women. Men were, however, more likely to take drugs regularly than women, with 54% of male Cantabs regularly taking drugs compared with 48% of women.

When it comes to the age profile of our hamsters, more jaded (or more experienced?) third years are relatively hooked on the stuff, with 58% of them taking drugs regularly, compared to 47% of freshers. Yes mum, you should be worried that university will destroy your sweet little angel (no, you really shouldn’t).

In a result that upends all our parents/DOSes/police ever told us about drug usage, Cantabs who took drugs regularly - those who didn’t just try them once - are the most likely to get a first. That’s right: there’s a small, but unquestionably scientifically significant, correlation between the proportion of regular drug-takers and the grade they got.

61% OF THOSE WHO’D TRIED DRUGS SAID THEIR EXPERIENCE WAS “GOOD”

Weed was, fairly unsurprisingly, the most common drug of choice. Only 36% of all students never having tried it. MDMA was the next most popular, with 40% of students trying it at least once. Despite various reputable news outlets claiming Ket is the “drug of our generation”, it was one of the least popular drugs, with a mere 20% of

students deciding that they needed a blast of horse tranquilizer to have fun.

And then we come to the too-cool-forT h e - Ta b - b r i g a d e .

That child in school who reminds the teacher that you had homework at the end of a lesson was the sort of person who responded ‘caffeine and alcohol LOL’ to our question about other drugs they have taken. We hope you gained some form of self-gratification out of this.

THE DRUG SURVEY

They say curiosity killed the cat, and it seems that ‘curiosity’ is indeed a Cambridge student’s most besetting sin, as the most popular answer to why people tried drugs. Other popular answers included ‘boredom’, ‘fun’, and the ‘influence of friends’ (no pressure, fresher…) One typical gap yah wanker enlightened us that their influence was ‘Cultural, from an Amazonian tribe’, whilst another sought to avoid culture and ‘more fucking clocks’ in Amsterdam.

Living up to all the stereotypes of going away to uni and getting involved in unsavoury activities, the most common age at which students first tried drugs was 18, with 23% of drugtaking students getting their first hit just as they became legal.

Of those that had tried drugs, 25% tried them before their 16th birthday.

S’ N E E QU S T N E S T U D LIKELY T S R O E M V E VE A H S G TO U R D D E I TR

range.

Just to remind us why Cambridge is Cambridge, there were answers aplenty from pretentious primadonnas. An aspiring Socrates amongst the respondents argued that ‘drugs are an intelligence tax on the already stupid’. Others flouted just how much knowledge their degree had given them, ‘I know too much pharmacology to risk it’.

D i s a p p o i n t i n g l y, most of the “weirdest place you’ve taken drugs in Cambridge’ were fairly standard: Cindies, Life, Fez, usually accompanied with some overused gripe at how awful the Cambridge clubbing scene is. But some more daring individuals chose to brag about truly odd locations: Nanna Mexico; ‘In the toilets during an end-of-year exam to calm down’; King’s Chapel; Senate House at an undergrad graduation ceremony; and, of course,‘The Union, in order to tolerate all the wankers’.

Turning to the topic of the source of the stuff, it seems students are equally likely to get drugs from other students or a non-student dealer. 39% of Cantabs said they got drugs from one of those two sources. Most students spent very little on drugs - in the £10-£20

Because The Tab strongly believes in #seriousjournalism, we weren’t going to let these claims of weird locations go untested. We invested in some ‘Crackdown cocaine testing wipes’, normal looking wipes that when wiped over surfaces with cocaine present appear with blue

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

Y RESULTS ARE IN!

CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE

“W E S H O DEGENE U L D A L LO W S M O K E TRATES TO A L I F E O H E M S E LV E S T O R OVERF M E D I O C R I T YO A F T E R L I DOSE TO T H E W H AT T F E I F T H AT I S H E I R WE MINDS D ESIRE” AK spots.

Immediate change of colour means there is a strong presence of cocaine: the development of coloured spots within 10 seconds indicates a small presence of cocaine, or some variation of it, ie: crack.

First, we tested areas where survey respondents bragged they had taken drugs: Dangerspoons toilets and King’s College Bar. Hoping to find some traces of drugs inevitably left after the ‘waviness’ of the King’s Affair, we were unfortunately left disappointed by both locations.

But, believing that toilets would be the main source of results, we flushed ahead, testing bathrooms in Trinity, Christ’s and John’s bars. The first two were unsuccessful with no traces on toilets or around the sink area. Yet John’s - probably the only college able to afford cocaine - tested positive. After wiping around the sink area of the ladies bar toilets, very faint blue spots appeared after several seconds, indicating a very small presence.

F o l l o w i n g proclamations that people had taken drugs in the UL (unsurprising given the doom this building inspires) we scoured t h e

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have weak bones. She profusely apologised and let me continue.’

Bitter baby boomers moan that this generation is full of liberals: if the results of this survey are anything to go by they are correct. When asked outright, 73% of people wanted weed to be legalised, and the elaboration we received in the comments was overwhelmingly in support of decriminalisation for most drugs. Many answers said the government should ‘encourage education and safe usage’, whilst others offered that if alcohol was legal, the same should be applied to weed. Our resident philosopher appeared once again to entertain us with delightful wisdom, saying “we should allow degenerates to smoke themselves to a life of mediocrity or overdose to the afterlife if that is what their weak minds desire”. They must be fun at parties. Others used this section as an opportunity to spread conspiracy theories (#thewaragainstdrugsfailedanyone?)

TRINITY STUDEN TS LEAST LI K E LY TO TA K E D SOCIALL R U G S Y fe l l ow - f i l l e d halls attempting to find traces. After testing multiple toilets, desks in isolated areas, and even bookshelves, we gave up. But if there’s one thing Cambridge doesn’t lack, it’s libraries. The Sidgwick site provided plenty of hallowed halls to test.

The English faculty and Econ faculty were boring, but the Law faculty (unsurprising, given the amount of work they have) and the History faculty (surprising, given how little work they have) tested positive. Wiping around the sink area in the female toilets of the Law Faculty, bright blue streaks indicated a very strong presence.

Clearly the six-figure salaries promised in the future provide a chance to keep up this pricey habit. Very similar results were found around the sink area of the History faculty.

These three locations were the only place we found positive results.

Other places we tested included the railings of Orgasm Bridge, the ADC and the Union toilets, various punts, Mill Lane lecture theatre, and John’s Chapel. When asked for comment, a university spokesperson said: “Incidents of known illicit drug use will be reported to the police.”

Unsurprisingly, the majority of Cambridge students seemed clever enough not to get caught with drugs, with only 19% of those who’d tried drugs getting caught. Most were caught by either parents or friends but one story (which we seriously hope is true, because it is magnificent) told of a time they were caught using cocaine in Selfridges: ‘shop assistant comes up to me and says - Sir we don’t permit use of illegal substances in our shop. So I said - this is vitamin D powder cuz I

With 17% of respondents saying they had taken study drugs, we were curious to see the effects. Some compared them to ‘performance enhancing drugs in sports’, saying that they should ‘accept your inferior skills of self-motivation rather than giving yourself an unfair advantage over the most honest students out there’. Another found the presence of study drugs ego boosting: ‘I enjoy the smug feeling of superiority I get for being able to do 18hr days without resorting to drugs / cheating. Natural high amiright’. Clearly this sadist wanted to, along with responding to the survey, make all other students feel inferior with the proclamation that they can do 18 hour days. These socalled ‘dishonest’ students had varied results, with one saying that ‘Modafinil got me a first’, whereas others found success on revision days, but it ‘kept me up till 5 before my last exam: I got 32%’. Oops. Despite these horror stories, study drugs did work for the majority of those that took them.

COCAINE FOUND IN THE JOHN’S BAR, LAW FACULTY AND HISTORY FACULTY TOILETS

Again, we couldn’t resist the temptation to rank the colleges (sorry, CUSU). Students at Girton, Homerton and Trinity were the least likely to have tried study drugs, proving that maybe they were right when they said nothing beats good old-fashioned hard work when it comes to getting a first. While King’s didn’t live up to it’s overall reputation for the most drug-friendly college, perhaps its reputation comes from the amount of study drugs they take, with 50% of King’s students who took our survey having tried them.

‘Literally don’t understand what the point of these surveys are soz’ was one of the responses we received in the ‘anything to add?’ section. Honestly, neither do we.

But if you’re curious about Cambridge’s cocaine habits, inquisitive about illegal substance use, hopefully this will have provided some information, however much angry mathmos (you know the type, the ones who respond ‘fuck you’ in the comments of our surveys) may moan about statistical inaccuracies from self-selecting Google Form surveys.

In case you missed it, we have to reiterate that this is a self-selecting Google Form survey; the results are probably as accurate as you’d expect. If you have any questions, email editor@cambridgetab.co.uk. The Tab does not endorse taking drugs, which is illegal.

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The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

...cont from front page It was revealed by a FOI request that, at a meeting of the University’s General Board of the Faculties, a proposal had been put forward for the abolition of the Class Lists, posted outside Senate House every year.

Inevitably students with way too much free time reacted in an attempt to ease their boredom and procrastinate revision. A furious counter campaign titled ‘Save the Class List’ was created to fight for the ‘traditional’ public display of results.

Then for a while students realised that in order to fight for / against the public display of exam results, they actually needed to get some exam results, so people decided to calm down and do some work. Yet once the turmoil of exams and the mayhem of May Week was over, the opportunity to cause conflict once again appeared.

The ‘Save the Class Lists’ campaign submitted another petition to CUSU with enough signatories to trigger a referendum on Class Lists. Shiny new CUSU Pres Amatey Doku said of the issue ‘ As happens every year, CUSU Council will appoint members of the new Elections Committee at the first Council in Michaelmas Term and will begin the process of dealing with the petition and referendum request immediately.

Has Brexit not proven that referenda don’t fucking work?

Obviously the fellows then got jealous of all this democracy, and decided that if we had a vote, they should bloody well have one too. 55 members of Regent House submitted a petition to hold a vote to be held on 28th November and close at the beginning of December.

The problem is, this will almost definitely happen after the student vote has occurred. CUSU constitution states a vote must take place in 21 Full Term days after the referendum petition is submitted. While it’s unclear exactly what date the petition will be submitted, if it’s submitted at the first CUSU Council of the term, the student referendum will almost certainly be held before the Fellows vote.

The whole matter was further complicated when an angry Trinity supervisor couldn’t hold his tongue and had to share his opinion, calling abolition of Class Lists a ‘victory for mediocrity’, once again promoting angry students to write articles about him, but not actually do anything.

It seems, as with Easter Term last year, we will be faced with referenda galore. Victory for democracy?

Ben Brown Cartoonist

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab being about whether one should prefer tradition to student well being. However, the two are not opposed.

Numerous signatories of the Save the Class List petition have testified as to how it helped their mental health. As one put it: “I battled with depression in my first year and attempted suicide multiple times. The examination period was the most stressful for me and made my condition so much worse. The public display of class lists may at a first glance be seen to make the situation worse for those with mental health problems, however for me it was a lifeline. I realised that getting a 2.ii or a 3rd was not the end of the world … Without the public class lists I would have spent the weeks after receiving my 2.ii locked away in my room … The perspective and solidarity gained from the public display of class lists made my condition much easier to cope with.”

Nicholas Taylor Save the class lists Contributor AFTER much campaigning and following

a failure to directly consult students, Save the Class List has been able to force CUSU to organise a referendum on the proposed abolition of the publication of the Class List outside the Senate House. We urge you to vote in favour of the retention of the Class List with an easier opt out system.

The University and CUSU have framed the issue as

Eleanor Toal Opinion Editor

Students who did not perform as well as they had hoped for also said that they found the publication helpful as it allowed others to be tactful around them. Other students also reported that the publication encouraged them to work harder as well as providing them with a sense of belonging in Cambridge. The myth that taking part in sports affects examination performance for instance has been debunked by research which found that there is no noticeable effect of participation in competitive sport on academic results. Students are not defined by their results.

As for the league tables, they are – of course – not perfect but they do still provide valuable information.

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By wanting to abolish them the University is making the perfect the enemy of the good. If the University Council had concerns about the methodology it could have published its own tables as Oxford has done since 2005. League tables also serve to maintain the character of each College as distinct academic institutions rather than merely as different halls of residences.

It was said that Cambridge is the only University in the country to still publish class lists. This is not true: Warwick, Leeds, and Sussex all do.The anxiety that some students feel around that time is primarily due to the results themselves rather than the actual publication.

Valid concerns have been raised about the procedure to opt out on medical grounds and the position of trans students but these can be fixed without stopping the entire publication.

Similarly, some students just do not want their results to be published. Of course, we agree that people should not have their results announced if they do not want to and this wish should be respected. This is why we favour an easy opt out system. However, many students do benefit from the practice and it would be wrong not to give them the option. Our Grade, Our Choice includes the rights of students to have their names put up on Senate House.

If you like the Class List vote to save it, if you don’t want to be on it opt out. But there is no reason to abolish it entirely. This would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

HUMILIATION OVER CLASS LIST ABOMINATION

THIS GOES FURTHER THAN A PIECE OF PAPER

THE archaic tradition of public shaming

embedded in class lists propagates a dangerously sour edge of competition.

Moving to university should be a chance to escape the stagnant school culture of statistics which produces hostility, unhealthy rivalries and alarming pressures upon the most vulnerable students. No legitimate academic purpose is achieved by publishing our grades on a bit of paper outside the Senate House for all to view.

The public display of grades is counter-productively humiliating.

What should be most rewarding about the teaching at university is the very fact that you get out of your degree as much as you put into it. There is no-one to hound you about deadlines or subject you to overambitious expectations. If you are not putting the work in then you alone will face that burden of responsibility. The university values independent learning in all other areas so it seems entirely hypocritical that we still face a dangerously competitive system of ranking students alongside each other for maximum mortification.

Abolishing the class lists would also mean an end to the Tompkins Table, allowing the university to be transformed into a more level playing field with a greater inclusivity between the colleges. Most of the colleges in fact fall within a relatively small 10% range of each other; the class lists create grossly inflated divisions in academic standing. That said, the collegiate system is riddled with inequalities which mean that students are often receiving different standards of support depending on their college. Removing academic rankings between colleges would be one small step in the battle against the horrendous disproportion in financial and academic support across colleges.

It is time we were allowed to see ourselves as a member of the university – a wider, all-embracing community – rather than just being segregated into collegiate, academic boxes. Let’s face it, Trinity is most likely to stay at the top spot for a long time to come (it has dominated the coveted top position for the past six years) and equally those colleges who are consistently at the bottom of the list face being misrepresented with mature colleges such as Hughes Hall and St Edmund’s being consistently slated as the weakest links despite having significantly fewer undergraduates.

Your college should only matter so much in that it is the place you live yet the standards in teaching and support across colleges varies wildly. Such rankings only serve to perpetuate unfair reputations about each college which in turn upholds inequalities in the collegiate system.

When applying to Cambridge students are led to believe that the university allows them the freedom to focus on their own work and passions without the artificial pressures that are all too prevalent in the school environment. Abolishing the class lists would liberate us from this final remnant of ranking which perpetuates unhealthy competition far more than it produces any kind of positive incentives to work harder.

Some students may well see the class lists as a positive incentive of motivation rather than a daunting threat of public mortification. But students should ultimately have control over their own work. Results, after all, are a deeply personal result of an individual’s efforts. The idea of a student’s performance being openly available for anyone to analyse, dissect and make uninformed judgements about is a disturbing invasion of privacy.

Class lists are one tradition that Cambridge could really do without.

VictorianAdvice 8

The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

FOR A MODERN FRESHER

Cameron Anderson News Editor

5) Don’t, if you are a teetotaller, wear a blue ribbon. An obtruded virtue is almost as objectionable as vice.

THE WORLD OF 1893 IS A SCARY PLACE.

Translation: Don’t bang on about how long you’ve been in the library for to your hungover golem of a friend. They have a headache, and 2,000 words in for 12pm. They don’t need to know how hard you are working.

Victorian Freshers were given a handy guide to help them adjust to life at Cambridge, and as The Tab reverts to the archaic medium of the printing press, it seemed only right that we include some content which addresses this year’s cohort in a proper 19th century style.

6) Don’t play the piano all day however accomplished you may be.

Want to be as fetching as this gentleman?

Follow our advice

Translation: Throwing shapes to Darude Sandstorm at 3am might seem like a great idea after a night out at Junction.

It’s less fun for your neighbours.

Let us set the scene: Number plates appear for the first time in Paris. Thomas Edison finishes work on the first Motion picture, while Mormon temples spring up in the US. The zipper is invented, Tchaikovsky rivets the world with the first performance of “Pathetique,” and Henry Perky patents shredded wheat. Herman Goring is Born, Wilfred Owen dies, and you, a fresh faced undergraduate have been thrust into the world of high calibre academia.

7) Don’t forget your engagements.

Nothing is more rude.

Translation: No matter how hungover you are, go to your supervision. Sit there and mumble something about the abstract of an article you read that morning. Your supervisor will know, but will probably teach you something regardless. You can probably skip your lectures that day though.

Fortunately, Arthur J. Story (St John’s - 1893) has written you a guide addressing some of the more important etiquettes you will need to get to grips with if you are to embody a “proper” Cambridge student.

With a little help from The Tab in updating some of the advice, we have translated this advice which still rings true today.

1)Don’t, if you are in lodgings, get too familiar with your landlady’s daughter (or son).

Translation: Don’t shit where you eat. Sleeping with your various neighbours might seem like a good idea at first, but when they haven’t done the washing up for a month and start going out with your best mate, things get awkward.

8) Don’t be ready to think a man has offended you. Cambridge salutations are always distant.

3) Don’t attempt to keep every brand of wine under the sun. Most undergrads cannot distinguish “Bordeaux” from “Burgundy” if served in a decanter.

Translation: Buy Sainsbury’s Basics wine. As long as you sieve out the bits, and put it into a decanter, no one will know the difference.

2) Do not walk the streets four abreast as if you were part proprietor of the town.

4) Don’t forget to be courteous to your landlady.

Translation: Don’t go out on Saturdays. Students descend on Cambridge’s assorted clubs every night of the week, much to the dismay of all the other residents. Saturday is their day. Stay in and play Scrabble or something, or risk get head-butted in Spoons (what a first Saturday that was).

Translation: Don’t be a dick to the porters. They will probably end up carrying you home from a bop, or turning off a fire alarm you set off by “burning toast” at 3am. It’s worth having them on your side.

Translation: Don’t get offended by ornamental bronze sculptures. I will say no more lest I offend.

9) Don’t reply to a Boating Coach. His position is a very thankless one, and it is no wonder that he is occasionally irritable, or even mildly abusive.

Translation: Constantly talking about rowing is a symptom of getting up at 5am and splashing around in a cold river. They seem to speak a different language. Do not engage with rowing “banter.”

And last, but certainly not least,

10) Don’t let your residence in Cambridge cause you to assume superiority over others.

Translation: You are at Cambridge. Awesome. Just don’t be a dick about it.

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

9

TIT HALL IN UPROAR AS ACCOMMODATION BLOCK GOES UNFINISHED Joseph Spencer Editor-in-Chief, Easter 2016

Tit Hall’s swanky new accommodation block, WYNG Gardens, has not been completed for the start of term.

There were repeated assurances made to students by the Trinity Hall authorities that they needn’t fear the accommodation not being ready in time.

Despite these assurances an email was sent out in September to students of the college informing them that the Contractor for the site had failed to make sufficient progress for students to move in at the start of term on the weekend of the 1st October. Students who had balloted for WYNG Gardens are being moved to ‘alternative accommodation’ for the start of the academic year.

Noted Tit Hall Man about Town Jack Lewy told the Tab: ‘Although I understand that the contractors can never fully guarantee the time of a project’s completion, it is a shame that College brazenly told us time and time again that the project would be completed on time. For the first half of next term I won’t be living anywhere near my friends now.’

* not an actual photo of the development Students affected are being granted a 50% discount on their normal rent while the Contractor completes the development.

Trinity Hall student Chee Ching Sik commented on the Contractor’s failure, saying that ‘One would have thought the college that prides itself for law would do a better job in enforcing its contract’.

Daniel Gethin added that ‘it makes a mockery of the ballot if not only is the new building incomplete, but also the people I’ve chosen to live with are scattered all over the place. It’s pretty shambolic, and hardly the start anyone wants going into their final year. How can I have trust in college if their fundamental promises on

accommodation are broken?’

It remains to be seen whether the disruption will be restrained to the first few weeks of term, or extended to the Christmas Vacation and beyond.

The WYNG Gardens development has been underway on Thompson’s Lane since 2014, with Tit Hall’s Junior Bursar stating at the time that the development would provide the college with ‘much-needed, up to date facilities as expected by students today and also allowing us to increase revenue generated through conferencing during the Vacations.’

Persons wishing to sponsor the yet to be completed development can pay to name one of the 72 bedrooms in the complex for the bargain price of £75,000.

CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS ARE CONFIRMED AS THE HARDEST WORKING IN THE UK Rory Sachs Deputy Editor We really do work hard, play hard, it seems A survey conducted by NatWest on how different students live in the UK has confirmed some of the stereotypes that Cantabs have known to be true for years.

