Palatinate 800

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Thursday 16th November 2017 | No. 800

Palatinate’s 800th Edition

Former editors Sir Harold Evans, Hunter Davies, George Alagiah and Jeremy Vine write exclusive guest columns

Russell Group universities ‘worth £87bn to UK economy’ Tania Chakraborti News Editor

Some 69 years, eight months, and three days after its first ever edition, Palatinate today reaches its 800th. We celebrate with guest columns from prestigious former editors on p8-10 (Faye Chua)

Durham Counselling Service: too few counsellors for students Despite higher spending for 2017/18, staffing shakeup leaves service short of official guidelines and prone to longer waiting times

Sophie Gregory News Editor Durham University’s Counselling Service has reduced its number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) counsellors from 6.2 to 5.4 for this academic year, leaving it short of the recommended counsellor-student ratio.

Though overall staff numbers and spending levels have both been increased, information provided by the Counselling Service reveals the cut in counsellors puts Durham below the official minimum proportion of full-time counsellors to students, as advised by the British

Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

According to the BACP’s Sector Overview of University and College Counselling Services, published in October 2017, a counsellorstudent ratio of 1:3,000 “has been seen as minimum provision”.

Despite being met last academic year, the newly decreased total of FTE counselling staff means this is not now being reached at Durham.

In 2016/17, with a student populace of 17,927 and 6.2 FTE counsellors, the ratio was approximately 1:2,891, but for 2017/18, with 5.4 counsellors, the relationship is

closer to 1:3,300.

Official statistics for the University’s present student population are not yet available, but using last year’s figures, the ratio for this academic year stands at one counsellor for every 3,331 students.

Overall, there has been an increase in Counselling Service staff, with the addition of one Mental Health Advisor. The staffing team is comprised of 5.4 counsellors, two Mental Health Advisors, 0.8 FTE Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners, 0.5 FTE Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre (RSACC) specialists, and 0.5 FTE trainees.

A Palatinate Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed expenditure steadily increased by over £200,000 in the last five academic years, though the number of students attending counselling sessions has not increased in proportion to this spending.

In 2016/17, the Counselling Service’s total expenditure reached £607,745, including £50,000 for Sexual Violence support and training. This is an increase on the £500,100 spent in 2015/16.

Mental health at university is an increasingly prominent conContinued on page 4...

Leading research-focused universities in the UK, including Durham, are worth £86.8 billion a year to the national economy.

This is according to a study conducted by London Economics, Business Management Consultants, which focused on the single academic year of 2015/16.

The study claims that in that one year all Russell Group universities together contributed a total to the UK economy equivalent to eight months’ expenditure on the NHS. The report assesses the medium- and long-term impacts of universities’ teaching, learning activities and research, their value through income gained from overseas students, and their spending on goods, services and employees.

The study also showed that Russell Group universities support approximately 260,000 jobs, more than the total population of the city of Aberdeen.

Within teaching and learning, the study reveals the 166,000 UKdomiciled students undertaking research at the 24 Russell Group universities in 2015/16 will contribute almost £21 billion to the UK economy through the valuable skills they acquire.

For every £1 of public research funding these universities receive, the report claims, they will accomplish an average return of £9 for the UK’s economy.

This follows a major study conducted by BiGGAR Economics earlier this year which showed that for every £1 Durham University receives in funding, it provides £3.21.

Furthermore, the BiGGAR study revealed Durham University is worth £1.1 billion a year to the UK economy and that the University generates over 13,000 jobs overall.

Durham students also contribute 14,000 hours to volunteering annually overall, according to the survey.

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Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

Editorial “Everything about journalism has changed, but the stories and the issues have not” As you might have picked up from our none-too-subtle trumpeting of the milestone overleaf, you are currently reading no less than the 800th edition of Palatinate.

Some 799 editions, 69 years, and quite possibly an entire forest have passed since the birth of this newspaper on the 13th March, 1948.

Along with cloudy vistas of the Cathedral, Bailey-Hill college rivalries and the Klute dancefloor’s uncanny ability to obliterate any and all student footwear, Palatinate has over the years been a core institution of Durham University – so it was only right to mark this occasion by reaching out to some of its prestigious former editors, to reflect on their time at the paper.

First off, last week we interviewed the BBC’s George Alagiah, OBE (p9). “Everything about journalism and the way you do it has changed,” he said, “from the mobile phones and the laptops to Google, et cetera… But the stories and the issues haven’t changed that much.