The Student Living Index 2016, compiled by Zenith Optimedia, has ranked 25 different university towns by the amount of income the average student at each institution receives and spends, as well as how much time they spend studying and socialising.

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, it appears Cambridge students are the most studious in the UK, working on average nearly 48 hours per week, with Oxford students studying only a meagre 40 hours per week by comparison. On average, students across the UK studied for 30.77 hours per week, putting Cambridge well in the lead.

More tellingly, each week Cantabs managed to socialise for 7.83 hours per week, just below the average for all UK students of 8.89 hours. In what appears to have become an accidental Varsity match, Cambridge students once again edged their counterparts at Oxford, who only managed to socialise for 7.03 hours each week #GDBO. Given Cambridge students therefore spend on average over 50% more time than other UK students working, and socialise as much as other UK students, this has confirmed what seems to be a basic fact of Cambridge

life: that Cantabs really do work hard and play hard.

In terms of employment, we work the lowest part time hours compared to all other students at other UK universities surveyed, working only 2.72 hours per week, compared to the national average of 5.73 hours.

Cambridge students are still formally forbidden to work within term time by the colleges, and this figure may reflect insignificant earnings, made through college JCR bartending, for example.

Cambridge students each received an average income of £1057 in term time, placing their incomes fourth from the bottom of all UK universities surveyed. Most of us can relate to these stats too, with many feeling the squeeze by the end of term time, with the feeling of desperation sinking in as one tries to withdraw the funds for a Van of Life quesadilla after an expensive night at Cindies.

The findings call into question the draconian rules on term-time work imposed on Cantabs by their colleges, forcing them to make difficult choices about their incomes.

However, the study flagged up some more puzzling results about Cambridge living: Apparently, Cambridge students are paying the most for rent in the UK, spending an average of £131.48 per week, with only Oxford students paying more at £135 per week. By comparison, the survey found the UK average rent for students to be around £110.

This revelation contrasts to the conventional wisdom often touted by the Cambridge colleges that subsidised, landlord-free accommodation they provide makes student life ‘affordable’ in the city. These stats

perhaps highlight the significance of ‘hidden’ college establishment charges and pricey formals, which may be leaving unwitting Cantabs out of pocket.

The results paradoxically suggested students in London had the lowest weekly accommodation rates, when institutions such as UCL and Imperial College London remain notorious for their high purported rents.

Furthermore, our lowly expenditure on booze may shock and disappoint many frequent Cantab clubbers, given Cambridge placed at a disappointing 20th out of all 25 university towns surveyed, spending only £5.89 on alcohol each week. This may seem like a bitter pill to swallow, especially for many Cantabs who can attest to regularly spending more than that on a bottle of Sainsbury’s House Pinot Grigio and a few Jägerbombs on a night out, and who therefore know the difficulties of swallowing such bitter tastes.

Students of Cambridge also came second last in weekly expenditure on nights out, spending only £4.95 per week. But any Cantab who’s ever bought entry to Lola’s or Cindies may find this stat confusing, even when ignoring the added costs of drinks, cloak rooms and cab rides home for disaffected Girtonians.

It appears that this survey has however relied upon university students self-reporting their expenditure, so for now we’ll take these findings with a pinch of salt.

Like we do with our pricey tequila, we’ll have NatWest know.

GRANTCHESTER

10 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

ALUMNIANTICS GANG ATTACK Charlie Gladstone News Editor

CAMBRIDGE has a long list of prestigious and

noteworthy alumni, so The Tab is providing you with a handy list of the ones we saw in the news over summer. You will likely be gloating to everyone how ‘Celebrity X went to my college 25 years ago’, so this list may help you streamline.

TOM HIDDLESTON WON REAR OF THE YEAR 2016

Prestigious actor and all-round hunk Tom Hiddleston (Double First in Classics – Pembroke) won an award which is the ultimate goal of all aspiring actors: having the best bum on screen. His behind was presented the award (which The Tab suspects was inspired by our own yearly Best Bums competition) for its courageous (if disappointingly brief) performance in The Night Manager. He also dated Taylor Swift, but has been left looking not-so-hot after a magazine claimed his superiority complex led to their breakup. According to Celebs Now, he was known to tell Taylor’s team ‘I have a double first from Cambridge, I do actually know what I’m talking about’. Nobody likes a bragger Tom...

was harshly condemned for not properly informing ministers on the situation in Iraq, and failing to make it clear that evidence of WMDs was not fully established.

OLYMPIAN CANTABS If Cambridge were an independent country (one can dream), we’d have come 39th in the Olympics, between Georgia and Azerbaijan. The first was George Nash (Engineering – St Catz), and the second was Tom Ransley (History and Management – Hughes Hall) – both of whom achieved gold medals in rowing. Shoutout to Emma Pooley and Mark Aldred, who missed out on medals. Much to The Tab’s irritation, if Oxford was an independent country, it would have placed 22nd – although this might also explain why we perform better in the academic tables.

FAMOUS PON HAS BABY Eddie Redmayne (Art History – Trinity) and his PR Exec wife welcomed baby Iris Mary Redmayne into the world this summer. Redmayne won an Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking, who is still a fellow at Gonville and Caius.

SWIMMING CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS Shani Wijetilaka | Editor-in-Chief

POLICE INVESTIGATIONS ARE UNDER WAY

Earlier in the summer, a group of sixth formers allegedly threw bottles at five Cambridge students who were relaxing in Grantchester Meadows.

According to Sam Nicholls, who was attacked, the five post-doc researchers were enjoying the warm summer evening in Grantchester Meadows by swimming in the Cam when a group of “about 50 sixth form students”, who were “drinking alcohol and smoking pot”, “began to hurl bottles into the river”.

When asked to stop, the sixth form students allegedly “began to throw bottles at them and threaten them from the bank, using very abusive language, especially towards the sole female university student in the water”.

They then “impeded” the students from climbing out of the water. One Cambridge student was pushed back into the water and struck by a bottle on the shoulder.

Mike Kelly, who was injured, told Cambridge News: “They went completely mad; they started squaring up all along the bank, which was quite intimidating, shouting and screaming, saying they would fight us.”

“I went forward to try and mediate the situation, and one of them threw a bottle, got in the river and started pushing me,” he said.

“Then another threw one which hit my shoulder and drew blood. If it had been three inches to my left it would have hit me in the face, and as I was standing in the water if it had knocked me out I would have gone under.”

According to those involved in the incident, “the police were called and the two main perpetrators were identified and an ABH charge against them is currently being considered”. Allegedly, the same group had “verbally abused another group of Cambridge students the previous day and had left empty bottles and other litter on the river banks and in the river”. The Tab is also aware that another university student cut himself on broken glass in the same spot whilst swimming in the river on that day, requiring stitches.

It takes a Cantab to play a Cantab Studying at Cambridge does not ensure you will become an attractive superstar, nor that you will date one.

ERRORS IN IRAQ: The highly-awaited Chilcot Report was released this summer, which delivered a scathing criticism of a number of those involved in Iraq War. The chair of the inquiry himself, Sir John Chilcot received an MA in English and Languages from Pembroke. One of the characters most strongly criticised by the report was the head of MI6 during the Iraq War, Sir Richard Dearlove.

Dearlove was an undergraduate of Queens’ College and later became the Master of Pembroke College – he

STEPHEN FRY INSULTS MILLENNIALS IN NEW SITCOM Stephen Fry (English – Queens’) is no stranger to creating controversy, especially angry young students.

Earlier in the year, Fry spoke out strongly against the ideas of no-platforming, and suggested that victims of child sex abuse should “grow up” and “get over it” – a comment which unsurprisingly received heavy criticism. More recently, Fry has been revealed as the costar of new Sitcom The Great Indoors, which portrays millennials as oversensitive and obsessed with social media. The Tab declines to comment on the accuracy of these claims.

For the victims of this unprovoked attack, a once idyllic spot has been ruined. None of those involved feel safe to return to Grantchester Meadows, “given both the serious nature of these incidents and the possibility that something similar may happen again”.

The Cambridgeshire police told The Tab: “We were called at 5.15pm on Wednesday, July 20 to reports of an assault in Grantchester Meadows. A group of 10 to 15 people were involved in a confrontation with another group.

“A man in his 30s received minor injuries as a result of the assault. Officers attended the scene and investigations into the incident continue. A teenage boy was voluntarily interviewed by officers over the weekend.”

Inquiries are ongoing.

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

11

CULC Student politics is like House of Cards, grammar schools are terrible and the student right is all about ‘Port and Policy’ Oliver Yeates Editor-in-Chief

If the acronym, ‘CUCA’, stood for something else, what would it be?

Crushing Unions Creates Anarchy? Cambridge University Clowns Anonymous?

What’s worse: a red flag or red trousers?

Red Flag- socialist chic. Red trousers- Jacob Rees Mogg chic. I’ll let you make your own mind up.

What’s the best thing about Jeremy Corbyn?

He isn’t Tony Blair. Or that he’s helped make Labour the largest political party in Western Europe.

What’s the best thing about Theresa May? She isn’t David Cameron.

Why does student politics have a cliche of backstabbing and sneakiness?

Because its’ normally true. Student politicians love to sit around watching House of Cards, and then act it out. Luckily in CULC, we go for Jeremy’s ‘Kinder, Gentler Politics’ sort of thing. So we don’t stab each other in the back, we just have annual leadership elections and then threaten to deselect each other.

Ideologically, how distant is CUCA from CULC? I can’t speak for CUCA, but CULC is all about socialism, equality, inclusivity and campaigning on issues we care about. We don’t sit around, dining on Port and Policy - we get out and do things. Come and see for yourself.

Give a poetic summary of the ethos of your society.

To the left, to the left. To the left, to the left. - Beyonce.

If your society was an alcohol, what would it be?

Liam Byrne once described Jeremy Corbyn as the ‘craft ale of politics because he is authentic and has strong flavours.’ I’d drink that.

Are Cambridge students engaging with politics in the right ways?

I think too often our conversation is too inward facing and narrow. There are loads of legitimate issues inside the university, but we rarely go out into the wider world. In CULC, we pride ourselves in having an active engagement with Cambridge beyond Mill Road, and have friends and links in the whole city.

Student politics in Cambridge sometimes takes the ‘Town/Gown’ rubbish too seriously, something we in CULC are keen to avoid.

Tell a joke about CUCA. Go onto their Facebook and have a look at their ‘Direc-t=Tory’ Freshers Guide. It literally describes their events as ‘lubricated by port’.....

Are online forums such as Cuntry Living and Race Matters more of a help or hindrance to how students discuss issues?

Help, 100%. This sort of new social media has given people a voice that previously didn’t, which is no bad thing. For organisations like CULC it challenges us to confront old thinking and reach out in new ways.

Cambridge should be a hub for radical and progressive groups, including members of Cuntry Living and Race Matters.

Would more grammar schools result in higher application rates to Universities like Cambridge?

Grammar schools are such a terrible idea; even the government is rowing back on them after a week. Here in Cambridge- the bastion of educational inequalitywe should be saying loud and clear that we don’t want them back, and will do everything we can to oppose them.

What isn’t the government funding enough?

Everything? To give an example, look at mental health. Since 2010, demand for mental health services has gone up by 20%. The Tories response? To cut the mental health services budget by 8% in real terms.

They see that as ‘austerity’, but in reality its been devastating for people who depend on those services.

Good mental health services should be a basic in any decent society- something the government doesn’t seem to quite grasp.

What do we have to learn from Donald Trump?

That you can have tiny hands and still make it in politics.....or that racism is still alive and kicking in the 21st centry, and anyone who says otherwise is probably a racist themselves.

Brexit: good or bad?

CULC was officially against Brexit, and most of us campaigned quite hard. But what matters now is what sort of Brexit we have. Its clear that Theresa May wants Brexit to be an opportunity to do the things Margaret Thatcher only dreamed of- undercutting workers rights, disengagement from European investment programmes, rolling back the frontiers of the state even further. The British people didn’t vote for this ‘Hard Brexit’, and won’t tolerate it. CULC will campaign to make Brexit a progressive moment- I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it can be done. Look at the achievements of Sadiq Khan in London, and you can see the sort of society we want to create.

If the CULC committee went on Britain’s Got Talent, what would its act be?

We would all eat a bacon sandwich while singing The Red Flag.

views on tearooms: see our Directory.

Give a poetic summary of the ethos of your society.

We’re for Thatcher, not for Marx; We drink port, but not sambuca.

And who are we? We hear you ask.

We’re known in town as CUCA. If your society was an alcohol, what would it be?

Fosters. Smooth and you could end up getting lots of head.

Are Cambridge students engaging with politics in the right ways?

Since we haven’t won our seat since 1987, it is far from us to say how Cambridge students should be engaging with politics.

Tell a joke about CULC. Why did CULC give up their allotment? It was a Blairite plot.

Are online forums such as Cuntry Living and Race Matters more of a help or hindrance to how students discuss issues?

Although we were not aware of these groups, having done some cursory research, they seem to be a place for some individuals to discuss their ideas with likeminded people.

Would more grammar schools result in higher application rates to Universities like Cambridge?

For too many talented young people, ambition is seen as a dirty word. We hope that the reintroduction of

grammar schools will encourage, and enable, students of all backgrounds to be as successful as they can be in whatever they choose to do. For some, we expect this would be manifest in applications to top universities.

What isn’t the government funding enough?

This question will probably find a vast array of answers from our members. In short, we, as Conservatives, are committed to as high a level of funding as the nation can afford for all of our crucial public services, both in real terms and in removing waste and unnecessary bureaucracy.

What do we have to learn from Donald Trump?

Your intelligence doesn’t determine your ability to succeed. No doubt reassuring advice for all in the midsts of essay crises.

Brexit: good or bad?

What do we mean by Brexit? Well, Brexit means Brexit, which means Brexit, which is defined as Brexit. CUCA was neutral in the Brexit debate. We are confident, however, that the Government will deliver a Brexit package which ensures the best possible outcome for the nation. While Labour struggles to agree on the colour of an orange, the Conservatives are united behind making Brexit work for everyone.

If the CUCA committee went on Britain’s Got Talent, what would its act be?

Shit.

CUCA Brexit means Brexit, Corbyn is like Santa, and we don’t know what Cuntry Living is Oliver Yeates Editor-in-Chief

If the acronym, ‘CULC’, stood for something else, what would it be?

Corbyn’s Unstable Labour Cronies What’s worse: a red flag or red trousers?

That depends on who is waving the flag, and wearing the trousers. The worst in each case would be champagne socialists and ‘hipsters’. We are divided on which of those is worse but we would probably go for the trousers. That is our identity you are appropriating.

What’s the best thing about Jeremy Corbyn?

The Santa comparison is more than skin-deep: much like with Christmas, we know the date of our next major celebration, and how good it is going to be.

Bring on the champers for 2020.

What’s the best thing about Theresa May? Her transparent plan for Brexit, which we understand means Brexit, by the way.

Why does student politics have a cliche of backstabbing and sneakiness?

Because there is no smoke without fire.

Ideologically, how distant is CUCA from CULC? CUCA is a broad church; to understand us as having an ideology would be to miss the point. Unlike certain institutions we have never been known to purge those who disagree with us. However, we do have very firm

12 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015 James Hamilton Interviews Editor

THE HOMELESS FRESHER: ONE YEAR ON

Jacob Lewis found himself homeless as the result of a family feud. Despite his sofa-surfing living situation, the then 22 year old went on to achieve four A* grades at A-level, securing him a place to study Law at Hughes Hall. One year on, Jacob Lewis spoke to the Tab’s Interview Editor James Hamilton about homelessness, Cambridge support and freshers week.

Last year you were thrust into the spotlight as ‘the homeless fresher’. Describe that experience.

I did one interview with the South Wales Echo and went to work selling solar panels after results day. Switched my phone on at 6 o’clock and I was everywhere; I was getting good luck messages from Venezuela for heaven’s sake. It’s not nice when people know your business, the media hype was certainly not intentional, but it has its perks. The other day I didn’t have my ID in a restaurant and so I asked the waiter to Google me and an article came up listing my age as 22. He served me my beer.

Since I’ve been so bloody associated with homelessness I thought I’d try and do something about Cambridge’s homeless problem. I have a theory. People do not help out the street homeless for three reasons: either they don’t have change on them (or, the ‘right’ change); they think that it’ll be spent on alcohol or drugs so it’s not really helping; or the person in question is a total Scrooge.

L A S T

E V E R

TOMPKINS TABLE

I can’t do much about the third group but basically, from this year, in participating cafés in Cambridge you’ll be able to buy a Stickybuck with your meal – it’s basically like a food token that you buy with your meal and give to the homeless guy who can redeem it where you bought in food/drink.

the holidays as you’ll promise yourself you’ll do and so make sure to make at least a decent stab in term time.

The buyer gets some karma-enhancing philanthropy with the full knowledge that he’s actually feeding someone, the business taking part makes more money (because the money for the voucher goes straight in his till) and the needy get fed. Everyone’s a winner. We’re also sorting out Stickybucks jumpers, blankets etc. you can buy online and have delivered to the local hostel.

Not yet though, currently revamping the website.

What do you feel about the kind of support you have been given from your College and the University since arriving?

Do you have any advice for freshers? Any things you regret doing/not doing enough of in first year?

Have plenty of fun, but please remember that supervisors are world-leading experts in their field and are almost impossible to bullshit – bravo if you manage it, but it’s much more rewarding to actually do the work and get the most out of supervisions. And some supervisors will ruthlessly expose you. So do your work, but leave plenty of time to do cool stuff otherwise the place will drive you mad. Cambridge has something for everybody. There are something like 700 registered student societies; do whatever makes you happy.

Oh, by the way, you won’t do nearly as much work in

by Shani Wijetilaka / Xavier Bisits COLLEGE

SCORE FIRSTS CHANGE (%) IN RANK 75.6 45.1 0

(maybe)

Trinity

Peter Tompkins released what may well be – if CUSU has its way – the last ever Tompkins Table, ending a 30-year-old tradition of being precious about what grades your college gets.

Pembroke Christ’s Emmanuel St John’s Queens’ Jesus Peterhouse Magdalene Corpus Christi Churchill Downing Trinity Hall King’s Selwyn Sidney Sussex St Catharine’s Clare Gonville and Caius Wolfson

70.6 70.1 69.8 69.4 69.3 69.1 68.9 68.8 68.6 68.5 68.4 68.2 68.2 67.4 67.2 67.2 67.1 66.9 65.5

32.7 31.6 30.9 29.8 30.1 29.3 31.8 28.4 28.9 30.5 29.2 29.2 30.3 28 25.5 24.6 25.9 26.2 21.6

+3 +11 0 +5 +1 +4 -2 -7 +12 -8 -3 -5 +4 -3 +1 -4 -3 0 +6

Newnham

65.5

21.9

0

Robinson

65.3

22.2

-6

Fitzwilliam Homerton Murray Edwards Lucy Cavendish Girton St Edmund’s Hughes Hall

65.2 64.2 64 63.3 63 62.7 61.7

23 20.8 18.2 13.8 19 19.8 14.1

-3 +3 -2 +3 -3 0 -4

Trinity once more tops it. In last year’s iteration of the Tompkins Table, Trinity trounced the other colleges with a healthy 41.0% of firsts. This year, Trinity’s 45.1% of Firsts is followed by Pembroke, with just under 33%.

An anonymous Trinitarian said “It’s consoling to know that there’s at least one good thing about Trinity to make up for all its terrible aspects. Suck on that Pembroke.”

Christ’s – rising a stunning ELEVEN places – rounds out the top three with 31.6% of firsts. Other colleges who’ve moved up in the world are John’s (5 ranks), Corpus (12 ranks) and Wolfson (6 ranks).

Magdalene – after an impressive second place finish last year – has dropped back to 9. Churchill, too, fell 8 places, Robinson fell 6 and Tit Hall 5. At the bottom of the table is Hughes’ Hall in 29th place, just below St Edmund’s and Girton.

The results are based on publicly-displayed class lists, which the University releases to him in advance of their publication in the University Reporter. The Table relies on the proportion of class marks gained by undergraduate candidates for each college in ranking each one – meaning graduate colleges Clare Hall and Darwin don’t appear.

At a CUSU Council in Michaelmas 2015, President Priscilla Mensah proposed a motion to “eradicate” all ranking tables between colleges, after controversial Trinity JCR President Cornelius Roemer made a comment to her about students at his college being better. The abolition of class lists has hit a snag, with enough Fellows signing a letter to send the proposal to a Regent House vote. Students, too, will get their say, with a petition for a CUSU Referendum gaining at least 700 signatures.

So who knows whether we’ll be back in 2017 for an annual addition to the timeless ritual of whose-collegeis-better.

And don’t worry about the people here – there’s a right mix from Etonians to itinerant state-educated chavs like me – we’re a mixed bunch, you’ll meet nice people.

Cambridge are good at that sort of thing. My rent pretty much eats up the entirety of my student finance but Cambridge have a Mature Student Bursary that more than provides living costs. So if we have struggling students – I know I’m not the only one with hardly anything left over after rent – talk to the University about what they have available. It’s really not in their interests to have their students starve to death. There’s a bursary officer at most colleges – scout him/her out.

You recently told a Welsh newspaper that you wanted to be Prime Minister. What do you think your first policy would be as PM? Lesson in life: never say anything to a reporter even in jest, because they, you know, report things. But since you’re asking, it would be to forgive all student debt, liberalise the drug laws and knight Jeremy Corbyn. Oh and stop taxing beer and poor people.

WE ASKED THIS YEAR’S FRESHERS WHAT THEY THOUGHT

CAMBRIDGE WOULD BE LIKE Rory Sachs |Deputy Editor

Fresher’s week will see around 3000 eager new Cantabs descend upon our small university town for a week of Jägerbombs, society squashes and, well, the drunken mistakes which arise from the combination of the two.

“While it’s lovely to day dream that on reading my first essay, my supervisor will see the work of a true genius, realistically I know that he will tear it and my delicate pride apart, handing them back to me in the nonsensical fragments from which they were constructed. I am trying to prepare myself for Aside from the usual, all-encompassing that moment. fears of never-ending reading lists and the exam-death-abyss, they’ve also found I don’t have high hopes for the clubbing scene, time to ponder early morning rowing but then again even sweaty basements filled sessions on the River Cam, the cheesy with cringingly cheesy tunes and a rank mist tunes of Cindies and the strangeness of of sweat can be fun when you’re with the right formal hall. people.”

We caught up with some of this year’s DAVID, MEDICINE, CHURCHILL cohort of excitable freshers to hear all their initial thoughts and grievances of their impending first week in the bubble:

“I’m slightly scared of the formal dinners, with everyone in smart suits and dresses talking about foreign policy and Chaucer and then I’ll no doubt pronounce ‘tapenade’ wrong and no one will talk to me, but that’s probably just a stereotype and Facebook chat groups for freshers are thankfully more focused on Bake I might even write an article or two for The Off than 14th century literature.

Tab. It’s my chance to be famous.”

Mostly though, I’m confused about whether punting along the Cam is seen as a hobby for snobs and people in t-shirts reading ‘My Degree is in Chillaxing’ or if it’s just something everyone has learned to think is normal, because to me it just looks weird.”

ETHAN, MML, CHRIST’S “I’m actually really looking forward to it!

I’m obviously a little worried about the workload, but I’ll be studying something I love and all in an amazing city.

ALFIE, LAW , CAIUS “Undoubtedly there’ll be a lot of work and time spent on studying so I’m expecting my time management will be needing to be tuned.”

ALEXANDRA, ENGLISH, SIDNEY ANIA, ENGLISH, GIRTON “I am wholly aware that my diet will slowly begin to revolve around predominantly carbohydrates. I just hope that no one will be too alarmed by my choice of pencil case. It’s a shark. Amazon labelled it as a ‘Boys’ pencil case. I’m constantly fighting the system.”

IZZY, FRENCH AND GERMAN, CAIUS

C A M B R I D G E ’ 13 S Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

APPROPRIATION OF THE

WORKING CLASS MAKES FOR BITTER SOCIAL DIVISION Eve Mair | Michaelmas Columnist

“Since I’m not even halfway through the preparatory reading list, I’m not optimistic that that side of my degree will be a walk in the park.”

HANNAH, MUSIC, CHRIST’S

Nobody likes a phony, as Holden Caulfield would say, and as the U.S electorate’s distaste of Hillary Clinton would demonstrate.

Phonyism, a word I’ve now coined, is particularly dislikable when seen in attempts to emulate a different class. Everybody knows how embarrassing it is when the Mrs Bucket’s of the world swarm to M&S to buy shit that they could get in Aldi for a fifth of the price in order to ensure that Sharon from the Book Club won’t whisper about her over a glass of Prosecco.

But even more embarrassing is when the middle class model themselves on the working class. Judging from my experience of “After much preparation for the move, Cambridge (a painfully middle class place), mainly consisting of weighing up what where this practise is rife, most are unaware I can live without as I don’t fancy of the levels of unease they are reaching. blowing my whole student budget before I even start, it has reached the My grandmother, a Rusholme ruffian, born to an Irish single mother, used to ride her point where I just want to get there!”. bike to work with no tyres. She was not just working class, she lived a life of utter poverty.

HOLLY, HISTORY, PEMBROKE She was homeless and abused. She worked for fifty one years, and then, four years ago, used up her pension to pay for me to go to a private school for three years, where I had got a bursary and a scholarship. This is my family - what I come from.

“I applied to Cambridge under the illusion that I would have the chance to float around like Sebastian Flyte.

However, it turns out that Brideshead Revisited is actually set in Oxford, and Sebastian ends up as an alcoholic in a Tunisian monastery.

I come from workers. I come from graft and oven chips and staunch Labourites. When I went to school I realised how different I was to some people, and, at school, I realised a lot of people with a lot of money pretended to be the kind of person that lived on the bad side of town. Then, when I went to University, the same thing happened. It’s a phenomenon isn’t strictly limited to Cambridge, but here, I feel it sting all the more.

This university is the educational extension of the country’s class system. It breeds a social, academic, political elite oozing privilege, which when it hits yellow summers fosters white tie and quietly sips on champagne. It is the home of people who are not like me or my friends. I was told that Cambridge We wish all of you freshers out there harvests the brains of the future and that the best of luck on your first week in in getting here, I would reach summits that the bubble. previously required visas. I was told I would not only to be amongst the elite, but would Amidst the drunken mistakes at your also be accepted by them. fresher bop, and the never-ending joy that is navigating through the sticky Cambridge fell short of its promises, and basement of a packed Sunday Night affirmed only one thing to me about this Life, try and make it to a few lectures caste class system: it is solid, it is untouchable along the way. and there are doors in which we will never cont from previous page You can follow the antics of Holly, enter. In other words, in Cambridge, the David, and Ania in each of their middle class dominate and the working class columns as they navigate through are left feeling different. their first term.

So thanks, Evelyn Waugh, for ruining my life. I have adjusted my mindset accordingly and now am, instead, very much looking forward to regular brunch and the prospect of wearing trainers clubbing. My poor toes rejoice.”

14 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015 However, the more I began to understand this, the more one thing became incredibly apparent: the key holders to these doors didn’t want to be those people.

They wanted to wear streetwear and use our words and listen to grime in Fez, reviving memories of Upper Sixth where they smoked bud for the first time in their mates’ North London basement. They aspire to emulate a class without feeling any of the true consequences of being it. The middle class yearn to disprove their privilege when surrounded by affirmation of it. To them, to be working class is to be cool, and to be middle class is to eat hummus and rot in the city. To the working class, particularly in Cambridge, it is to have little money and to feel alien.

Perhaps it stems from embarrassment; a sense of weariness of judgement from those who truly grafted their way into this institution. Perhaps it is just their aesthetic. Perhaps it’s because it is what is cool.

Irrespective, it is not theirs to own or appropriate. They attempt to purvey an image of themselves as the kind of person who they mock; the scally, the chav, the guy with the pimped out Ford. They used to shit themselves when you walked past these people on the way back from their girls grammar school. Now, you want to be them and you never, ever will be.

You cannot choose which elements of working class culture suit you. We are not here for your entertainment, or for your gain. We cannot shed our upbringings, our families, our small homes. You can take off your Roshe’s at the end of the day and you are still wealthy, privileged, educated. You still hold the keys to those doors. We are left outside. Our accents are funny. Our opinions in supervisions are endearing. Our holidaying in Magaluf is just ‘so us’. Our streetwear is scruffy, whereas yours is “ironic”.

The past year, I found myself frequently looking around The Maypole, in the ADC, thinking to myself, “just fucking do you”. I like my accent. You should like yours.

Don’t pretend to be like us. So many people are too embarrassed by who they truly are, but they shouldn’t be; enjoy your privilege. For me, I was nurtured on the words of the Gallaghers, and their words sunk into my subconscious over years and years. “I’ve got to be myself. I can’t be no one else.” Sometimes, I think a lot of people can forget that.

events talks lifedrawing film pavilion

SHOULD I BE WORRIED THAT I DON’T HAVE AN OPINION ON

ANYTHING? Holly Smith Michaelmas Columnist OCTOBER is upon us. Arriving to

Cambridge as a fresher has been a prospect that has had me feeling rather apprehensive (read: knickershittingly terrified) about several things.

There is, for example, the unnerving fact that my rent is mysteriously almost £20 less than every single other room in my building.

What has warranted this deduction? Are there flesh-eating rats?

Asbestos? Ha ha I am scared. why lol xx

Secondly, how can I reinvent myself so that nobody catches a glimpse of The Horrific Person That I Truly Am until at least Week 3? This will be challenging as I only own enough wavy garms to last me approximately four days.

But something that is particularly stressing me out is that I am absolutely clueless about how to navigate the choppy waters of student politics.

Me, by JMW Turner, 1819 Universities, most notably Oxbridge, seem to have been hitting the headlines in the past year over a variety of issues: safe spaces, cultural appropriation, no platforming, the NUS, yadda yadda. This puts me more than a little on edge, as, to be totally frank, I haven’t the foggiest what I think about these debates.

I’ve tried, I really have; I’ve read articles from both the Guardian and the Telegraph. The problem is, each side seems to have okay reasons for their respective stances, and I’m too indecisive/lazy to pick between them.

Rhodes Must Fall? Not a fucking clue. I mean, we can all basically agree that old Cecil was a bit of a shit, but, further than that, I can’t honestly commit myself to taking a side on the subject. Can’t his statue just be be replaced by one of Cecil the Lion (RIP) and everyone’s happy?

#RhodesMust(maybe, probably, sort of, I think?)Fall Same goes for NUS affiliation – this whole ‘shut down all prisons’ thing seems a bit extreme, but equally I’m shallow and have no money, so I’d really quite like to keep my 40% off at Pizza Express.

I basically just want to pootle wellmeaningly along, without offending anyone. What if someone from King’s asks me what my stance is on The Topic of the Month and I blurt out a half-baked opinion that, if asked to give any supporting evidence, will disintegrate quicker than a Berocca? I’ll be exposed, immediately, for the superficial husk of a person that I am.

How am I supposed to navigate extracurriculars with this in mind? Obviously, I won’t be able to speak at the Union because I’d just have to stand in the middle, wheeze and maybe mumble something about how Malia Bouattia has quite nice hair.

This House Believes that Holly is a total mug Potentially I could join the thespy scene and follow a script to act out somebody else’s opinions.

However, I learned from getting a D in my Drama GCSE exam that being an insufferable attention-seeker does not necessarily also translate into any notable acting prowess.

Of course, like most History students trying to distract themselves from the inevitability of a career in management consultancy, I’d quite like to get involved in student journalism. However, it transpires that there is more to this than a vague longing to be Caitlin Moran.

I can’t be a bloody opinion columnist without any actual opinions.

So, look forward to seeing me at the Tiddlywinks Society – looks like it’s my only option.

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

BAKE OFF’S ANDREW: OXFORD STUDENTS KNOW HOW TO PARTY Rory Sachs/Dani Cugini Deputy Editor & Deputy Features Editor Andrew Smyth has been one of the heavyweights in this year’s Great British Bake Off. The 25-year-old aerospace engineer has swapped jet engines for rolling pins, narrowly missing Star Baker twice and barely putting a step wrong in six weeks of competition.

The Sidney graduate developed his baking skills at Cambridge and has dazzled on the show with braided bread-baskets, baklava bites and biscuit-based throwbacks, with Week 2’s “Punting on the Cam” being a highlight for Cantabs.

Andrew told The Tab about everything from gyp rooms and exam term to his favourite recipes from the series.

Hi Andrew! To begin, what got you into baking?

I was a chubby child who loved eating, so naturally I gravitated to the kitchen - the source of all deliciousness.

I helped my mum and gran out with some baking but it was really when I had my own space at Cambridge that I started to bake more frequently and expand my repertoire. It’s been onwards and upwards since then!

How would you say your Engineering degree/job at Rolls Royce is helping you in the tent? Or are you wasting your Cambridge degree?

I reckon my Engineering Degree has helped in some subtle ways - from planning out something with precision to being able to learn new techniques quickly.

I’m still analysing jet engines during the week so I think my engineering degree is being used well.

Cambridge accommodation is notoriously bad for cooking facilities in gyp rooms. Can you suggest a microwave baking recipe or two for us?

On my corridor in first year, the kitchen was fairly sparse and a few neighbours and I tried to make a microwave mug cake. It was disgusting. Would not recommend - I’ve only tried it once again since and it was equally rubbery. If you’ve not got an oven, stick to traybakes, steamed puddings and other things that don’t need an oven!

And obviously within term time, Cantabs are very stressed out and need to cut loose. Can you recommend any alcoholic baking recipes for us in particular?

For my churros, I made an amaretto chocolate ganache which could easily be used in many ways and is suitable for pre-9pm. For something with a lot more kick, maybe try Tom’s Gin and Tonic Drizzle cake from Week 1... it sounds like Oxons know how to party.

What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to bake?

The filo showstopper in Week 5 nearly broke me. When practising it at home, I accidentally dropped several sheets of carefully stretched filo onto the floor, wasting about 2 hours worth of work. And those were so fiddly to make I’d have to say those are potentially the trickiest things. They didn’t get much easier with practice either!

Is baking a recreational activity for the privileged?

Baking is probably one of the most accessible hobbies - I think that’s what makes Bake Off so popular and relatable. It only takes a handful of ingredients and a cake tin to make a Victoria Sponge!

Can we use baking as a form of therapy for pent-up post-Brexit rage?

Whatever your rage, baking could be a good form of therapy I guess. Probably best not to attempt a croquembouche if you’re looking to calm down though…

Have you received any marriage proposals since appearing on the show?

There have been some very funny and steamy tweets which have had me in fits of laughter, some of which were marriage proposals. It’s funny but also kind of mortifying as my mum is on twitter and regularly likes to see what people are tweeting…

Oxford graduate Tom’s recipes can be found on The Great British Bake Off website. Credit: BBC/Love Productions A contestant from Durham has been knocked out of the show before you. Did you sense the Durham/ Cambridge rivalry?

Haha, if there was any rivalry I didn’t sense it at all. The great thing about Bake Off is everyone genuinely wants everyone else to put their best foot forward.

Who is your favourite other contestant on the show?

I can’t choose one favourite... but if I had to choose a trait to steal from another baker, it would have to be Selasi’s cool calm demeanour. If he could bottle that up it’d command a high price come exam term in Cambridge!

Credit: BBC/Love Productions What kind of extra curriculars did you get involved in at Cambridge?

I dabbled in a few different societies when at Cambridge with the main ones being choir, orchestra and lifesaving.

I’ve stuck with the musical endeavours but not so much the pool-based ones.

15

Twitter loves Andrew Finally, Cantabs loved seeing your Gingerbread ‘Punting on the Cam’ masterpiece. Are there any other throwbacks to Cam that we can look forward to later in the series?

My lips are sealed - I guess you’ll have to watch the series and see how I get on...

When we asked whether Bake Off ’s move from the BBC to Channel 4 would result in a soggy bottom or a successful raise, no answer was given.

Selasi’s laid-back charm has won him a huge online following : BBC/Love Productions

Make sure to tune into The Great British Bake Off on Wednesdays at 8pm on BBC One for more of Andrew’s Cambridge-inspired desserts.

16 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

BECAUSE, LET’S BE HONEST, WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL! Rory Sachs Deputy Editor Ah, the Cambridge bubble. Dear fresher, take a brisk walk around the Freshers’ Fair, and you’ll quickly realise that the strange university we populate mirrors the outside world, which we all too easily forget for eight long weeks every term.

Cambridge is a little stomping ground for wannabe politicians, thespians, journalists and visionaries, all hoping to take the world by storm. The Union’s our Parliament, where future safe-seat Labour MPs prance around in formal attire, entertaining the loud jeers of a wood-panelled chamber. Surely any parliament wouldn’t be complete without a host of unaccountable, bureaucratic civil servants? We can thank CUSU for that.

Heck, even our own self-serving Tab journos wouldn’t exactly look out of place at any future Leveson-esque inquiry.

A lot of Cantabs will arrive here, eagerly adding their Hermes details to those signup sheets, with all the confidence needed to match such lofty ambitions. And sure, a healthy dose of self-esteem never hurt anyone.

But take a quick visit to any ADC show, Law Soc dinner or Union debate and you might easily be caught making a slip of the tongue when referring to your fellow ‘C*ntabs’.

We fiercely compete with one another, argue about free speech, make national news, have a referendum every five minutes, argue about free speech, write scathing about each other’s theatrical performances, and heckle each other at debates. Oh, and did I mention we sometimes argue about free speech?

You see, young fresher, we’ll all be going to hell sooner than we graduate to become future politicians and solicitors. But remember, all of our crimes are different.

So, as you make your way round the stalls, choosing what to sign up to, just make sure you know what sin you’re going down for:

THE UNION – GREED

Let’s begin with the crème de la crème of Cambridge extra-curricular goals. It won’t even matter if you’ve produced any sets at the Corpus playroom or guided

a few sixth-formers around Summer schools. If you’ve had a Union position, it’ll take pride of place at the top of your LinkedIn page. But, be warned, you ignorant fresher. To get this prestigious accolade, as a Union insider, you’ll have to single-handedly embody every port-guzzling, black-tie-by-night, red-chino-by day, walking-access-problem that the Daily Mail’s warned us about time and time again.

Oh, and you might even end up screwing over your ‘friends’ for a chance to sit next to Stephen Fry or Robert Downey Jr. You’re basically Augustus Gloop, if, you know, the chocolate river was like CV points and celebrity Facebook profile pictures. And you won’t stop until you’re President of the whole chocolate factory, will you? Greedy fucker.

Meanwhile at the Union...

ADC – PRIDE

The only thing that’ll stop Narcissus from staring at his own reflection in the pool of his audience’s tears from his ‘audacious’ portrayal of whichever Shakespeare character he’s massacred in that week’s Main Show will be the ever-so-slightly imperfect Tab review of his show.

Take a trip down memory lane and witness the vitriol that thesps have left in the comments section under our reviews. It seems Narcissus cannot handle anything less than the beautiful profile picture he’s just put up on Facebook to promote the show.

And then there’s the ‘ADC eyes’. For every fresher out there, that’s basically the looks over your shoulder you’ll get whenever that ADC actor you’re humouring spots someone in the crowd of the ADC bar he’ll need to schmooze to star in their play. It’s not your fault, he’ll need to nurse his fragile little ego in every way he can.

The incessant pride may eventually falter upon leaving the bubble, and receiving the first of many two-star reviews, as he performs amateur ‘comedy’ skits in the basement of a warehouse-turned-pub in Shoreditch.

CUSU – SLOTH

They’re sloths because they don’t ever really do anything, amirite?

Ask the average Cantab what CUSU’s mission statement is, or how it can assist them and the chances are they’d be clueless. “I can get condoms from my own college, can’t I?”. And they’d be right. CUSU’s sadly become known in the last few years for fighting for the abolishment of Class Lists, which a lot of students don’t even know if they want, rather than providing and publicising the essential services they offer.

And then again, they can’t even do that quickly, with their plans facing numerous hurdles from academics and the student body alike. CUSU’s famous slothfulness can be seen at their bi-termly CUSU council meetings, where one can wade through jargon in a parlour-game of CUSU bingo and see less accomplished than at a Department for Exiting the European Union meeting on a bank holiday.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LAW SOCIETY (CULS) – GLUTTONY

Lawyers definitely know how to celebrate, when their not cramming for 14 hours a day in a desperate bid to achieve a low 2.1. And even then, if you’re going to be locked in the confines of a library for your whole day, what better place to do it than the corporate shrine that is the Sidgwick Law Faculty. And when you’re not being treated to lavish banquets by commercial chambers or Magic Circle firms, you’ll be treated to the finest parties and balls, by none other than LawSoc.

They’ll lure you in with their promises of cheap cocktails, but what they won’t tell you was how many thousands of pounds Linklaters contributed to their garden party last June. At a LawSoc careers’ event you’ll eat and drink to excess. This will culminate in their LawSoc ball: an outlandish, expensive piss-up that’ll no doubt end in a bang. Or a coach crash. We could go on, but we don’t want to be sued.

VARSITY – ENVY Don’t hate us cuz you ain’t us. It must be hard for a Varsity writer. It’s bad enough when the only career ambitions you’re trying to satisfy are filling up the under-appreciated pages of a pretentious Observer supplement your old supervisor might browse through before it becomes a coaster for their morning coffee. It’s even worse when you consider that no one reads what you’re writing now.

And why bother writing wannabe Guardian riffs anyway when you can write something fun that a University student might actually want to read? They like to think that they’re classy, sophisticated, or deal in real news.

Anything to make themselves feel better, we suppose.

We do love the petty rivalry though. #badblood

Green with Envy THE TAB – WRATH And finally, the most despicable sin of them all. All of Cambridge’s societies are guilty of feeble crimes by comparison, but they are, alas, all united in their hatred of yours truly. Forget about the societies, and just mention in passing to any fellow student in Market Square that you write for The Tab and you’ll immediately be greeted with confused mix of pity and disgust.