“I think my first issue… the lead story was about accommodation problems for students, and rip-off landlords and things like that, and of course on the News at Six today we did a story about homelessness and a rip-off landlord, you know.”

To further illustrate his point, one need look no further than the front-page of Palatinate no.

799, which last fortnight splashed

with a whopping great picture of students protesting the University’s decision to increase college accommodation fees. There was more of the same on our website, too, with last Friday’s revelation that undergraduate college costs will next year exceed £8,000 for the first time (also on p5).

Along with the Cathedral and Klute, Palatinate has grown into a core Durham institution In this instance, the University itself stands accused of being, in the words of Jazmine Bourke (p3, Palatinate 799), a “money-grabbing, shameless and shambolic” landlord.

It will come as no surprise that this student newspaper editor respectfully disagrees with Alexandra Beste’s dim view of student journalism, expressed on page 11, but in my eyes stories and comment like this rather undermine her claim Palatinate merely “report[s] on reported news”.

Just take a look at some of our other original reporting. This week we expose the threat to waiting times posed by the Counselling Service’s staffing shakeup, while previous editions have broken the news of a Durham student losing £1,600 to a Year Abroad accommodation scam, the “madness” of exam proposals that could see a rise in error-strewn papers, and Castle football club’s

season-long ban for initiation misconduct.

For this 800th edition, though, we’ve passed on some of the workload. We’re extraordinarily lucky that, alongside Alagiah’s interview, three of this newspaper’s most famous alumni have agreed to write a guest column apiece.

Former Sunday Times editor Sir Harold Evans (p8) reflects on ice hockey behind the Iron Curtain and accusations of “lefty” Palatinate bias, while prolific columnist and author Hunter Davies, OBE (p9) explains why editing the paper in the 1950s was the most fun he’s had in life “without taking his clothes off,” and legendary broadcaster Jeremy Vine (p10) imparts some sage and poignant advice he’s been meaning to give Durham undergrads for years.

A huge thank you to all – and, in fact, thank you to every Palatinate contributor, past and present, who has kept this newspaper bursting at the seams with the very best of Durham student writing.

Here’s to the year 2086, and the 1,600th edition of Palatinate.

Eugene Smith

Inside 797

News pages 4-7 800th Edition pages 8-10 Comment pages 11-12 Profile page 13 Politics pages 14-15 SciTech page 16 Sport pages 18-20

indigo Editorial page 2 Features pages 3-4 Film & TV page 5 Music pages 6-7 Visual Arts page 8 Books page 9 Fashion pages 10-11 Creative Writing page 12 Stage page 13 Food & Drink page 14 Travel pages 15

Find us on social media www.facebook. com/palatinate

@PalatinateUK

The best of Palatinate Online www.palatinate.org.uk

NEWS: BREAKING: New Elvet closed off due to ‘suspicious package’

COMMENT: Uber in Durham – a great app-ortunity?

STAGE: RENT review: ‘unique, poignant and raw’

SPORT: Durham thwarted by Loughborough in Hollow Drift clash

Last week we broke the news that New Elvet Road had been closed to allow Durham Constabulary to handle “historical explosive devices” handed in to the station.

Uber’s announcement it would be taking fares in Durham prompted Saskia Simonson to praise the divisive company’s “cheap, and reliable service”.

Kathryn Tann is full of praise for RENT, arguing DULOG have managed to capture this rock opera’s “unique and addictive atmosphere”.

Deputy Sport Editor Ollie Godden charts Durham’s agonising loss to their fierce rivals highly billed match-up on Saturday 11th November.

Palatinate is published by Durham Students’ Union on a fortnightly basis during term and is editorially independent. All contributors and editors are full-time students at Durham University. Send letters to: Editor, Palatinate, Durham Students’ Union, Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3AN. Alternatively, send an e-mail to editor@palatinate.org.uk

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief Adam Cunnane & Eugene Smith editor@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Editors Anna Tatham & Caitlin Allard deputy.editor@palatinate.org.uk News Editors Sophie Gregory & Tania Chakraborti news@palatinate.org.uk News Features Editor Ben Sladden news.features@palatinate.org.uk Deputy News Editors Jack Reed & Clara Gaspar deputy.news@palatinate.org.uk Comment Editor Zoe Boothby comment@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Comment Editors Emily Smith & Danny Walker Profile Editor Isabelle Ardron profile@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Profile Editor Holly Adams Science and Technology Editors Martha Bozic & Jack Eardley scitech@palatinate.org.uk Politics Editors Eloise Carey & Cameron McIntosh politics@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Politics Editors Rhodri Sheldrake Davies & Jack Parker Sport Editor Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero sport@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Sport Editors James Martland, Ollie Godden, Will Jennings & Ella Jerman Indigo Editor Tamsin Bracher indigo@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Indigo Editor Adele Cooke deputy.indigo@palatinate.org.uk Features Editor Divya Shastri features@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Features Editor Katie Anderson Food & Drink Editor Emma Taylor food@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Food & Drink Editor Sapphire Demirsoz Travel Editor Harriet Willis travel@palatinate.org.uk Fashion Editor Anna Gibbs fashion@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Fashion Editor Emma Denison Film & Television Editor Imogen Kaufman film@palatinate.org.uk Stage Editor Helena Snider stage@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Stage Editor Helen Chatterton Music Editor Tom Watling music@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Music Editor Ashleigh Goodall Creative Writing Editor Chloe Scaling creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Creative Writing Editor Kleopatra Olympiou Books Editor Julia Atherley books@palatinate.org.uk Deput Books Editor Tanvi Pahwa Visual Arts Editor Madeleine Cater visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Visual Arts Editor Anna Thomas Chief Sub-Editor Yongchang Chin Sub-Editors Inka Karna, Aoife Clements, Mint Parabatra, Zuzanna Gwadera & Angelos Sofocleous Photography Editor Max Luan photography@palatinate.org.uk Illustrations Editor Faye Chua illustration@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Illustrations Editors Charlotte Way, Katie Butler & Akansha Naraindas Digital Team Craig Bateman (Digital Coordinator) Helen Paton (Social Media Officer) Alex Stuckey (Website Administrator)

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

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Archive

I wanted to use my column this week to talk about how we tackle sexual violence and harassment, and to do so, lay out a few illustrative facts.

• The University is committed to promoting a culture in which any incidents of Sexual Violence and Misconduct will not be tolerated as per its own policy.

• Two incidents occurred during the Castle FC initiation that involved inappropriate, intimidating and offensive behaviour by members of the team towards women Castle FC have been banned from participating in all intercollegiate fixtures for the remainder of the year • Several members of the team think this ban is unfair, with comments to Palatinate such as “it is unfortunate we have been used as a scapegoat to implement a University level agenda”.

So what does a culture where incidents of sexual violence and misconduct will not be tolerated look like? Because to me, this incident makes it abundantly clear that’s a conversation we need to be having.

That culture cannot be one in which inappropriate or intimidating behaviour is a ‘tradition’ (as one of these incidents was described here last week), it cannot be one where it is ok to stand back and let others commit these acts (“95% of the club have done nothing wrong” claims one member).

And it cannot be one where a team can admit that these actions took place and yet still claim that being banned from football is too strong a punishment for offensive behaviour towards someone that is so clearly against their wishes.

It is a culture where our first concern in this situation is not for Castle FC and their ban but for the victims of their behaviour, who were disrespected by members of our University.

There is a will to create this culture. Our Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice Chancellor Colleges and Student Experience are committed to a zero tolerance approach, as are many of our student leaders. But we need to see this commitment lived at all levels, right down to college discipline, peer leadership and questioning our traditions.

That’s why I’m committed to make sure this conversation keeps happening – you can expect me to keep calling out behaviour and excuses like this and to keep talking about how our culture here needs to change and how we can do that.

Megan Croll

The one that started it all: Palatinate No. 001 – Wednesday, 13th March 1948

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

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News

“Durham desperately needs to take responsibility for the stress cultures and high levels of mental distress it plays a part in creating” Continued from front page -cern. A 2016 YouGov poll found some 27% of students suffer from mental health problems, while a survey of Durham students by The Tab last June showed 54% of 405 respondents saying “they have suffered from a mental illness”.

Despite this increase in investment and media exposure, fewer than 10% of Durham students attended even one counselling session in the past four academic years.

There was, in fact, a decline in the number of students attending the Counselling Service in the last academic year, a fall from 1,582 in 2015/16 to 1,400 in 2016/17.