HOW NOT TO MAKE AN UTTER TIT OF YOURSELF DURING FRESHERS Molly O’Connor Editor-in-Chief, Easter 2016

My dear freshers, an arduous and confusing week lies before you. You have been tasked with moving house, meeting a load of scary academics who have a disturbing amount of power over your college life, wrestling with a reading list longer than your leg and forming meaningful friendship bonds so you don’t have to eat in hall alone like a saddo all in five short days. To make matters worse, you will have to do most of this either drunk or hungover.

Now some of you may be like me when I was a fresher.

I am from Ireland, I had older friends who could buy me booze, I have outrageously chilled parents (my father once sent a text to my mother reading ‘Molly is upstairs surrounded by lesbians drinking shitty vodka, the only issue I have with that is the ‘shitty’ part’). It is safe to say by the time I arrived at university, alcohol was thoroughly demystified.

Whether we’re lying to Cantabs about Taylor Swift May Ball appearances, making a limp comparison between your college and a forgotten ‘90s TV show, revealing petty squabbles at the Union or even feeling the wrath of a whole host of CUSU sabbatical officers, we’ve sure angered a sizeable proportion of Cambridge in our time.

We could apologise for all of this, but, you see, love and hate are basically the same emotion. Haters gonna hate and all.

See you in hell, Fresher. Just make sure you get there in style.

sacred law of BYOB. I have my drinking down to a science. For me, two bottles of coke filled with three quarters coke and one quarter rum = happily tipsy. I bring that to pre-drinks, safe in the knowledge that if I stick to my own stuff I will not make a fool of myself that evening. It may take a while to work out your own personal happily tipsy formula, but once you’ve got it sussed, I recommend you stick to it DON’T LET OTHER PEOPLE MIX DRINKS FOR YOU The best advice about drinking I ever got was from my home economics teacher. “I don’t care how many drinks you’ve had, as long as you know how many drinks you’ve had.” There is a huge difference between ‘I’ve had two pints’ and ‘I’ve had two mugs full of special juice that the guy I just met has been brewing in his bathtub.’

You can’t ever learn your limits if you never know how much you’re pushing them, so mix your drinks yourself and keep track of what’s in them.

However, many of you may not be so fortunate and freshers’ week could be your first time actually drinking or at least drinking without the safety net of nearby parents or friends who’ve known you forever and will look after you even if you’re vomiting like that kid from The Exorcist. This column is for you guys, so let Vodka Aunt Molly guide you through your brand new relationship with alcohol.

DON’T SCREAM FROM THE ROOFTOPS THAT IT’S YOUR FIRST TIME DRINKING

Don’t let us anywhere near a church...

17

ALCOHOL AND YOU: Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

There is nothing that inspires greater dread in my shrivelled heart than someone I’ve just met saying ‘I’ve never really drunk before’ as they down tequila shots. On instinct I will now try to spend as little time with this person as humanly possible. This is because I know that by the end of the evening they’re going to be a total bloody disaster and I do not want to be the person stuck cleaning up their sick/wee/tears.

Keep your alcoholic virginity on the DL for at least a while, that way by the time you’re vomiting up a lung/ weeing your pants in the Cindie’s smoking area/crying uncontrollably about the death of your goldfish when you were five, it will be too late for any potential new buddies to escape.

DO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN DRINK There are so many disasters that could have been avoided if people would just respect the ancient and

DO BE AWARE THAT THE DUMB THINGS YOU DO IN FRESHERS’ WEEK MAY HAUNT YOU I’m not even talking about big stuff, like doing yourself an injury or getting off with someone you regret or drunk dialling your nan. I’m talking about the relatively minor stuff that your friends will never stop slagging you for. I have a friend who fully believed that she time travelled in freshers’ week. You better believe I bring up this story regularly. Freshers’ week is a week where you are doing your best to seem friendly and cool, don’t shatter the illusion after one too many jaegerbombs.

DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO DRINK In spite of everything I’ve said here, you actually don’t have to drink your way through freshers’ week. Some of the better nights I had in freshers’ week are the ones where I stayed in, took it easy and actually got to know the people in my college while I was stone cold sober.

It’s all about what you’re comfortable with. If you’re the kind of person that wants to go wild every night of freshers week, go nuts! If you want to stay in and bond with your new friends over mugs of hot chocolate, you do it! If you want to alternate the two, you go! Just be safe, be yourself and try not to look too haggard in the matriculation photo and it will all be fine.

18 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

Eddie Spence Opinion Editor

Fresher’s week has come again and for most second years (such as myself) it’s a time to reminisce about all the mistakes you made, all the arseholes you put up with and all of the shitty JCR events you were semi-obliged to attend. The clamour for any kind of friend you could find, the nicer more open person you pretended to be to that end - they’re all now relics of that seemingly distant week we remember as being ‘a bit weird’.

Don’t let me make you feel nervous, after all, at the time I thought it was a fun, if bewildering, experience.

Naturally there’s plenty I regret, mistakes I have - for the most part - been able to mitigate. Unfortunately, a string of minor errors lead to something of a branding,

a permanent tag, perhaps only to be removed at graduation (like some kind of academic under house arrest). I was the ‘pretentious prick with the headphones’.

Not to worry, though, you’ll meet people at your college who enjoy music just as much as you do (unless you’re at Peterhouse, the Vatican City of Cambridge colleges) and undoubtedly the moment you realise that you’re both ‘one of those types’ will be a bonding moment. The thing is, shocking as it may sound, not everyone wants to discuss your eclectic and broad love of the auditory arts. You shouldn’t be confused when they haven’t heard the B sides, or don’t own the album, or just like that one song that’s actually a cover (although that one still irks me). Not everyone will understand your need to genrelabel every minute of your records and if you keep going on about that lovely little ‘post-dub hardcore’ track you found in the recesses of YouTube then, well, people might not like you.

You see, there’s a school of thought (shared by everyone) that the overzealous music kid isn’t really interesting at all, in fact, he’s a little boring on the surface. Perhaps his contemptuous little intrusions on the pre-drinks playlist (with something he has secretly deemed ‘accessible’ enough for the unenlightened folk around him) are a little cry for attention. His new found hatred of grime is a natural flair of his contrived contrarian nature, while

the posters decking his room (bought a week before arriving off RedBubble) are just his attempt to show you the real (read:not real) side of him.

Part of me thinks this develops out of a kind of fear of the great new unknown of university. This year, returning to the friends I left last June, in the university I love, it’s hard for me to empathise with the whole first day of school type paranoia that unless you fill some kind of stereotype, or rather have something that is yours, you’ll be left alone as the boring middle class kid you really are. You may think a heart-on-sleeve passion for the most obscure music you can dig up will give you something to be known by, something maybe even to be respected for, but sadly, it won’t. You’d be better off just chilling out, and maybe not being such dick about the difference between house and techno.

Again, I stress, don’t feel paranoid about that fact. After all, you can still discuss music with your normie friends.

Although they might not want to hear about the three separate waves of post-rock (google it), they’ll probably be happy to listen to a few gentler recommendations, so long as you don’t rubbish Beyonce. Maybe when you’re prepping for a club visit, it might be best to step away from the AUX chord, and its probably advantageous to at least pretend like you’re enjoying Cindies (even if it’s gnawing at your soul like some wild, blue WKD-fuelled rodent). Whatever happens, just be nice. You can reveal your power level in Pub Quiz music round.

HOW TO GET ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR BEDDER

Alice Cattley Chief Features Writer

IF I were a Disney character, I’d be Filthy –

you know, the 8th dwarf in Snow White who never actually makes it onscreen because he blockades himself into his room under a pile of shit. The majority of my life has been spent trying to keep people out of my own personal landfill site at all costs, but then I started uni, and quickly realised that the technique I’d used as a child to put off my parents’ cleaner – playing ghost noises from my computer in the hope that she would be too afraid to open the door – wouldn’t exactly fly with my bedder.

This is unsurprising. Anyone who regularly inspects the bedrooms of students will have encountered things far scarier, and probably more covered in ectoplasm, than ghosts.

For those who don’t know, ‘bedder’ is short for ‘bedmaker’, and yes, some do indeed make your bed for you. This can include changing your sheets once a week if you opt for college bedding, a decision which involves balancing an inflated sense of privilege against the indignity of a duvet cover which has clearly been designed so as to disguise as many stains as possible.

But the role your bedder plays in your student life can involve far more than sorting your linen, emptying your bins and providing a reason not to leave uneaten food on your floor. (If you’d like another reason, I can tell you from experience that people are unlikely to find the act

of stepping in a bowl of pesto courgetti you’ve left beside the bed an effective aphrodisiac). From somebody who learnt the hard way, here are a number of tips you can follow to make sure that your relationship with your bedder doesn’t turn sour. Spoiler: they basically involve having some basic human decency. I know, it’s hard.

FAMILIARISE YOURSELF WITH YOUR BEDDER’S ROUTINE How often your bedder comes will depend on your college. At Trinity, for example, it’s every weekday; at John’s, three days a week, and at Newnham, never. (Don’t complain, ladies – it means that at least once a term you’re guaranteed to touch a male in college, even if he is just Henry the Hoover). Knowing when your bedder is likely to knock on your door increases the chances that both you and your room will be presentable when they arrive. In theory. However, if you’re not the sort of superhuman who bleeds Cillit Bang and owns the exact same number of hangers as clothes, you might also want to do the following, just in case…

IDENTIFY AN EMERGENCY HIDING PLACE Tragic but true: no matter how many times you go to Sunday Life and realise that Schopenhauer was actually talking about the club when he said that “life is a constant process of dying”, you will still find yourself there every week, valiantly chugging a rainbow of VKs. If you make it to your Monday 9am, you’re a better

person than me (or maybe you’re just a Natsci). I’ve lost count of the number of mornings I’ve regained partial consciousness to the sound of my bedder outside the door and the sight of a room not yet recovered from last night’s pres, on top of a weekend of unmonitored mess.

The - albeit short-term* - solution? Bundle the debris under the bed, into the wardrobe, or out the window. If you’re lucky enough to have an en suite, shove it all in there. This is doubly effective as you can then lock the door, turn on the shower and hide alongside it. *guaranteed to become long-term MAKE CONVERSATION Chatting to your bedder is vital in showing them that you’re more than just a messy room; you’re a total mess, full-stop. While most of us see uni as a chance to reinvent ourselves, and will do anything – at least for the first few weeks of term – to convince our supervisors, and anybody we’re trying to con into being our friend, that we’ve got things sorted, bedders are not so easy to fool. After all, they’ve witnessed the aftermath of one too many all-nighters, and can see that your laundry pile is fast overtaking the Empire State Building.

Embrace the fact that your bedder is one of the few people at Cambridge who doesn’t know or mind about your academic performance. While pastoral care isn’t in their job description, it’s reassuring to know that they’ll offer sympathy rather than an essay extension if they find out you’ve made yourself ill.

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PATRONISING NOTES FOR FRESHERS Joseph Spencer Editor-in-Chief, Easter 2016 JOSEPH Spencer is a former Co-Editor of the

Tab who spent four years at Cambridge and graduated last summer. He is unemployed.

Despite the fetishisation of subtlety in academic essays, Cambridge students do tend to be quite hasty to assign aspects of their university experience entirely positive and negative characteristics. Nuance is lost. Here is a list correcting some commonly held positive and negative misconceptions about Cambridge institutions that are regularly seen as either impressive or underwhelming so that you can appreciate or denigrate more fairly.

UNDERRATED LIFE (Kuda) The beautiful place Currently known to some young radicals as ‘Kuda’, back in the halcyon days of my own fresherdom it was called ‘The Place’, known to everyone as Life, and attended religiously on Sundays and occasional Thursdays. You’ll meet many a Cantab who’ll sneer at the sweat-ridden underground cesspit, or point out, correctly, that it must be one of the few nightclubs outside of the City of London where a large proportion of the clients attend in ties. Life is regularly listed on the The Tab as one of Cambridge’s least cool nightclubs, and this from a less than stellar lineup.

It’s underrated, however, because it’s just so much fun.

There’s marginally better music than Cindies, with a smoking alley that doesn’t fence you in, not nearly as much irritating edginess as Fez and last - but certainly not least - significantly less risk of suffering actual violence at the hands of the bouncers than certain other establishments in Cambridge I could mention.

Try and abandon your scepticism, or at least, pretend to go ironically, and dance the night away with some well

chosen Long Island Iced Teas. You may find that you’ll have a much more enjoyable evening than if you spend your time in the queue to Fez and on a weekend’s hike out to Junction drugged up to your eyeballs.

your behalf three times a day becomes clear. Hail to the Buttery!

Whatever you do, don’t try to tell me that the Hawaiian theme of Lola’s is less tacky.

TRINITY COLLEGE

SMALLER COLLEGES They’re a strange breed, the students of smaller colleges, less mocked than pitied. Not for them the half smiles on most Cambridge students when someone introduces themselves as being at Girton or Robinson. No, Corpus, Magdalene and Peterhouse elicit a certain curiosity. Of course, they seem nice enough, but who actually imagines they’d want to go there? Au contraire, my fresher friend, these colleges are great. I have friends at all of them and I can attest that they are convivial, friendly, well-located, and possessing a certain charm that the overbearing buildings and bolshevism of King’s completely lack. Yes, if you want to play nonfootball team sports you may have to combine with another college. And yes, it sounds a bit claustrophobic at times.

But make sure to do an extracurricular outside of the college itself and you’ll be fine.

OVERRATED

Yes, I know they’re richer than Branson or something, their alumni list is about as impressive as the rest of the university as a whole, and their accommodation is spacious and luxurious. That’s all irrelevant if your college lacks a soul. It’s too big, both in size and in number of students. One of the great advantages of the college system is you can realistically know nearly everyone in your year. Not really possible at Trinity.

Even if you did it’d take you half your limited Cambridge days to wander between them all. The result is a notable lack of spirit except a sort of bizarre smugness about the results of their Mathematical introverts and a wealth that is entirely unearned. To my mind they never really completely shook off the association with Kim Philby, the Cambridge Five, and the resultant slight whiff of treason.

LEAVING CAMBRIDGE WITH A BLUE, A FIRST OR A WIFE (OR HUSBAND) You won’t go far in Cambridge without being told, half-seriously, that your time here will go wasted if you haven’t achieved one of these feats before you leave.

Utter codswallop. Look at me, I achieved none of these things, and while I may be chubby, unemployed, and alone I still feel perfectly jovial in the morning.

On a serious note, though, kudos to those physical, mental, and charisma athletes who do get there, but most don’t. Too many people in this town have been made miserable pushing themselves too hard and not enjoying the ride.

COLLEGE BUTTERIES

ROWING

Back in the real world, many seemingly functioning adults are forced to spend literally hours of their day engaged in the preparation - yes, preparation - of food for eating. Sitting forlornly well beneath Formal Hall in the average Cambridge student’s favourite quirks of Cambridge life is the three meals a day drudgery of the buttery. You will inevitably complain about the standard of the sausages or the Ottolenghi obsession of your college’s head chef (I went to Pembroke) but once you take a step back, or leave, the true luxury of having usually reasonably priced and edible food prepared on

“Everyone needs to try it just once.” No, you don’t. Don’t risk being ensnared and don’t give in to peer pressure.

Develop your understanding of bumps and coxes enough to cheer and booze on Boat Race day and to keep up with the conversations rowers will have. You’re going to be subject to these conversations whether you row or not, so you might as well be able to follow them.

A SOCIALIST WORLDVIEW Come on guys, Corbyn is so 1980s.

20 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

Ben Brown Cartoonist

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CASH GRAB SUCCESS:

CAMBRIDGE HAS ITS MOST SUCCESSFUL FUNDRAISING YEAR EVER

Rhiannon Shaw Opinion Editor I’VE never liked cycling. For me, it calls to

mind obnoxious middle-class dads in lycra, or grubby teenagers doing stunts at skate park.

Where I’m from, cycling is reserved for times when you don’t actually have to go anywhere.

You might have a bike in the garage, but you only use it to pootle around the cul-de-sac or go on a family outing, where literally the only thing you were doing was cycling. In most places, it just isn’t the done thing.

In fact, by the time I arrived at uni, I hadn’t ridden a bike for years. I’d outgrown the one I got for Christmas when I was 9, and had no intention of replacing it. Cambridge is so small that hopping on a bike for a ten minute ride each day seemed an unnecessary luxury.

I didn’t intend to become one of them. I wanted to just walk, and, surely, that should have been possible. It only takes you twenty minutes to get anywhere in this city, and that’s coming from a 5ft woman with stubby legs.

So I arrived, bike-less, and, I thought, free.

Shani Wijetilaka | Editor-in-Chief cobbled lanes are not made for people going any faster than the walking speed of a doddery old don. Orgasm Bridge is case in point. There are too many tourists and too many fucking maniacs who think they own the road. I’ve heard of crashes and I am honestly surprised I haven’t seen one – or caused one, by overestimating the capacity of other cyclists to move the fuck out of the way. Yeah, I’m getting angry, but maybe that’s just another symptom of the cyclist problem.

One classic experience with a cyclist occurred while I walking down Sidney Street, towards Pat Val (if you can guess already where I’m going with this). A chap on a bike seemed to be wilfully going away from Pat Val, in what is quite evidently a one-way system. An elderly man spotted this cyclist’s mistake, and said, gently:

A sea of rubber and woven baskets ‘Fuck off and shut the fuck up you fucking cuntfuck.’

The bicyclist replied, disappearing off into the night.

So I gave in and accepted my fate. If I wanted to be a real student, I needed to travel like one.

I sympathise with both of them. It is crap having to go around the back ways just to get to the station. It’s really hard to walk to Sainsbury’s when some twat seems keen on cycling over your face. But encounters like this wouldn’t happen every day if we just admitted to ourselves that cycling in Cambridge is not the great romantic thing that everyone’s worked it up to be. It’s actually a bit shit.

But the thing is, Cambridge is not built for bikes. The tiny

The VC announced that Cambridge raised more than £200m in a single financial year, thanking “the generosity of our alumni and supporters”. This brings the total raised so far in the ‘Dear World, Yours Cambridge’ fundraising campaign to £742.8m. The campaign, which aims to raise a staggering £2 billion, was launched in 2015 with a gala dinner, complete with light show, fireworks and over a hundred specially selected student ‘hosts’. Guests included Sir Ian McKellen, Sir David Attenborough, Bill Gates Senior and Stephen Hawking.

‘Careful, it’s a one-way system!’

How wrong I was. I was struggling to control my panic when I noted that every single car had parked up at accommodation with a fucking bike attached.

Neighbours chattered about cycling to lectures together, while I was stuck with a handful of other Billy No-Bikes, setting off for Sidgwick fifteen minutes before anyone else and arriving back fifteen minutes later. And everyone looked so cool. I wanted to do that thing where you stood on one pedal and swerved into the bike racks. I wanted to stow my notes in a woven basket. I wanted to be a cyclist. Within two days, I was at the Bike Man haggling for a discount on a preppy little number with a square basket and a cute little bell thrown in.

This peer pressure to buy a bike perpetuates the idea that Cambridge is made for them. It suggests that we’re all meant to be able to get from the UL to Midsummer Common in five minutes. This university not only expects you to learn quickly, but to be able to transport yourself from place to place at superhuman speeds.

VICE CHANCELLOR SIR LESZEK BORYSIEWICZ – probably the most important person in the University who students have never heard of - has given his final speech to Cambridge.

While this was undeniably the best thing I’ve overheard in all my days, it does beg the question: Who is the real ‘fucking cuntfuck’? The pedantic pedestrian, seeking safe passage? Or the brazen cyclist, whose disregard for the rules of the road will end in, at worst, a terrible accident involving many innocent people and, at best, a terrible accident involving a ciswhite male drinking society? While drivers and pedestrians are traditionally at loggerheads, the addition of a third party only makes things more complicated, and more cuntfucky.

Plus, boys, I hear it lowers your sperm count.

Turning to Brexit, which he vocally opposed, Sir Leszek said the outcome was “certainly not the one that I think would have been best for the University”.

However, he emphasised the importance of continuing to engage with the world beyond the UK and “seek the opportunities that arise from [it]”.

“Our commitment to Europe runs deeper than our access to research funding, or even the essential issue of student and staff mobility. It is a commitment to a shared cultural and intellectual heritage, of which we are firmly a part. On this subject, the University has a duty of leadership that it will not abandon.”

He also praised Cambridge’s “ability to translate academic influence into global leadership and influence” and said the University takes “strength from our commitment to contributing to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.”

The VC finished his speech by praising the “global community of inquisitive and creative men and women – from freshers, to professors, to our enthusiastic and committed alumni across the world” and said “I will never cease to feel that Cambridge is where I belong”.

If approved by the Regent House the new Vice Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, will become the 364th person to take the job on 1 October 2017. The Canadian legal academic is currently the Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

THE UNIVERSAL TRUTH OF SUBJECT STEREOTYPES

22 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

RUNNING FOR

Eddie Spence Opinion Editor

Josh Ellis Tab TV Contributor IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

“Its better to have run and lost than never run at all” – Tennyson, if he was a not-so-good Olympic sprinter.

There was a time when I thought I might like to enter politics. Spend a day at the Union and you will realise that you are not alone in holding such ambitions.

The Union still professes to be at the heart of student politics, and to be honest it is. And for that, you will still find a self-selecting group of Cambridge students at its helm. Moreover, as with all things student politic-ey, the Union has a much darker and uglier side – one that rears its head at election time.

At the end of every term, the Union holds and for its five most senior positions: President, Executive Officer, Speakers Officer, Treasurer and Social Events Officer.

These elections are big news for some, and utterly irrelevant for most. But for the few who obsess over Tab BNOC competitions and the like, the penultimate week of term is a time of pomp, politics and pseudopopularity.

So how did a fresh-faced boy come to care so much about something that so many consider trivial? A good place to pick up the story is Lent last year when I was the Union’s Speakers Officer. Thinking back to my time as Speakers Officer, there are standout memories which will always make me smile. Two that come to mind are Calvin Klein doodling on my underwear (a story for another time) and seeing the chamber come alive with laughter as Stephen Merchant recounted tales of his failed exploits with women.

To me, those experiences are what the Union is all about and made running for President so important to me. To have known that our hard work helped create these fantastic experiences for our members was an incredible feeling. It was like a drug, and I wanted more.

By this time, I had also spent a great deal of time in the building, but for all its greatness I saw areas of improvement that needed addressing. And so my motivations for running for President were born. I had a vision for the Union, a direction I wanted to take it.

But I was also not ready for this chapter in my life to end. On reflection, this was the probably the hardest part of losing; I felt the book had been closed before I’d had chance to finish the story.

One of the greatest challenges of running for President is that you will most likely be running against people you know well. For me, this even made my decision to run a very difficult one. It goes without saying that in any race there’s a winner and a loser. But time and time again, in Union presidential elections, that ugly head has come between friendships.

A wander down Cambridge elections of yesteryear just shows how vitriolic they can be. Think cocaine scandal, vote manipulation, exchange of sexual favours etc. But many euphemistic coffee dates later, the idea of running against close friends had been reconciled by week 5 and the campaign trail began, albeit in earnest. Trying to balance a Presidential race and meet supervision deadlines was just another hurdle on what often seemed more of a long trudge and so thoughts of the election, while ever present, were put temporarily to the side.

The ban on campaigning until the Friday before the election helped to keep this ever-present yearning

subdued – for a little while at least. But when that Friday came… nothing happened. It was all rather anti-climatic. Yet a peculiar tension existed: who would crack under the pressure and be the first to put up their Facebook event? It was a game of chicken and I ended up clucking first.

A tactical move I told myself. Immediately after an event at the Union with Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), I published a video I am still proud of to this day.

Imagine Star Wars text scrolling, panning to a picture of my manifesto and me. Very Wow. Very Professional.

And with that came my Facebook event.

That week was exciting. A girl in the queue for life shouted “OMG it’s Josh Ellis!” A big moment in my life.

But describing the election day itself as stressful would be an understatement. I’m not the anxious sort, but for a whole day I didn’t think about food, or about work, or about anything else except the election, the Union and presidency. But disaster soon struck. By lunchtime I had been temporarily blocked from sending messages because Facebook thought they were spam, and by the early afternoon I couldn’t even log into my account.

I was distraught. I remember sitting in my room staring at my computer. I had no alternative plan. The unexpected had happened and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. In hindsight it probably didn’t make all that much difference, but at the time I felt powerless.

An election, which I had planned so meticulously, was slipping from grasp.

And after all those hours, it wasn’t meant to be. I wish Asia every success in her term as President. Running for President was an incredible experience. And losing was all part and parcel of that. Sir Vince Cable apparently lost five of his union elections before finally being elected (or so I’ve been told). Even the great Obama lost an Illinois Democratic primary in 2000. Fuck the cliché, but I saw who my true friends were and grew as a person as a result of the experience.

The support and help I received from friends: in the lead up to the election; during the campaign; on election day itself; and in losing will stay with me forever. An election is a lonely business, but its loyalty and friendship in the truest sense that made running worth it.

If University teaches you anything, it is that stereotypes, whether cultural or sexual, are laughably false. Whilst Fresher’s week is bewildering for a number of reasons, no aspect was more shocking for me than finding myself surrounded by people of such an incredible variety of backgrounds (given I’d basically never had a friend outside the southern half of Manchester). Quickly you realise that all those things you secretly thought might be at least a little bit true about Southerners, or Americans, or whatever disparate culture your neighbour has inherited, aren’t.

Despite the incoherent rantings of my Grandad, foreigners weren’t exclusively evil people and Londoners didn’t hate me for my Mancunian roots (apparently the hate stemmed from my shitty personality) . Most people it seems can’t be grouped with character traits on the basis of background or sex (shock horror) and usually you have to take a second to observe a person before deciding if they were a twat or not (at times longer than I gave…)

So stereotypes aren’t true, yay! Now presumably we can all sing kumbayah ‘round the fire till all the nasty things like prejudice and the deficit are gone. Well, sadly not, for one particular set of stereotypes does seem to have a strong empirical basis in reality. You’ll joke about them on first meeting people (because really, who has the No-one in this photo studies humanities

conversational skills to talk about anything other than their subject or home town?) but oddly won’t credit their existence as much as you may others.

Yet as the year goes on you’ll come to realise that they are so unbelievably true that you begin questioning the lovely liberal dogma you managed to develop about everything in your first few weeks. As the headline of the article evidently gives away, I talk of course, about subject stereotypes.

Architects are invariably hip, engineers socially awkward, medics almost cultish in their cohesiveness.

English students are naïve rural kids, art historians went to boarding school and mathmos while making up 10% of the undergraduate base seem to represent 0.001% of the people you see in clubs. These all ring so disturbingly true you’ll start questioning whether your entire uni experience is but a figment of your imagination, the dream of a brain in a jar being fed antibiotics by some mad scientist (which seems to conform to every assumption you made about NatScis anyway).

If the Tab’s pornography and sex surveys taught us anything it’s that Land Economists have libidos larger than their projected earnings, and the Divinity department has a pretty massive guilt complex. Oh, and that scientists, mathmos and engineers aren’t getting any, but who really needed the survey to work that one out?

LAND ECONOMISTS HAVE LIBIDOS LARGER THAN THEIR PROJECTED EARNINGS Now that’s not to say that every single member of your fresher cohort will conform to some set of pre-packaged characteristics, and indeed if you searched hard enough you might find a theologian who is actually interested in the subject (honestly what is that acceptance rate?).

Some people seem born to defy every presupposition you could make: the female engineer or the HSPSer without 15 committee positions.

I secretly envision myself as some kind of anti NatSci, maybe because I can string a sentence together, but probably because the bleak image of the lab coated unic isn’t exactly a sexy thing to aspire to. Plenty of me still conforms to the sad little physicist tradition: the social awkwardness, the long hours, the caffeine dependence, and as much as it pains me there really is no point in trying to escape the cosy little box your subject confines you to.

Maybe it’s best just to accept it: to an extent, your subject defines who you are. It might not be genetic, but really, there is no point in rebellion. Embrace the little quirks your course will instill in you, take the comments lightly and enjoy the fact that you aren’t a mathmo.

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

Oliver Yeates Editor-in-chief

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YOU LITERALLY DON’T HAVE TO BE

FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T LIKE SOCIAL interaction is our greatest source of

hypocrisy. We moan about the people we party with, we swoon over the people that bore us and we smile at those who make us cringe.

The cracks in social peace are cemented with this hypocrisy, and I dream of a world where Miley Cyrus swings in on her wrecking ball and smashes those cracks wide-fucking-open.

I was watching a video which showed someone spill a load of jelly beans onto a table as a symbol of life. Half of the beans are swept away to show the time we spend asleep, some more for our careers, the time we spend on the toilet and so on. When they got to the last remaining few beans, I realised just how little time we have to ourselves. And in God’s name why - I thought - do we spend it on people we don’t like? Let’s call this my egostential crisis of the summer.

Instead of watching my life ebb away one precious jelly bean at a time, I aspire to a state of being matched only

by Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music - gliding across the Alps with open arms, basking in the glory of all the fucks she doesn’t give.

“I ASPIRE TO A STATE OF BEING MATCHED ONLY BY JULIE ANDREWS IN THE SOUND OF MUSIC - GLIDING ACROSS THE ALPS WITH OPEN ARMS, BASKING IN THE GLORY OF ALL THE FUCKS SHE DOESN’T GIVE.” We wouldn’t order bad food off a menu, pick a dull film at the cinema or wear a sloppy outfit. So why do we do compromise with people? Ah. Yes. We live with them, study with them, work with them. A slight hitch.

But the hypocrisy is infuriating when girls defend misogynist “lads” because “they’re actually really nice when they’re not objectifying you”. Uh huh. I’d tell you how illogical that is but I wouldn’t want to mansplain.

And there’s nothing that confirms a person’s dullness more than a mutual friend having to insist “oh they’re actually really funny” for the twentieth time. Sigh. I’d rather flick my jelly beans at you then share them.

We’ve gone from brazenly uninviting each other from our birthday parties in the playground to cowering behind Twitter fights or a picket line. We’ve gone from

happily thinking “urgh as if I’m sending that bitch a chicken on FarmVille” to “oh sureeee she can join us for coffee” and wincing “long time no see” to the strays from school. Turn to the proverbial sarcasm of Regina George, and you get the gist: “I love your skirt where did you get it?” Is this what the world is destined for?

A never ending abyss of empty tones of intrigue? Fake upward-inflexions on the end of every sentence so that everything sounds like a question when we talk to people?

Alcohol is the ultimate saboteur. A bottle of Sainsbury’s Basics vino down and two shots of regret later your defences are out the window. Kinda like how your body tells you the PE-teacher fit guy turns into a regular fit guy at around 3am. This happens with people too. The “I’d rather swap anecdotes with my toe than talk to her” girl becomes the “yeh let’s pose for hilarious snapchat filters together” girl.

Don’t get me wrong, a little bitching here or there is fun - a girl’s gotta eat. But it doesn’t make it any less exhausting when so-and-so swans over and nasally asks how I’m doin’, to which I grimace back and ask the same. We both hate it. It’s not subtle. Lest we forget the jelly beans people.

Now I’m not saying we should be outright rude to people we don’t like - I said I wouldn’t send them a chicken, not that I blocked them as my neighbour all together, jeez. A sour tone or blatant insults are about as helpful as a dildo for a nun - you’ll lose friends and make things awkward.

It’s all about striking the Goldilocks balance between J’amie Private School girl and any passive wet Michael Cera character. Balance is the key to any successful bitch. Well, pseudo-bitch to keep things that extra bit faux-friendly. Maybe think less eye roll, more just blank and bored gaze. It paints the same picture. It’s tricky knocking on the social-Pandora’s box while at the same time trying to keep peace.

But this isn’t a code that needs cracking people. I may be going out on a limb here ... but ... if you don’t like someone ... then ... wait for it … don’t waste your energy on them! Phew. I said it. Groundbreaking.

So was this a useful life hack? Almost certainly not.

You’ll all go on being fake to people you don’t like as soon as you’ve finished reading. Hell I’m guilty of it too.

I just dream of a world filled with gliding Julie Andrews memes and time to ourselves to feast on the remains of our oh-so-precious jelly beans.

24 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

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26 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

FREUD WOULD HAVE A FIT AT THE MODERN COLLEGE FAMILY Hannah Dawson Deputy Editor Incest is so not the best.

You’ve arrived in Cambridge all freshfaced and eager and are suddenly bombarded with what appears to be an entirely different dialect.

If you’re woeful about how to wear your gown, lusting after a good night out that won’t be provided by Sunday Life, and wondering what the fuck a college family is, fear not. The Tab is here to help.

Fortunately for you, years of past college family experience and unfortunate stories have enabled us to demonstrate how to keep the family flame alive (HINT: do not sleep with your parents.)

Freud would have a field day...

FACEBOOK STALKING You start with the simplest and most innocent of encounters: The Facebook stalk. You will have received over the summer a letter, likely featuring an embarrassing club photo of your new college parents beaming at you. To begin with you just want to see what they look like, maybe get a hint of what Cambridge life is like. But before too long you have accidentally liked a picture of them from six years ago on their ex-girlfriend’s profile and humiliated yourself way before Freshers has even begun.

INTERMARRIAGE What harm can marrying your college brother do? You get along, everyone else is getting married, you need to find a spouse pronto. But unless you want a family tree more intertwined than that of the Royal Family, avoid at all costs. Before long you will find that not only your brother is your husband, but your mother and father are cousins, your college parents are lost lost relatives, and your poor children are traumatised.

If you want to avoid looking like unfortunate Charles II of Spain, try to keep it outside of the family...

FAMILY DINNER A college family dinner will likely be your first encounter with the culinary delights of Cambridge’s swap restaurants. Whether you experience the vomitinducing Curry King dinner, or the seedy and salacious side of Sesame, family dinner presents the perfect opportunity for embarrassment. Prepare to be pennied and down a bottle of wine: you will likely end up throwing up everything you eat anyway. But be aware - down your bottle only after fines have been completed. If not you may find yourself admitting to things best kept in your repressed memory or, even worse, creating fodder for fines in the future.

INCEST If anything is more taboo than intermarriage, it is incest. What may seem like harmless flirting across a bottle of rosé in Mai Thai could turn into quite the story to tell the children, and has the potential to turn into a complicated web which even Greek mythologists would be ashamed of. Worse than this is boasting that you ‘fucked your sister’ last night. You think you’re funny but really it just shows your failure to get with girls under normal circumstances.

Oedipus is judging you DIVORCE Unlike a Kardashian marriage, college marriages are for life. Splitting up with your spouse two days into supposed matrimonial bliss can cause college chaos.

Who is married to whom? Is there a long long line of ex wives trailing in an individual’s wake? Don’t get yourself a reputation as a fickle fiend.

Therefore freshers, woo to your hearts content. Find your spouse and soon enough you will be having kids of your own, but remember: what happens in the family does not stay within the family: incest gossip spreads like wildfire.

QUITE a different society to its previous incarnation—known as Cambridge Futures and, before that, the Industrial Society—Andy Quach, Co-President of the Guild, has high ambitions. ‘The careers scene at Cambridge hasn’t been in great shape’, he says. ‘Careers are an undeniable part of uni life at Cambridge, but far less so than at other unis where business, careers and other such societies are bigger and more active. Their whole point is to offer something the Careers Service can’t—to add careers to the social scene. It sounds and is obvious that a society is something far more engaging and inclusive than a service, but Cambridge really lacked anything other than Law Soc in this regard.

‘I heard that universities from Exeter to Oxford call some of their biggest societies ‘guilds’—ones that are more institutions than student clubs, engaging thousands of members on campus and also interacting with the real-world. It’s that kind of engagement which a Cambridge business society could easily aspire to and that’s what we’ve worked towards. Social events, social media and so on are simple things that will engage students.’

And engagement is a problem in Cambridge. With packed timetables, it takes more than just a mailing list to get Cantabs to go to careers events, however important they might be. The Careers Service has even said that it is most used after midnight; Cantabs have less time to take pesky preliminary tests and prepare for job interviews than students at other unis. According to its director, Gordon Chesterman, ‘Cambridge graduates perform very well in job interviews, however they are often turned down in the initial stages due to applications which are full of errors’.

How far the Guild’s new form goes to change this will be watched closely by students, companies and the Careers Service alike.

Sign-up to its mailing list and Facebook to keep up-to-date with its events. The Guild is accepting applications for its general committee. All years may apply, and positions will be discussed at interview. To apply, email your CV to: president@thecambridgeguild.com

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IF THE Union excites with its promise of ’hosting your heroes’, the Guild sets its sights not on stardom, but on ‘hosting your future employer’. This year it has delivered a lineup of the usual landmarks from the corporate world, as well some more ’off-piece’ surprises. Time will tell if they appeal.

In its biggest year for some time, the half-century-old student-run careers society has spent the last year rebranding itself to the Guild and the work appears to have paid off with a 2016-17 line-up of over a dozen partners spanning the graduate careers spectrum.

The traditional heavyweights of Cambridge graduate recruitment—law and finance firms—are all represented. The likes of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Hogan Lovells make an appearance. Sponsoring the Guild on the professional services and accountancy front, there is PwC. But sticking out are some of the other signings—not just the hitherto elusive Boston Consulting Group, but two Fortune 500 giants, Mars Inc and Jardine Matheson, both with world-beating man-

agement training schemes. They appear for the first-time in a big way on the Cambridge careers scene. There will also be events held by Education First, the world leader in international education. With Brexit, the Guild’s decision to push the bounds of the careers scene beyond the City and UK companies is of note.

Designed to provide an alternative to the corporate mundanity of the milk round, the Guild claims that it has taken to thoroughly ‘modernising’ the careers scene at Cambridge and has lined-up ‘career’ events that are actually interesting. Accenture, the Guild’s sponsor in the consulting sector, will be sending along a panel of partners to discuss the Economist’s ‘to the brainy, the riches’ article, which contends that in an increasingly complicated world (yes, cue cliché) demand for clever consultants is booming. Meanwhile, expect insight into whether law, accountancy and other professional services will be partly mechanised in the near future, as robotics encroaches into traditional middle-class jobs.

If consulting is on the rise against the much-maligned investment banks, the Guild is planning a debate on this

topic. The Financial Times has argued that the end of ’super-profitable’ banking is upon us, but the industry is unlikely to be stripped of its title as the most prestigious high-paying career path any time soon. Citigroup is the Guild’s leading sponsor from the financial sector, while Goldman Sachs and (now most valuable bank globally) J.P. Morgan are also in the roster.

Swiss bank UBS is a further partner.

Alternative asset managers BlackRock are also sponsoring the Guild this year, so expect a widening of horizons even within finance.

Of note is Theresa May’s recent visit to New York, during which she discussed Brexit with them.

On the social side, the new look

Guild first reared its head back in May Week with the ChariTea Garden Party.

As for the coming term, tickets will be released shortly for the Guild Ball, held in London at an ‘ritzy’ venue. Members of its sister societies—the LSE and Oxford Guilds—are all invited, so they warn that tickets are quite limited. Freshers will be able to compare notes with their counterparts at the Other Place.

On that note, the Oxford Guild has made its twice-termly ‘champagne social’ famous, and the format will be coming to Cambridge too.

Other events in the pipeline soon to be confirmed include an application workshop, lunch with BCG, and a taste of careers in the Far East at an event with Hong Kong-based conglomerate Jardine Matheson.

27

28 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

CUSU? CU-WHO

Boris Marx Contributor The latest political correctness fad - that hiring students from top universities is anti-meritocratic - is gathering a dangerous momentum.

2016 seems to have become the year when it’s trendy to bash top academic institutions. In January, David Cameron accused his alma mater of “not doing enough to attract talent from across our country”. Needless to say, Oxford didn’t take the old Etonian’s advice well.

But this summer the floodgates of political correctness really opened. A mega-sized government report conducted by the Social Mobility Commission slammed the hiring practices of top companies.

Investment banks were singled out for favouring applicants who “wore the right sort of tie”, “avoided brown shoes”, and other stupid things. But the report saved up most of its wrath for attacking an apparently even more anti-meritocratic practice - recruiting “from a handful of elite universities”.

Newspapers of every political persuasion, from the Guardian to the Telegraph, cooed with delight at the report’s damning verdict on Oxbridge. “Working-class kids are being systematically locked out of top jobs in investment banking because they may not attend a small handful of elite universities”, they whinged.

This very dangerously daft diagnosis is based on the fact that the LSEs, Oxbridges, and UCLs of this world “tend to be populated by individuals from more affluent backgrounds”. Basically: Cantabs might be clever, but if it they’re not diverse, you shouldn’t hire them.

The Social Mobility Commission’s proposed solution to the lack of diversity – primarily socio-economic but also ethnic - in top firms is for these employers to actively ignore applicants’ university background.

A number of top law firms have already taken this to heart, imposing “university-blind” hiring policies. One HR officer even told me that, were I to apply to her firm, she wouldn’t find out which university I went to until I had passed through several preliminary rounds of tests and even an interview.

This supposed solution is a classic case of tackling the symptoms of Britain’s skewed education system but not the cause. When David Cameron threatened to create new laws to shame elite universities into improving diversity back in January, Oxford’s admission office shot back that the effects of social inequality were “already pronounced before children begin formal schooling” and could not be addressed by higher education alone.

There is an obvious limit to which Oxbridge can admit disadvantaged pupils whose educational attainment lags behind the rest. Similarly, top companies should not start actively excluding applicants from top universities on the basis they are not sufficiently socially or ethnically diverse.

Because the earlier stages of Britain’s education system are poor, less privileged pupils are left far behind - too far to just catch up in their twenties and waltz into a challenging graduate job. The country performs at a mediocre level in internationally comparable tests.

About one-fifth of the adult population still lacks basic literacy and numeracy skills. If David Cameron was right to highlight the “killer” diversity problem, the medicine he prescribed was wrong.

What’s more, the “ethnicity problem” at elite universities is overblown. To cite one instance of just how outdated perceptions of diversity are at Oxbridge, Cathy Newman, a former City lawyer and leading diversity campaigner, complained that the focus on Oxbridge at her old law firm was excluding BME talent.

“There was an unofficial quota that stipulated 40% of the trainees would come from Oxbridge,” Newman told one industry publication, with the implication that those trainees were more than likely to be white.

A look at the admissions statistics for the 2015 Cambridge cycle reveals a different landscape. An

Shani Wijetilaka |Editor-in-Chief

applicant’s success is not dictated by ethnic background.

28.9% of “white” applicants received offers. Once “ethnic minority” applicants are broken into separate categories, the corresponding figures for Indian and Black Caribbean students were 29.1% and 23.4% respectively. Relative to their share of the population, such groups fare well. There is still significant work to be done, but the suggestion that companies should actively ignore Oxbridge and other top unis in order to find ethnic talent is the kind of kneejerk overreaction that is likely to be counterproductive.

Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Institute notes that only 1% of all UK undergraduates are at Oxford or Cambridge – “you can’t transform society through those two institutions alone.” Widening opportunity in the final stages of a child’s educational development won’t solve much; obsessing over Oxbridge won’t change anything at all. (Nor will grammar schools.) By the time a student is applying to Oxbridge, or for a graduate role, the system is meant to be selective, competitive and – let’s say it – elitist. Whatever the Social Mobility Commission may cry about the background of successful Oxbridge, Imperial, LSE, and UCL graduates, the hard truth is that they’ve been given an education that is second-to-none.

Not every degree is created equal after all, and when the true cost of an Oxbridge degree is estimated to be at least twice that of the tuition fee, it makes sense to prioritise those who have had such world-class training.

In economic terms, it would be mad not to.

But the pragmatists are increasingly rare voices in the wilderness of today’s politically correct discourse.

Indeed, for the pessimists amongst you, the reaction to the SMC report also reflects a more worrying kind of political correctness-one-upmanship. Did you see the all-white protesters at London City Airport the other week, protesting “racist climate change”? There is a remarkable and worrying tendency in Britain and elsewhere to cry wolf, to fire about labels of social injustice – whether racism or elitism – at problems that in fact have very little in common with the perceived injustices.

Climate change is not “racist”. It may disproportionately affect black people in Africa, but that is merely geographical lottery. Giving top jobs to Oxbridge students is not “anti-meritocratic” simply because the recipients are not diverse enough. It has everything to do with “meritocracy”, but very little to do with diversity. In fact, it proves the impossible impractical - demands of meritocracy in the first place.

Inequality is, like geography, something we cannot just wish away. Back in 1693, John Locke pointed out that good citizens are created by good parents. Inequality starts young – high-income parents talk with their school-aged children for three hours more per week than low-income parents. That’s one reason why grammar schools will not solve the educational divide in Britain, by the way.

Meritocracy is a radical ideal. In requiring a constant levelling of the playing field, it is a Sisyphean ideal which can only work if there is extreme interventionism by the state. Its watered-down form is a society that rewards the aspiring, without stipulating that there is any such thing as a level playing field. In other words, getting to Oxbridge is enough to succeed. The dreamy meritocrats from the Social Mobility Commission would rather that not be the case. For them there is no such thing as enough.

While a newly-matriculated fresher - and, let’s be honest, cynical, washed-up finalist - might be forgiven for thinking that CUSU is the famous place where Robert Downey Jnr. made headlines, we’re actually talking about that other union. The Cambridge University Students’ Union: “the university-wide representative body for students at the University of Cambridge”.

CUSU is run by six full-time elected Sabbatical Officers (Sabbs) and assisted by a nameless and faceless team of administrative staff (I’d be more specific but CUSU’s Staff-Student Protocol prevents anyone naming the staff ). Current President Amatey Doku tells me this Sabb team wants to push for accessibility for everyone: “I think one thing that everyone is very keen to do is make sure that Cambridge fits all students.”

For most students CUSU is just there to provide all the free condoms and lube you could ever need. Other than that, the general consensus is that its intrusions are mainly unwelcome and come in the form of onceyearly elections, ever-escalating referenda and the weekly email from Amatey. That said, CUSU does theoretically at least - very much have the power to shape students’ experiences. As the main representation of student body on University Committees, it’s our voice in influencing how the University allocates resources, decides teaching standards and makes a myriad of other decisions that affect students every day.

Representatives of the Women’s, LGBT+, International Students, BME and Disabled Students’ Campaigns vote alongside college JCR and MCR representatives at CUSU Council to mandate what policy the Sabbs implement. CUSU Council, held twice a term, is the main forum for deciding CUSU policy, but is normally poorly publicised and attended and the motions rarely generate debate or dissent.

Accusations that it’s an undemocratic echo-chamber, while exaggerated, contain more than a grain of truth.

To fix the operation of CUSU Council, Amatey has suggested a new committee, made up of a subset of JCR and MCR representatives who will increase the scrutiny of how the Sabbs are implementing CUSU Council Policy, and argues for a “dynamic” approach to policy.

Outgoing President Priscilla Mensah made use of her unprecedented mandate and made a mark on the University, championing the abolition of class lists at CUSU Council. But while CUSU certainly can’t be accused of being ineffective, the class lists issue has brought up another frequent criticism, that it’s out of step with popular opinion. Certainly polls would suggest that the class lists issue is significantly more divisive than CUSU Council’s vote appears to show.

Disaffiliation is to CUSU what confusing traditions are to Cambridge. Concern that the National Union of Students’ newly elected President, Malia Bouattia, made - and then refused to apologise for - anti-Semitic remarks saw Exam Term disrupted by a close-run and occasionally bitter campaign to disaffiliate from the NUS. Despite the pro-affiliation campaign strongly urging Cambridge to reform from within, four months on, it doesn’t seem like much has changed within the NUS. Amatey has promised to challenge the “failings” of the NUS from the inside, noting “it would be highly hypocritical of a students’ union such as CUSU - which has a similar affiliation structure, as it were - to advocate running away”. He floated the idea of drafting policies to take to the NUS, a Cambridge-first, and asked students who were concerned about anti-Semitism at Cambridge to come to CUSU. After the NUS referendum failed, colleges launched collexit campaigns (Pexit, Quexit, to name a few) to disaffiliate from CUSU. Colleges like Caius and Corpus have long been disaffiliated and avoid paying CUSU fees. While they lose their CUSU Council vote, individual students remain affiliated to CUSU and

can use its services. Ultimately, disaffiliation doesn’t really affect students, but is a huge headache for CUSU, depriving them of a much-needed income stream.

For every student that’s irritated with what CUSU does (and there are a quite a few, one anonymous Cantab told us her reaction to CUSU was “Fuck off you bureaucratic dementors”), there are five that are highly apathetic. A survey over the summer put it as the third worst student union in the country, only satisfying 37% of Cantabs. This is partly because CUSU is competing with college JCRs and MCRs in providing services to students but also because CUSU doesn’t have a great record. At anything. Financial management is a great example. Highlights of their past few years of budgetary incompetence include: For the 2015-16 financial year CUSU had a nearly £5000 budget deficit, despite being previously warned that their income projections were unrealistic Last September, CUSU begged the university for an insane £100,000 bailout after they themselves decided to terminate a £40,000 contract for The Guide to Excellence - a book which chronicled the superlative 50-year history of CUSU itself.

In a bid to rescue their budget, CUSU killed off the print edition of The Cambridge Student last year, despite the editorial team offering to take responsibility for finding sponsorship off of CUSU’s hands and alleging that they were being punished for the failings of CUSU staff While Amatey is leading a review into CUSU’s constitution, processes, “everything” this year, it’s not certain how much will change. He’s in charge of a Governance Review which will look “right from the very bottom at how this organisation works”. It’s all up for debate, and he seems eager to get as many students as possible involved. While he defended CUSU’s financial record, arguing that it gets far less funding than most other unions, he did say that the situation is “not impossible, we function well, there’s certainly no mismanagement of any kind”.

But even if the governance review does miraculously reverse years of CUSU backflips and incomprehensible decisions, that’s only one part of what’s contentious about it. The other major headline is its several ‘autonomous’ campaigns, dedicated to the liberation of various marginalised groups within the university.

Nominally uncontrolled by the sabbatical officers, although as trustees of a charity, they have a legal duty to exercise some control, they’re often the cause of CUSU grabbing the headlines.

Revelations last year that female Cambridge students were trading and offering prescription drugs via a WomCam facebook group originally named “CUSU WomCam Self-Care Tips”. Some of the 1000 members on the group - moderated by CUSU’s autonomous Women’s Campaign - were engaged in the dangerous, although not illegal, practice and joked about. While CUSU quickly distanced themselves from the practice, refusing to endorse the practice, questions were raised about the oversight of the five elected officers who were members of the Facebook group.

Other campaigns - against Germaine Greer’s appearance at the Union in early 2015 and David Starkey’s appearance in Cambridge promotional material last November - have also polarised the student body. When asked whether the Sabbs should have more oversight of these campaigns, Amatey was emphatically against it. “Whatever ‘reputational risks’ are associated with [autonomous campaigns], I think CUSU should be in a position that it should back up those campaigns,” he said, as, by definition, the campaigns are likely to be bringing up issues which are “unpopular” with the majority.

Last year, Priscilla was described as “less a politician than a bureaucrat...exactly what CUSU needs”. Under her team’s reign, engagement with CUSU - one measure of satisfaction - did improve. Amatey is an advocate, with an ambitious outlook and a pragmatic view of how to get things done. The new Sabb team is enthusiastic, was elected on platforms with specific policies and seem to be eager to get changes implemented. It remains to be seen whether the relentless Cambridge bureaucracy and fragmented and clashing student views will hold them back. Looking back on how CUSU has handled those challenges in the past, it seems that the best approach is cautious pessimism.

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29

Shani Wijetilaka | Editor-in-Chief AMATEY DOKU PRESIDENT (HSPS, JESUS, MATRICULATED IN 2013) Describe what you do in 10 words?

Leader, Activist, Trustee, Representative, Spokesperson, Negotiator, (wearer of many hats) Three things you want to change about Cambridge?

• Rampant disparity between Colleges • Lack of data on said disparity • The fear of change itself Scariest thing about Cambridge?

• The bureaucracy…

Do you believe in true love?

• It’s most certainly a social construct What is the largest animal you think you could take in a fight?

• I don’t fight. I seek to resolve all disputes through calm debate and deliberation.

Are you gunning for a top position in next term’s BNOC competition? What number are you aiming for?

• Definitely no. 1: why do you think I signed up to do this job?

• 100% *heart eyes emoji* What is the largest animal you think you could take in a fight?

• I was once attacked by a seagull, so anything smaller than that What would your ten-word tinder profile be?

• Searching for bae, unfussy but must be an intersectional feminist

ROBERTA HULDISCH EDUCATION OFFICER (EMMA, MATRICULATED IN 2013) Describe what you do in 10 words?

Making education accessible & excellent for all.

Representing students. COMMITTEES!!

Three things you want to change about Cambridge?

• Make sure all students can access education on equal terms, regardless of, for example, disability or educational background • Feedback on examined work so people can know where they went wrong and how to improve • A more diverse and globally oriented curriculum, and greater integration of teaching and the cuttingedge research happening at Cambridge One word to describe the NUS? • Sigh What is the largest animal you think you could take in a fight?

• A small slug

EIREANN ATTRIDGE ACCESS & FUNDING OFFICER (EDUCATION AND ENGLISH (IT WAS LIT ), HOMERTON, MATRICULATED 2013) Describe what you do in 10 words?

• Encourage people to apply and run the shadowing scheme.

Scariest thing about Cambridge?

• The UL. Favourite place to hide from humanity?

• The CUSU office- no one knows where it is *cries*.

But seriously I keep a blanket in there and everything Would you rather have arms for legs or scissors for hands?

• Eireann Scissorhands

AUDREY SEBATINDIRA (LAW, TRINITY HALL, MATRICULATED 2013) Three things you want to change about Cambridge?

• Lad culture • Student perceptions of and engagement with liberation politics • The lack of gender and racial parity in some of our curricula Do you believe in true love?

JESS WING DISABLED STUDENTS’ OFFICER (ENGLISH, HOMERTON, MATRICULATED 2012) Describe what you do in 10 words?

Finding ways of making life and education at Cambridge universally accessible.

One word to describe the NUS? • Skeptical What is the largest animal you think you could take in a fight?

• Probably one of the Mill Pond cows What would your ten-word tinder profile be?

• I would use three words, and they would be “buy me nando’s”

SOPHIE BUCK WELFARE & RIGHTS OFFICER (PBS, EMMA, MATRICULATED 2013) Describe what you do in 10 words?

Mental and Sexual Health. Liberation groups.

Welfare training. Advice. Representation.

Biggest vice?

• Tinder Do you believe in true love?

• No, but I do believe in free condoms Would you rather have arms for legs or scissors for hands?

• Arms for legs, only if it comes with hands for feet; I need an extra pair of hands.

30 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

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31

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CLUBBING IN THE

BUBBLE

Randeep Kumar Nag Features Editor HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ‘BRIDGE’S STRANGE WORLD OF VKS, CHINOS & CHEESE So you’ve made it. You’re a wizard, Harry. You are now a student at the best university in the country and one of the top universities in the world. An institution backed by tons of history, numerous famous alumni and that wonderful academic rigour that we all hold so dearly in our hearts.

Immerse yourself in the bubble and you will find a lot to love. You’ll meet amazing people, even if you don’t find your best friends straight away in fresher’s week. You’ll quickly adapt to the quirks and strange terminology.

You’ll eventually get used to the workload. But one thing that you’ll come to realise is that the nightlife… leaves a lot to be desired.

Sure, we didn’t come here for the club scene, or lack thereof – that’s for the Oxbridge rejects at Bristol to enjoy while they gurn away their job prospects (at least, that’s what I tell myself as I stare into the abyss in the Cindies smoking area every Wednesday). But try as you might to defend it, it’s not ironic, oxymoronic or any other big word you might throw at it to disguise the fact that really, deep down, we all know it’s a bit shit.

I’m sorry if I’m sounding harsh but I’ll take my loud, repetitive and ever so slightly misogynistic rap bangers (#ballsohard) over the Circle of Life in a club situation any day of the week. Perhaps it’s the Brummie in me, who knows? Still, cheesy as it is, you’ll learn to love the various options that the bubble provides you. These places will be the basis of many drunken memories and regrettable decisions and ultimately it’s the people that make them so enjoyable. Here’s what to expect.

just fine (i.e. falling asleep in lectures, but it’s all part of the experience, right?). Bouncers can be a little gruff when it’s busy and once you’ve inevitably broken the seal after your third VK of the night, expect them to peer into cubicles at regular intervals to make sure you’re not taking any naughty salt. Expect cheesy tunes, relatively cheap drinks and seeing literally everyone you’ve ever met in the smoking area. Oh, and lots of queuing.

FEZ - THURSDAYS, FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS

LIFE - FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS

The other big’un (in Cambridge terms), Sunday Life is another extremely popular club night and just like Cindies the club has an official name that no one uses – the fuck is a “Kuda” anyway? The music is marginally less cheesy and leans towards standard chart stuff - I once heard “Jumpman” at Friday Night Life and subsequently flipped my shit but alas, you’ll be lucky to hear any real bangers. Floors are seemingly permanently sticky and the smoking area is literally just a side alley next to the club. Still, it’s good fun and staff tend to be friendly. It’s also home to Kaleidoscope, the biggest LGBT+ night in Cambridge which is good fun for all despite closing off half of the already pretty tiny dancefloor for no apparent reason.

LOLA LO’S - THURSDAYS

CINDIES - TUESDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS

Don’t be fooled by the “Ballare” (Italian verb meaning “to dance”, how very Cambridge) sign on the outside, that’s the moniker that the ARU plebs and townies use.

Cindies is the biggest club in Cambridge, although that’s not saying much - don’t expect multiple floors or anything ludicrously extravagant like that. Still, Wednesday Cindies is by far the most popular club night in the bubble and you’d be silly not to turn up. Make sure to religiously attend every week in Michaelmas, for you’ll soon learn to adapt to starting the next week (Cambridge weeks start on a Thursday) with a hangover

club of cultural appropriation yet, but its “exotic” theme can make a nice change from the rather mundane main two. Their infamous Jo-Bomb is pretty cheap, especially if you actually remember to bring the loyalty card they force upon you at Fresher’s Fair.

Apparently a “Tiki bar”, this Hawaiian themed club actually has different floors! Downstairs you can expect to hear R&B and chart stuff and upstairs there’s rock anthems and more cheese, as to be expected from Cambridge. The upstairs room is normally absolutely crammed so try not to lose your friends lest you be swallowed into the boogieing mass. The smoking area at the top provides a nice respite from the chaos, although there’s no roof so be prepared for rain and pack a lighter that actually works. I’m surprised no one has accused the

“By music lovers, for music lovers” the website says, and admittedly the music at Fez is a lot better than at any other Cambridge club, playing a mixture of grime, rap and garage bangers. It’s just a shame it’s so dingy inside and once again, expect to be crammed in, especially towards the back. Fez often receives the overspill when other nights are too busy, but it’s perhaps the best musicwise in Cambridge (Turf hipsters might have a bone to pick with me here) and the crowd is generally “wavier” than elsewhere, whatever that actually means. Friday nights are home to Propaganda, the main rock & indie night in Cambridge, although for reasons that continue to baffle me, no one really goes out at the weekend here.

OTHER OPTIONS Pretentious hipsters will love TURF, a house night that takes place a few times a term at venues as far afield as the Junction and attracts a more “edgy” (read: middleclass) crowd. ARCSOC puts on a few events a year that are well worth going to, although there’s always a mad scramble for tickets.

REVOLUTION on Downing Street is a bar but has an interesting shot menu and decent music and everybody’s favourite Spoons (officially The Regal) on St. Andrew’s Street is, well, a Wetherspoons. There’s also Q CLUB, which is never mentioned - probably because it’s so fucking far away on Station Road. And of course, don’t forget about the less obvious options for nights out – college “bops” (essentially school discos) can be good fun if you get plastered enough.

Either way, Cambridge does provide a fair few options for a decent night and while its club scene has been long derided, it becomes an integral part of your experience here, especially in first year. You’ll soon figure out which nights suit your own tastes and in any case, being drunk with your friends in any setting is always a good laugh.

32 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

FRESHER FAILS: AS TOLD BY PORTERS Emily Sellman Contributor

THEY REALLY HAVE SEEN IT ALL Glittering and shining, new-found freedom presents itself to us all as we escape school or possibly our gap year, and delve into the faux reality of ‘adult life’ that is our first year of university.

For some poor fuckers, that’s a bloody big jump.

New pastures can just be a bit too much, too quickly, and we slip up from time to time. That’s alright, but it’d be a shame to miss out on the beguiling anecdotes. So, being the #srsjournalists that we are, it was decided that we should roam the plodge’s of Cambridge to hear some of these tales.

Tales of tears and bodily fluids, stories of horror and entertainment, and really, moments that some will never quite forget. All told by those who had the joys of experiencing some of these moments second-hand.

DOWNING COLLEGE “A common one, is that new students try rowing and come back a bit soggy.”

“The library locks up at 2am, and we have a look round before we shut everything up. Somehow one night a student had managed to fall asleep on the top

of a bookcase and we missed them. They woke up at about 3, avoided the security sensors, climbed out the window and came to the porters lodge. They wanted to be let back in to get their laptop.”

“Rugby guys get naked and do a run around the paddock for initiations. One year a student ran slap bang into a fellow and both ended up on the ground in a heap - it happened to be their DoS.” “A student must have had a gentleman caller, but students need a key to get out of the gates. We had to let this one out ourselves at 3am and they had lost their trousers but were luckily wearing a dinosaur outfit on their top half.”

TRINITY COLLEGE “One student ended up vomiting down the central shaft of some stairs - it was quite a way down, I’d say several flights. Then they locked themselves out. It wasn’t a proud moment.”

“We got called to a young lady’s room as she couldn’t sleep because of a noise complaint. When we arrived we found a young man outside her window. He was serenading her, but had apparently gotten the wrong window. He was pretty adamant about staying until he found the right window.”

SELWYN COLLEGE “We caught two students, in a ... moment of passion.

They’d been playing croquet and it must have gotten them too worked up.”

“I think my favourite one was that someone had ordered a lot of personal items on Amazon which hadn’t quite been packaged correctly. That was an interesting collection.”

FITZWILLIAM COLLEGE “A student came to us quite worried, they’d missed their safety inductions because they’d slept in on the first day. Good start.”

“This has happened many times: a student comes through who has obviously fallen off their bike on the way back from a good night. Hair a mess - sometimes complete with vegetation in it, swaying and bumping into things. We’re glad they got back safe in the end, despite the grazes.”

BONUS: FRESHER SUCCESSES “Lots of homesick students. That’s perfectly okay though, it’s important they can come talk to someone.”

“I like it when people come in for a chat and a cup of tea.”

“We don’t mind so much when people lock themselves out. Even if it’s all the time. It’s what we’re here for.”

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you feel like you’ve messed up. What we’ve learnt is that adapting to a different place can be hard, and that people can be fallible and that’s okay.

Whatever happens, it will most likely make for a great story later on, or a pretty good lesson learnt - take it from the people who know.

THE TAB’S A - Z GUIDE TO CAMBRIDGE THEATRE Dan Edwards Theatre Editor A is for ADC. The heart of Cambridge theatre and the home of the Footlights, the theatre off Jesus Lane hosts some of the biggest and finest productions of the year.

B is for Bar. The ADC Bar to be precise. The location of interval drinks, post-show after parties and musical theatre bar nights, the ADC bar is the centre of the Cambridge theatre social scene.

C is for Camdram. The IMDb of the Cambridge theatre world. The website shows the credits from all those Involved in Cambridge theatre.

D is for Directors. The starting point of any show. The director envisions a show, runs auditions and works closely with actors to realise the production. Any aspiring directors should definitely apply to direct a Fresher show!

E is for Edinburgh. Cambridge dramatic societies send dozens of shows to the Fringe Festival each year, a must-do for any keen thespian.

F is for Footlights. The most famous University comic troupe in the world with a legendary alumni, from Fry and Laurie to the Inbetweeners. Footlights highlights of the year include the famous Spring Review in Lent, the Panto at Christmas and the International Tour show in the summer.

G is for Get Out. Post-show operations consisting of

clearing away sets, lighting and rigging after the last night of a show, ready for a new show to move into the theatre the next day.

H is for Hiddleston. Cambridge has the largest and greatest university theatre scene in the world. From Taylor Swift’s Ex to Nanny McPhee herself, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about a Cambridge theatre success story I is for Informality. With a theatre scene pumping out scores of shows a term, it can feel a bit daunting getting involved with your first show. Rest assured though, Cambridge theatre is one of the most informal and friendly aspects of Cambridge life.

J is for Jokes. For any wannabe funny people out there, Cambridge has an excess of opportunities. Whether it is be stand up or sketch shows there are innumerable ways of making your fellow students laugh, cry and cringe.

K is for Kreativity- Like the spelling of this caption, the Cambridge theatre scenes allows writers to go wild with their imaginations. New writing is one of the special aspects of Cambridge drama.

L is for Late Shows- Being the enormous theatre scene that is it, late shows also take place each week in the ADC (at 11pm) and Corpus Playroom (9:30pm.) Yay more theatre!

M is for Musicals- Musicals are some of the most popular shows put on in Cambridge. As well organising regular musical theatre bar nights, The Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society (CUMTS) puts

on at least one musical a term, including the Spring Term Musical at the End of Lent Term N is for Never Ending Publicity. Posters all around town. Flyers in pigeon holes. Adverts on social media. Doing a show brings with it getting people to come and see it.

O is for Other Venues- Theatre at Cambridge is not limited to University level. College dramatic societies put on shows throughout the term in college theatres and other, often funky, locations. You don’t need to be part of a certain college to participate in their shows, anyone is welcome!

P is for Playroom. The Corpus Playroom, to use its full name, is the other regular theatre venue located just off King’s Parade.

Q is for Questioning your own Sanity. Okay it’s not that bad. Rehearsals can be long. Performances can stretch throughout the week. Rest assured though, being involved in a show won’t jeopardise your degree. (If you do 12 a term it might though, I won’t lie.)

R Is for Reviews. A huge theatre culture in Cambridge brings with it a big reviewing scene. With the power to make a show sell like hot cakes, reviews are a great way of watching loads of shows for free. (The Tab reviews are to be recommended.)

S is for Smokers. Run by the Footlights, these Late Shows give anyone the opportunity to have a go and be funny for 3 minutes. Anyone can audition.

T is for Technical Theatre. Without the many lighting,

sound and set designers, stage managers and technicians, Cambridge theatre simply wouldn’t run.

U is for Ultimate BNOC status. Bowing to adoring Cambridge students night after night is a sure way to climb up the greasy pole and earn a place on the Tab’s yearly BNOC list.

V is for Verse- Speakeasy nights at the Union Bar take place every term and provide the perfect occasion for the poets among us to rhyme, rap and rock.

W is for Workload- Thesps often say they are cruising on a 2:2. This is usually a lie. A good work/theatre balance always helps though.

X is for Xylophone- I’ve heard there’s a Xylophone in the ADC. Also there was a great show called Xylophone last year. That is all.

Y is for Yearning for More. On getting their first taste of Cambridge theatre, many get the bug. One of the most friendly and inclusive aspects of Cambridge, Theatre is not to be missed during your years at Cantab.

Z is for ZZZZ. Congratulations, you made it to the end of the article. You can go to sleep now. I already am.

WHICH T H E S P I A N STEREOTYPE ARE YOU? We all know one of them.

Considering having a stab at Cambridge theatre? Are you determined to pull off a Tom Hiddleston? Read on to see what you might find should you audition for one of the billions of shows taking place in Cambridge every week.

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab THE EMOTIONAL MESS

Such a legend is hard to imitate THE NERVOUS WRECK

Too many emotions? The theatre might not be the remedy To this aspiring thespian, life is one big drama on and off stage. Your overactive tear ducts will flood the ADC dressing rooms to the point where directors will be gasping for air and their own sanity. You will have likely had great success in Kleenex ads but your thespian talents probably end there. You will channel all your rage, torment, sadness and pain into your audition, only to be reminded by the director that you are auditioning for the Panto.

THE PERSON WHO HAD A CONSTANT COLD (or any other ailment that greatly and consistently hinders their ability to be at their best) Everyone has a cold now and again. You, though, will always schedule your pneumonia to pop up in audition season. Most common in musical auditions, at your best you actually have a voice to rival Celine Dion and acting talents far surpassing the heights of Dame Judy Dench. Unfortunately, your timely cold will shadow these abundant talents. Directors can be sure, though, you are actually really, really talented… RIGHT? KING/QUEEN OF CAMDRAM

THE FOOTLIGHT WANNABE You only applied to Cambridge because you deluded yourself into believing you were the next Fry/Laurie/ Mitchell/ Webb. On walking into the audition room, you will probably describe yourself as a ‘funny guy,’ thereby affirming that you are in fact a dull prune. You usually say that you’re in the process of ‘collaborating’ with another comic god. Unfortunately, the only collaboration you have is with a friendly ball of tumbleweed, which follows you around wherever you go. You will audition consistently for Footlights Smokers until your eventual realisation that you are about as amusing as a butternut squash (fruit/veg jokes are about your level of humour.)

You will then turn your attention to becoming a Union/ Tab hack.

Fame is your profession, self-promotion is your vocation. You are probably on your tenth show of the term and you want everyone to know about it. Your essays are consistently 2:2’s but it’s totes fine because you’ve got over two hundred likes on your profile picture which invariably features an over egged expression on a background telling us all about the latest show you’re playing a marginally important role in. The fact that you spend almost no time in college leads many to question whether you are still alive/sane.

THE BRIAN BLESSED TRIBUTE ACT

Never be the same again

33

GORDON’S ALIVE!!!!!!!! Big, Bold and Bushy beardThis fine thespian will make a huge impression but you might eat the director in the process. Such a legend is hard to imitate

Poor peeping Tom! All you wanted to do was join the University Tiddlywinks society but your Cumberbitch parents told you that you were to be an award-winning movie star. Often you, poor soul, will fail to make the audition, marooned outside the ADC stage door, too terrified to ask for the code from the scary people with facial hair and wavy garms. If you do, however, manage to reach the inner sanctum of the ADC you must be handled with great care by the directors. Microphones may be required for your audition… as may gas and air.

THE PERSON WHO KNOWS THE DIRECTOR You are the absolute worst auditionee of all. Utterly soul-destroying to others auditioning, you won’t at first look different any different to other theatre try-hards.

When the audition door opens, however, your disguise is blown immediately. Your eyes will light up, a thespy in-joke with the director will follow. You will embrace each other dramatically (of course). You will then begin to exchange memorable lines from your prep school nativity. Everyone else may as well leave. You have made the audition process redundant.

Don’t fit into these categories? Chances are you are actually pretty decent. But to any freshers out there considering auditioning for fresher shows - fear ye not.

Just keep in mind the wise words of Toy Story Creator Joss Whedon- “Remember to always be yourself, unless you suck”.

34 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

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MISTAKES I MADE IN FRESHERS’ WEEK – AND HOW NOT TO MAKE THEM YOURSELF

Dani Cugini Deputy Features Editor So, this time last year, I arrived at Cambridge; a sweet summer child, unaware of the imminent ravages of winter, white-walkers and matriculation wine. I had five scarves, a new cutlery set and a litre bottle of offbrand peach schnapps in my suitcase, and no clue how to survive the incoming tsunami of freshers’ week (in this analogy, it’s probably a tsunami of off-brand peach schnapps).

The soundtrack to freshers’ isn’t Bieber or Galantis, it’s the rallying cry of ‘Shots! Shots! Shots!’ Going out is great. Drunk people are hilarious. Buying people jagerbombs is crucial bonding time. But the worst possible consequence of getting far too drunk isn’t ending up in the gutter, it’s ending up in the morgue.

Drinking a litre of the spirit of the day can leave you with brain damage, a missing wallet or vomit in your hair (I still can’t make eye contact with the porter who carried me back to my room…). By all means get drunk if you want to, or don’t if you don’t (anyone trying to pressure you to get drunk when you don’t want to is an arsehole) but blackouts aren’t something to aim for.

And spending half your weekly budget on booze is a bit galling if you don’t remember any of it after.

But I still made it through freshers’ without death, serious injury or any viral videos of me falling into a bin. So what are the common mistakes people make in the most hyped-up week of first year? And how can you avoid them?

Leave baby in the corner Don’t set your expectations too high Freshers’ week is misnamed. It’s more like freshers’ five days. I got my first essay set three days after I got to Cambridge. It’s a fun week, but I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s the best week of uni. (Your friends at Southampton, in the meantime, will have about three weeks of it. Feel free to regret your life choices.)

You’ll make more lasting memories with friends than a new, haphazard group of strangers. Don’t make the mistake of thinking freshers’ week is meant to be the highlight reel of your student life, because at some point, you’re going to go to a terrible nightclub, everyone else will magically disappear at 2am, you’ll take a taxi back to college alone while it pisses it down outside and feel like you’re starring in a James Blunt music video. This will feel much less painful if, unlike me, you know from the start that freshers’ is a bit crap at times.

I cannot stress this enough: if you’ve got a boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other, bae, babe, googlybear, schmoopsy-poo, human romantic partner or whatever else you want to call them, DO NOT SPEND FRESHERS’ WEEK ON THE PHONE TO THEM. Shut it down. Text them once or twice a day to briefly let them know how you’re doing, then close the chat, archive it so you can’t see it, and go and have fun with people who are not them.

Nobody wants to be that person whose best friend is their high school sweetheart, because it very rarely ends well. If you’re one of the majority who breaks up with them during first year, then, shit, your main memory of freshers’ is crying with your ex. And even if you stay together, you’ll still have missed out if you spend freshers’ week skyping the bae instead of going to an awkward staircase dinner or post-matriculation clubbing. They will still be there when freshers’ is You don’t have to be friends with everyone… done, and if they’re not a staggering arsehole, they’ll Common phrase in freshers’: ‘Everyone’s so lovely!’ It’s understand your need to enjoy freshers’ yourself. more likely that nobody’s so egregious a dickhead that you can tell they are from the two-minute ‘what’s your (If you don’t have a partner, you’re fine. Just don’t sleep subject / where are you from / what’d you do at A-level’ with anyone in college straight off, unless you like passing your one-night-stands in the brunch line for spiel. three years.)

You won’t click with everyone you meet and that’s fine. Freshers’ flu is not a euphemism It may take time to find your people, and I learned fairly quickly that trying really hard to sustain one-sided I thought it meant hangover. It doesn’t. What it does friendships is a fantastic way to make yourself feel like mean is that you’re going to probably get sick when you crap. And even when you are friends, you may not see get to uni, and then you’ll stay sick, FOREVER. You each other for weeks on end. Welcome to university. know you usually get ill and then get better? Forget that I had an upstairs neighbour last year that was only ‘better’ part. Everything about being alive will just be sighted once. We still think he might have been a hoax. slightly worse for about two months until Christmas, and then when you come back you’ll probably get it …but don’t hide yourself away either AGAIN, just because it likes watching you suffer.

Though you’re not going to be trading witty repertoire on Facebook with everyone, it’s still good to chat to and Bring out the assault weapons. Bring Kleenex, get to know as many people as you can. If you retreat painkillers, enough orange juice to cure a country of into your hermit cave during freshers’, you’ll be out scurvy, and don’t make any smartass comments about of the loop; other students are how you know quickly your ironclad immune system, because the flu can hear where pres are, what events are going on, any college you, and to make you pay for your arrogance it will news, whether that lecture got cancelled or that essay make sure your strain includes explosive diarrhoea. got changed, and they will also be your support network Don’t be a dick if you’re affected by any mental or physical illness.

Knowing people in those situations means you’ll have Follow this one and, really, nothing else matters that someone to talk to, or someone to call the appropriate much. resource for you – so even if you’re not a social person, And, most of all, take care of yourself make the effort to socialise.

Uni is amazing, but it can be overwhelming at times.

Tequila + jagermeister = very, very unadvisable So if you want to skip an event once or twice to bingewatch GoT or have a nap…go ahead. It’s your freshers’ Does anybody actually like jagermeister? week, after all.

Getting to A&E is not the goal

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

35

MICHAELMAS TERM

GIG GUIDE Emily Burrows | Music Editor

Considering its size, Cambridge has a perhaps unexpectedly vibrant music scene to suit all tastes. The Corn Exchange is the largest venue, conveniently situated in the centre of the town and corner from Life for that post-gig energy release.

With both seated and standing capacity within the impressive building, the Corn Exchange hosts a variety of events from theatre to comedy and live music. However, if the Corn Exchange is a little mainstream for you then the Junction may be more your thing.

Far away enough to escape the dreaded Cambridge bubble, the Junction arguably hosts the city’s best club nights as well as some impressive music performances. The Portland Arms is an intimate pub and venue regularly hosting some brilliant up-and-coming independent music.

And of course, being Cambridge, there’s a wealth of Classical music events, particularly at West Road Concert Hall and several college chapels.

OCTOBER 2nd Joanna Gruesome - The Portland Arms 11th Sorority Noise - The Portland Arms 15th You Me At Six – Cambridge Corn Exchange 22nd Jamie T – Cambridge Corn Exchange 24th Jamie Lawson – Cambridge Corn Exchange 24th Selector Dub - Narcotic Unitarian Church, Emmanuel Road NOVEMBER 3rd Hooton Tennis Club - The Portland Arms 5th Rebecca Ferguson – Cambridge Corn Exchange 6th KT Tunstall – Cambridge Corn Exchange 11th The Specials - Cambridge Corn Exchange 14th Slaves – Cambridge Corn Exchange 16th Sons Of Kemet - Cambridge Junction 24th Laura Mvula – Cambridge Corn Exchange 28th Honeyblood - Cambridge Junction DECEMBER 1st UK Subs - The Portland Arms 4th Rizzle Kicks – Cambridge Corn Exchange 8th the Human League – Cambridge Corn Exchange Tickets to all of the above events can be purchased from the Cambridge Live website (https://www. cambridgelivetrust.co.uk/tickets)

The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015 36 POLICE INVESTIGATE CAMBRIDGE ROWERS FOR

“CAUSING UNNECESSARY SUFFERING TO AN ANIMAL” AFTER WILDLIFE ARE KILLED Xavier Bisits | Editor-in-Chief, Lent 2016

Police investigate Cambridge rowers for “causing unnecessary suffering to an animal” after wildlife are killed.

The crime carries a penalty of up to six years in prison.

The Tab can reveal that Cambridgeshire police have narrowed down their investigation of anti-avian crimes on the Cam. Cambridgeshire police have begun investigating two potential offences – which may have been committed accidentally by oar-happy boaties – “criminal damage and causing unnecessary suffering to an animal” following reports that a cygnet and a number of ducklings were killed on the River Cam in Cambridge.

Officers were called at about 12.50pm on 11th June with reports that the animals were killed after a group of rowers ploughed through them. In an appeal for information, Chief Inspector James Sutherland said: “I believe there was a large number of people in the area at the time of the incident and would ask that any witnesses contact us, particularly those who may have video footage.”

The offences are now being investigated by the Rural Crime Action Team. The latter comes under the remit of the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, and comes with a maximum penalty of six years in prison or £20,000 in fines.

This year, the waters of the Cam during May Bumps turned a slightly pinker shade of murky after multiple deaths on the river. On June 10, a duckling was reportedly killed by a crew making its way to the start line.

The following day, one cygnet and a number of ducklings were ploughed through. Some reports claimed that one or more of the ducklings had been decapitated by the oars.

A representative for the police told The Tab they could not comment on whether they had identified specific colleges or students while the investigation was ongoing.

On 4 July, a member of the Rural Crime Action Team contacted the Cambridge University Combined Boat Clubs (CUCBC) to warn that “all coxswain are responsible for their actions and that prosecutions could result under the wildlife and countryside act [sic] 1981”.

His email continued: “The Rural crime action team are currently investigating possible offences against swans and cygnets on the Cam. There is continued evidence being provided to us of potential offences.”

The original email contained photos of the “swan incident”, although these were not included in the version supplied to The Tab. It is not clear whether this incident is separate to the incidents of June 10 and 11, which included ducklings and a cygnet.

The email was forwarded on to captains and coxes, suggesting that it may be “more appropriate to draw blades in as opposed to lifting them”.

However, Robert Shearme, who rowed in May Bumps, said: “There was someone deliberately baiting the swans into swimming into the paths of boats with bread. It seems that people who dislike rowing, especially college rowers, are trying to make us look like wildlife killers.

This has happened several times. Someone was baiting them into the paths of fully moving VIIIs and then shouting at the rowers.”

A representative of Animal Rights Cambridge told The Tab that while there had been some progress, they would be willing to “start a campaign with demos and race disruptions once again if things are not put right”.

He said that in 2012 they had successfully delayed May Bumps for two hours by taking to the river “in a boat dressed as swans”.

A university spokesperson said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation.”

Rupert Shearer Guest Columnist

THE TAB’S CANTAB NOT-TO-BUCKET LIST

There are of course plenty of tourist-esque bucket lists for Cambridge students that have been produced in the past with sensible suggestions that range from “try rowing” to “have Sunday lunch at the Fort St. George”. These suggestions will certainly give you good memories of your time in Cambridge, but unless you have a bent for it, they won’t make good stories for you grandchildren.

So The Tab has put together a list of things that would make good stories for your time here at Cambridge, but which you absolutely must not do. We’re only giving you this list to absolutely make sure you don’t do it, and don’t upset the college authorities. We are mostcertainly, definitely not, telling you to attempt this list because it would be very silly and definitely not be fun.

behaviour. On the days of Caesarean Sunday, May Week Sunday, and the morning after Trinity May Ball you should by all means avoid getting papped by the Daily Mail. It would be embarrassing for your college. Don’t do it.

9. Don’t steal yourself dinnerware. Some people take “mementos” from formals. Colleges have to replace things that students steal, and we all know that places like St. John’s can’t afford it. Don’t do it.

10. Don’t skinny dip in the Cam. The third time that nudity is mentioned in this article, so it should be clear that doing things like this is a bad idea. Don’t do it.

1. Don’t go rowing naked. Something like 80% of Cantabs try rowing in their time, and a fair few find it boring. Don’t try and spice up your experience by rowing naked in the early hours of the morning.

Don’t do it.

The modern Cantab - a culmination of almost 800 years of history, grace, and academic excellence.

Just a few boys having a good ol’ “tub” together.

2. Don’t skinny dip in your college’s fountain or pose on their statue. Jesus famously has a horse, Trinity a grand fountain, and King’s an alright one. It’s a send-downable offence to ride the horse, or treat these fountains like baths – if you’re caught. Don’t do it.

3. Don’t go roof drinking. Some colleges have easy access to rooftops through bathroom windows, but it is dangerous to go up there and enjoy the view with a glass of port after formal. Don’t do it.

4. Don’t enter best bums. Whilst The Tab protects the anonymity of its entrants, you definitely shouldn’t enter best bums from a prized place in your college, such as atop high table, or in the chapel as that is disrespectful. Don’t do it.

11. Don’t get Deaned. Even for a minor thing, it is not sensible to get Deaned, nor is it usually the ending of a good story. Don’t do it.

12. Don’t spend all of Caesarean Sunday, and May Week Sunday drunk. Whilst it may seem like everyone else is having fun doing this on Jesus Green, you should instead make your college proud and drink in moderation, like a responsible adult. Don’t do it 13. Don’t keep a pet. Lord Byron reportedly kept a bear, but you shouldn’t follow in his footsteps. Taking a townie home doesn’t count. Don’t do it.

14. Don’t break into another college. Whilst you may think it would be fun to hop a few walls, and gates to secretly explore another college at night, it is not a good idea – especially when drunk. Don’t do it.

15. Don’t get engineered pennied. Definitely don’t engineer penny people either as that is irresponsible.

Do not even consider using two pairs of pliers and a vice at home to make these pennies for formal.

Don’t do it.

16. Don’t go clubbing every night in a week. Whilst it is possible to go out to a club every night of the week, you should not attempt to do them all in one week as it will negatively impact your studies. Don’t do it.

17. Don’t play a drinking game through a supervision.

Definitely do not take vodka in water bottles into a supervision with your friend and pre-defined drinking rules. It is disrespectful to the academic hosting you. Don’t do it.

18. Don’t join a drinking society or swap with one.

Whilst these clubs are designed solely for the purpose of having fun, it’s obviously a bad idea to join their reckless activities for a night. Don’t do it.

I doubt anyone will read this caption - I typed it without looking tbh.

5. Don’t have sex somewhere you shouldn’t. Libraries, punts, college lawns, and fellows’ gardens are not places to have sex in. They are places that should be treated better than that. Don’t do it.

6. Don’t do a pub crawl of all the pubs in Cambridge.

There are at least 20 pubs in Cambridge and attempting to have a pint in all of them in one night would be ill-thought. It would be even more of a bad idea to set challenges for each pub and play pub golf with your friends. Don’t do it.

7. Don’t bridge jump. Previous Cantabs have sometimes thought it would be fun to climb over a bridge from a punt, and jump back into it as it leaves the other side of the bridge. The bridge by Magdalene should not be attempted, even if it looks like the easiest one to start with. This is clearly a bad idea. Don’t do it.

8. Don’t make it into the Daily Mail for raucous

If your education doesn’t involve a bit of hairy whipped cream, is it really an education?

19. Don’t break into a May Ball. Whilst the idea of partying for free for a night at an extravagant ball may seem like a good idea, your Dean would not be impressed if you were caught. Don’t do it.

20. Do enter RAG. This is the one item on the list we actually do recommend, because it’s a jolly good experience and clearly benefits others! However you get involved, you’re doing it for a good cause.

Do it.

PLAYLIST Emily Burrows | Music Editor

Alright / Supergrass – We are young and we are free! It comes as quite a shock during freshers’…

Escape The Nest / Editors – You’ve done it and escaped the nest!

Drinking From the Bottle / Calvin Harris – There’s a high chance you’ve forgotten something useful, like glasses, so it looks like you’re drinking from the (hopefully not vodka) bottle tonight.

Half Full Glass Of Wine / Tame Impala – Make sure you always have one of these in your hand, and only fill it halfway in case of pennying. Plus, if you want to seem indie to these people you’ve just met, put this song on.

Shots / LMFAO – You’re going to need to learn to pre-drink, and quick. What better way to learn than splashing out on Sainsbury’s Basics Vodka (you’ll warm to the taste) and taking a shot every time the word ‘shot’ is mentioned – simple.

Party Up In Here / DMX – If you haven’t met your neighbours properly yet, put this on at full volume and before you know it, the whole college will be partying in our room.

This Is The Life / Two Door Cinema Club – Enjoy a careless freshers week, because this really is as good as it gets.

Girls and Boys / Blur – so many girls and boys mixed together away from home for the first time, you know what’s going to happen, but you’ll likely get bored of one night stands by the end of freshers week.

Don’t Mug Yourself/ the Streets – Don’t make an idiot of yourself in freshers’ week, you’ll never live it down.

Regret / Everything Everything – Undoubtedly you’ll have many regrets during freshers’ week, but try not to make that sleeping with your neighbour, or it’ll be quite awkward for the next year.

Foals / Late Night – Best get used to those extremely late nights in the library speed typing essays, it’s not all fun and games. But don’t worry, Foals will get you through.

Still Ill / The Smiths – You WILL get freshers’ flu, you just will, and you’ll have to use this excuse to escape Cindies.

Homesick / Catfish and the Bottlemen – As fun as freshers’ week is, you’re bound to get homesick, or at least miss your dog.

Caitlin McCartney | Lifestyle and Fashion Editor Though some things are better left in the past (a.k.a matching Juicy tracksuits – I’m confident that even the most attractive of models can’t pull off these unholy abominations) Nineties fashion is back. This is good news for the sleep-deprived among us, as the return of grunge fashion has made wearing black hoodies and ratty jeans selected in the haze of a post-cindies hangover a socially acceptable fashion choice.

Of course, edgy Londoners have known the joys of nineties garms for ages, but basic bitches such as myself have only recently noticed that velvet dresses, knee socks and chokers are adorable (I am the reason you can’t have nice things I’m genuinely sorry).

37

Jack Lewy/Hannah Dawson | Tab TV Contributor Blues are some of the most elusive types about. In between waking up at ungodly hours and telling everybody that they have a Blue, they can be seen wearing funny jackets in the Cindies smoking area, and can be spotted from a mile away in your college library - wearing layers upon layers of sporting stash.

The question on the lips of those of us that never reached the pinnacle of sporting achievement is simple: how hard is it, really, to be a Blue? Importantly too, is there an easy way to get one?

Much sport. So activity.

FRESHERS

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

WHAT’S THE BEST SPORT TO BE A BLUE?

THE CAMBRIDGE

I need friends who’ll take cool aesthetic photos of me while I pretend I’m not looking

BEAUTY Forget eyebrows being #onfleek, if you really want to stand apart from the crowd, why not try plucking out your eyebrow hair altogether. This popular nineties look saw natural brows replaced with pencilled lines thinner than Kate Moss c. 1995. Similarly, if you’re a fan of the fulllipped trend but feel it lacks a nineties twist, you can take your look one step further with visible lip liner and frosted lip gloss, because who doesn’t want to accentuated an overlined mouth with a chapped/lip-balm chic shimmer?

HAIR For those who love the schoolgirl style of Clueless’ Cher, why not regress even further to age of three by accessorizing chunky highlights (mostly commonly found in 2016 on soccer mums) with butterfly clips? Guys wishing to pay homage to the innocence of childhood can try sporting bowl cuts with dead central partings in an imitation of a primary school photo.

HATS Bucket hats are clearly back in fashion, but you can make this look your own by attaching a fake sunflower or a daisy to the brim of your over-sized sunhat. Golf visors are also a stylish and practical choice on a night out, repelling unwanted advances in the club by creating a good 20 cm of distance between your face and any unwanted chirpse.

APPAREL Some consider rolling a professional sport and now you can prove your athletic credentials with tip-to-toe athleisure, a look seemingly exclusive to the chain-smokers among us. Those brave souls who want to look even tougher can attempt double denim, and if you’re feeling really reckless, nothing screams danger like a triple or quadruple denim combination. Try pairing a denim hat, jacket, shirt and jeans for a look that’s sure to impress your more basic friends.

ACCESSORIES Speaking of danger, a Velcro chain wallet is the perfect item to complete your street-hardened look. BNOCs with Cindies black cards will appreciate the added security this accessory provides. Metallic silver backpacks are also the ideal secret weapon for blinding any jealous attackers/ crazed fresher fans.

SHOES Some claim that socks and sandals can be now be worn ironically. These people are wrong. I’m actually not even going to try and be funny. Socks and sandals are beyond redemption and should be consigned to the depths of hell.

So there you have it, by following this guide, you too can differentiate yourself with a combination of middle-aged nineties dad/mum chic and extreme schoolyard style.

And remember, whenever in doubt: if looks really ugly, it’s probably fashionable.

The Hawks’ Club website lists the sports that will earn you a Full Blue. You know them already. The big dogs.

The ‘wow you must be a v good athlete wow’ sports.

Rugby, Rowing and co. The people who are in these teams are almost always absurdly talented and work ridiculously hard (the fact that Cambridge would have come seventeenth in the Olympics just proves this).

Yet for those of us who are a few strings short of a tennis racket, there is a far more interesting list of sports that can earn you ‘discretionary full blues’ and ‘half blues’.

From the stereotype-fulfilling polo, shooting and croquet, to alternatives like Korfball, Australian Rules Football, Eton Fives and orienteering, these sports could set you on your way to a blue without having to be the next Jonny Wilkinson.

KORFBALL Much less exciting than it sounds. Basically people playing basketball or netball and pretending it is something different. Played either with 8 females per team, or 4 males, 4 females per team, the objective is to throw a ball through a bottomless basket. The University Korfball Club told us that they train for three hours a week, and you have to start Varsity in order to qualify for a half blue.

ETON FIVES A much more complicated game of squash. Involves playing in pairs, and hitting a ball against a wall - yet with infinitely more advanced regulations that this Tab writer is too unsporty to explain. More interesting than the practice of the game, in which you can gain a half blue, are its origins. Founded at only a few public schools across England (hence the name), Cambridge possesses one of the six indoor Eton Fives courts across the whole of England.

POLO Claiming to be the most ‘affordable University Polo Club in the country’, the Cambridge University Polo Club attempts to make the previously elite sport accessible to most, possessing an impressive collection of 16 ponies, and the Chair of the club remains HRH Prince Charles. Yet all this prancing with ponies comes with a price - annual membership costs £165 per year.

SHOOTING If the pheasants in the field behind your mansion are getting a little pesky, you might want to join the Cambridge Univerity Small Bore Club - a half blue sport. Training twice a week, you will have to get your tutor’s approval to join this risky society (to make sure you won’t kill anyone).

38 The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015

90’s Photoshoot Caitlin McCartney Lifestyle and Fashion Photographer

Freshers’ Print edition | The Tab

CAMBRIDGE ETIQUETTE, THE FRESHERS EDITION: Leyla Gumusdis/Robert Shearme Lifestyle Editor / Tab TV Contributor

39

BACK TO sCOOL

MEETING THE (COLLEGE) PARENTS Meeting the parents is always nerve-wracking, and even more so when you are meeting your own parents. This first encounter marks your official arrival to Cambridge.

You may want to dress up, as many of you will feel an Oedipal pang, finding your new parents attractive. Don’t worry, this is perfectly normal. If you come from Norwich the commonplace incest may even make you feel at home - it’s about the only thing at Cambridge that will make you feel at home if you’re from Norwich, actually.

DON’T view this as the chance to debut that new and exciting transformation you’ve been pining for. Stick to the red chinos and blazer look. If you don’t own red chinos or a blazer you should probably alert the admissions director to their mistake.

DO wear a practical outfit. Your first events in college could range from burning a £50 note in front of the homeless to fucking a pig, or even to taking part in the hunt to catch your swan for Matriculation Dinner.

NB: this event is called “the Swanning” and requires you to bring your Hunters.

liberals, Around the World in 80 Days and Out of Africa are now unpopular themes. Lefties take all the fun out of racism.

DO tread the line between putting too much effort in (like the second year who dressed up as a dolphin in a homemade costume that involved so much ducttape he couldn’t move) and putting in too little effort (like the second year who ordered a fish costume for a three year-old and subsequently came to the bop with just the word FISH scrawled across her forehead in black eyeliner).

Fishing fo compliments.

DON’T wear an outfit that requires a lengthy explanation. A tenminute lecture at a party on how you’re the Doppler effect is wanted as about much as a Johnian is.

DON’T try to be edgy by not dressing up and sitting in the corner complaining about the terrible music while talking about all the festivals you’ve been to. If you want to sit in the corner looking on at others having fun, then join the voyeur society instead.

DO embrace the Abba/Spice Girls/S Club Seven - if you want to boogie to Dancing Girl then you should be allowed to live your dream.

DO go out afterwards - it’s freshers’ week and no one should have work during freshers’ week. If you do have work that needs to be submitted, join an age-old Cambridge tradition and don’t think about it until two hours before your supervision.

WEDNESDAY CINDIES AND SUNDAY LIFE (AND SUBSEQUENT DEATH) The classic Cambridge club night, Wednesday Cindies involves terrible music (Lion King, anyone?) in a club that has not been called Cindies in twenty years . Sunday Life is another club night and another Cambridge institution. The club hasn’t been called Life since before we were alive, but we continue to call it Life because Cambridge students refuse to embrace change. Famous for: drinking society swaps and its basement location.

Infamous for: the fact that it gets so humid the ceilings start dropping with sweat.

Never be overdressed, or undressed.

DO put thought into your first outfit - first impressions count, and it is up to you to make them count.

Only after a few weeks of surviving Cambridge is it acceptable to wear pyjamas outside during the day with your new friends. Until that time, be on your best behaviour sartorially.

BABY’S FIRST BOP Bops are a mixture of year seven school disco music, questionably alcoholic punch, even more questionable dress codes and a belief in the adage that organised fun is the best kind of fun.

DO adhere to the dress code. Popular themes are the alpha bop and Hollywood but thanks to the bloody

DO bring your dancing game because no one can feel embarrassed on a Cindies dance floor. Let your freak flag fly and feel free to bust any moves you want to.

NB: Some colleges may not support you flying your freak flag as it contravenes their flag schedule, and flag calendars are more important than supporting social progression.

DON’T bring too many things with you: the more items you have, the more items you have to lose. Ideally have your man-servant carry them for you, but by all means give him the night off - it is freshers’ week after all.

DON’T feel like you have to drink VKs. It’s been said before but it should be reiterated: it’s OK not to VK. #FuckTheVKtriarchy.

DO wear something easily identifiable: in the dark this will make you easier to find among the heaving mess of bodies dancing along to Baby by Justin Bieber (five years too late for this to be acceptable). This is

crucial as you will invariably lose your friends within the first five minutes, and they will need some way of identifying which street-strewn mess you are.

DON’T wear a lot - Sunday Life is one of the sweatiest experiences this side of a Finnish sauna, and you don’t want to be adding to the pool of juices. Please bear in mind though that we are not the French government and will not be forcing any people to take their clothes off for “liberté”, “égalité”, or “fraternité”.

DON’T ditch your new friends for some even newer friends you make in the club. Whilst it’s unlikely that your freshers’ week friends will be those with whom you spend the whole of your time at university, at least afford them the common courtesy of not leaving them at the first chance you get.

LECTURES AND SUPERVISIONS As a historian I have limited experience of lectures but I am told they are a usual part of Cambridge life.

Supervisions meanwhile are the reason why you told your interviewers you wanted to come to Cambridge, these hour-long sessions are the base of your whole degree. They will always be slightly terrifying because you will never be ready: no matter how much work you put in to prepare, you can never have put in as much work as your supervisor has over the course of their life, so be prepared to learn.

DO get dressed for your lectures to start with.

The general consensus is that sweatpants are acceptable by week three, pyjamas by week five, and it’s practically mandatory to go the last lecture of the term in nothing but your college scarf. #SchoolsOutForTheVacAndSoAreMyGenitals DON’T come in last night’s clubbing clothes either. The stamp on your hand is enough to prove how much of a party animal you are. The clothes are just overkill.

Be wary of clubbing attire.

DON’T wear an outfit that is too attention-grabbing no one should look that put-together at 9am in the morning. You should aim for the “my bedder just kicked me out” chic.

DO read the Tab’s guide on how to be a lecture BNOC to prepare yourself. An easier way to become a BNOC is to write for The Tab. DO make yourself look presentable. The general rule is that your essay is provocative, your clothes aren’t, and if your essay isn’t, your clothes are. You may need every trick in the book to distract your supervisor and make that essay look coherent.

The Tab | Tuesday 4th October 2015 40 THE DEFINITIVE

Meg Honigmann Fashion Columnist

GUIDE TO SHOPPING IN CAMBRIDGE

Let’s face it: Cambridge is no fashion haven. You’re far more likely to see Corduroy than Commes des Garcons pacing down King’s Parade and wind up chain-store shopping in the culturally devoid Grand Arcade than wafting about Dover Street Market. Nevertheless, for a savvy shopper - or just a master procrastinator Cambridge’s shopping selection can easily drain both your bank account and much of your time. Here’s a compilation of the best that Cambridge has to offer.

I’ll waste only one sentence on things exclusively Cambridge (gowns, hoods, and college related tat): go to Ryder & Amies on the corner of Kings Parade, or just ask your college because they probably also sell everything you need, and for a better price.

GRAND ARCADE There’s not too much to say about the Grand Arcade apart from that it’s right in the center of town, and it has most of the chain stores that you’ll probably be looking for inside. The Topshop is pretty big and changes its stock regularly. There’s an Office for shoes, and the usual Warehouse, River Island and New Look. (Basically a pretty standard shopping centre.) For Zara and H&M (my favourite chain stores) you’ll need to go just outside onto St Andrews Street.

GRAFTON CENTRE For those who want to venture slightly further afield (in Cambridge terms I stress, it’s actually only a 5 minute

walk from the town centre) the Grafton centre, and the streets surrounding it are home to a large Primark, Jemporium (a colourful vintage shop), and lots and lots of charity shops full of clothes, accessories, books and even home stuff (a friend once trekked a Mary Poppins style coat stand all the way back to college).

ALL SAINTS PASSAGE Worth a mention as a destination, even if only for the ridiculously luxurious and drool-worthy underwear shop Prohibido (and believe me the prices really are prohibiting). It’s fun for inspiration, as they change their window displays almost daily. Occasionally they have huge sales, which slash prices to just-above-affordable.

MILL ROAD Further out still (yes, still in Cambridge terms), Mill Road has possibly the best selection of charity shops that Cambridge has to offer. I can’t say I go there often, but when I do I don’t come back to college empty handed.

KINGS PARADE My favourite jewellery shop in Cambridge, and somewhere I could wile away hours and hours that I do not have, is Nomads: an eclectic and over-packed treasure trove of silver jewellery and intricately shaped rings studded with semi-precious stones in every colour.

They also sell gorgeous lanterns that would decorate a small student room well.

ROSE CRESENT/TRINITY STREET On the corner of Rose Crescent and Trinity Street is Whistles, so strategically placed as to tempt you in whenever you try and walk past and resist it. If you have any money you soon won’t. I remember placing a £30

week budget on myself towards the end of term, only to blow £120 on a leather jacket (it was down from £500 though, I couldn’t not…).

BENE’T STREET Whenever I walk past Bene’t street, I can’t help going in to Podarok to see what kind of weird and wonderful things they have for sale that week. It’s a great shop for gifts (in those brief moments that you’re not shopping for yourself) and so one to remember for Michaelmas and the run up to Christmas – they sell ties, jewellery and a whole host of strange items.

ST EDWARD’S PASSAGE Not only does this tiny passage have a good second-hand bookshop and a minute but cosy coffee shop (Indigo), but also crammed in is ARK: a wonderful gift shop with excellent window displays (I want a floor lamp in every colour). They sell good cards, printed leather notebooks and interesting jewellery. However, it is worth noting that it is not cheap.

ONLINE For all the shops that Cambridge does not have, and there are many, always remember that ASOS does next day delivery, and you never have to sign for anything (yay porters). Though do be warned that when it’s your 5th 7thparcel that week arrives they might start making comments, and you can’t pretend lumpy packages of clothes are books for too long.

And, finally, if all else fails just remember: London is only 48 minutes away…

THE TAB GUIDE TO: SOCIETIES YOU WILL MEET AT THE FRESHERS FAIR THE TAB The coolest hacks in town with our Tab condoms (stay safe, kids), seriously fashionable (read: tacky) white and red t-shirts and our endless supply of mugs, we will be unavoidable at the freshers fair. You can come find us at our stall, or see us wandering around the fair looking for a new ‘story’/that guy we’ve had our eyes on for the past two years/free pizza. Write for us if you enjoy losing friends and alienating people while drinking gin and tonic out of a tab mug at a CUSU meeting. Oh and also if you want to be read. (I’m told there are two more student papers in Cambridge, but I for one have found no evidence to substantiate that claim.)

#stash

CUSU Sadly also unavoidable at the fair and in your inbox for the rest of your student life, CUSU are substitute parents: their main impact in your life now is the provision of sexual health supplies, but they will constantly get in contact with you about other things they do (like attending meetings) in order to convince you that they actually matter. Disaffiliate from CUSU campaigns will become a part of everyday life, despite the fact that no one has yet found a discernible difference in their lives due to the state of their college’s CUSU affiliation. Getting

involved means running for a sabbatical position, which is at root just a way to prolong the Cambridge experience for those scared of adulthood (#Milo4Jam, anyone?) and/or a stepping stone into Labour politics.

THE UNION Not to be confused with the Student’s Union (CUSU), despite the fact that both spam your newsfeed, have very little impact on your life and are stunningly undemocratic. The difference essentially comes down to #freezepeach and minor-celebrity speakers. The Union comes neck-and-neck with the Tab when it comes to producing Cambridge hacks and the two together create a circle jerk that 95% of Cambridge students will never have to encounter (the lucky many). For those who do get involved with the Union the rewards are alcohol, feeling important when running events while looking like a douche and lots of opportunities to bust out your black tie. Disadvantages include the loss of your social life, far too much time spent with egos that barely fit in the building and the increased chance of becoming a Tory backbencher in later life.

#discourse THE ADC The friends you make in freshers week that you know are too edgy to ever really like you will probably end up

Leyla Gumusdis Lifestyle and Fashion Editor

here, living out their dreams of following in the footsteps of Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston.

When they aren’t auditioning, they will be performing in a series of increasingly more experimental plays.

You’ll attend the first two or three to be nice, but by the time third year comes around you won’t even open the Facebook notifications.

BOATIES Bearing little relation to other Cambridge students, rowers like to get up at 4am, speak in their own (slightly dirty-sounding) language and wear lycra for activities that should not require lycra. You’ll see them once a term when they emerge for boat club dinners and bumps and you’ll need to talk about rowing to them once a year when their knowledge comes in useful for the boat race.

THE HAWKS/OSPREYS They stand out thanks to their superhuman athletic prowess and ability to wear sports kit to any and all functions without embarrassment. They will be everywhere at the freshers fair, enticing you to try taster sessions in sports ranging from archery to Eton fives.

You will invariably go to one or two, injure yourself (the gymnastics taster session in Michaelmas 2015 left me with more bruises than I care to admit) and quit the sport shortly afterwards. If you’re lucky the experience will leave you with knowledge that you can repurpose every time the Olympics comes around.

TCS

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