When asked by Palatinate why they chose to use other services over the University’s Counselling Service, one anonymous student stated: “I found the NHS service much more accessible and specifically targeted towards what I am experiencing (e.g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for social anxiety) and just generally better advertised, with the University it’s quite unclear where you’re supposed to go.

“Also using a service outside of my place of education just felt more anonymous.”

“I found the NHS service much more accessible,” says one student Despite a significant focus on ensuring the Counselling Service is able to support students, some experiences have fallen short. One student told Palatinate: “It was a matter of weeks for the main counselling service but over nine months for the Rape Crisis service.

“I had an assessment and six sessions before being discharged without any support at all for months, despite describing issues with self harm and depression.

The counsellor frequently made unhelpful comments, including suggesting that I should consider trying to contact my rapist in order to find some ‘resolution’.

“I found it overwhelmingly unhelpful and not nearly enough to meet my needs. The Rape Crisis counselling was genuinely life changing but it came far too late.

“I think that the waiting times are appalling for specialist care and only require the University spending money on the problem instead of making lots of noise in their initiatives.

“I also think that there are some key groups of people who are completely unsupported – including men who have been sexually assaulted who are unable to see a specialist as the organisation who offers help only accept women.”

Of those attending the Counsel-

ling Service, there is a wide discrepancy between the male and female sex.

Consistently, the total number of females using counselling is approximately double that of males.

In 2016/17, 944 females attended one session of counselling in comparison to 456 males, while in the preceding year 1,073 women used the Service compared to 509 men.

advice and psychological wellbeing programmes.

“One example is SilverCloud, a suite of online psychoeducational modules available 24 hours a day via smartphones, tablets and PCs. “The Counselling Service has added a Mental Health Advisor and Psychological Wellbeing Support, and hosts the specialist service Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre, which provides support for students who have sexual violence, wherever and whenever this has occurred.”

The number of females using counselling is more than double that of males In response to this disparity, Owen Adams, the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor (Colleges and Student Experience), told Palatinate: “There are differences in the uptake of Counselling services between male and female students, a difference which is reflected in the national picture of psychological therapies.

“The range of services now available in the Counselling Service may support students to find a service that meets their needs and preferences.”

Mr Adams added: “Durham University invests significantly in pastoral support for our students.

“We offer support through our Colleges and Academic Departments, working in partnership with the central student support services, which includes Counselling and Disability Support.

“Students exercise choice in how they access support. We also maintain close links with local NHS providers.

“At Durham, as at other universities, we have seen large increases in the number of students disclosing mental health issues as a disability either prior to or during their studies.

“This reflects both an increase in the diagnosis of issues during school years and legislative changes that have encouraged a broader potential student body to consider higher education applications.

Though spending and overall staff numbers have increased, many students still complain of “apalling” waiting times “The University has significantly increased its support for mental health services in recent years.

The Counselling Service provision was relaunched to ensure that students understand the support available within the Service, and that they are quickly and effectively directed towards appropriate services that it offers, which includes counselling, mental health

The University has “seen large increases” in mental health issues

(Illustration by Katie Butler)

Despite the confidence of the University, Rosa Tallack, Welfare and Liberation Officer, does not feel the University is doing enough.

In a statement, she emphasised: “Durham desperately needs to look at external factors and take responsibility for the stress cultures and high levels of mental distress it plays a part in creating.”

Another student told Palatinate: “University is a uniquely stressful time and they should be encouraging people to seek out support.

The service has a bad reputation and they need to work on improving that to ensure that their students are not suffering alone, particularly men. I think people are aware of the existing issues with wait times and it means that they don’t bother to sign up for help.”

‘Senior Man’ title remains, three years on from referendum Jack Reed Deputy News Editor This term marks the three-year anniversary of the referendum at Hatfield College on whether to change the wording of the ‘Senior Man’ position in their Exec.

In 2014, newly elected Senior Man Maria Neary proposed a motion to change the title of ‘Senior Man’ to ‘JCR President.’

The motion emphasised that Hatfield, as a college, aimed to promote “equality and inclusivity”.

In its current form, the title is seen by some to implicitly suggest the role is not for females and it may dissuade women from running for the position.

However, the motion was defeated, with only six people voting in favour of it. There was a wide consensus on the need to maintain and protect traditions within the college.

No other similar debates on

the topic of ‘Senior Man’ have taken place since the failure of this motion.

Notably, the last two holders of the position have been men, with only one female candidate running over the two separate elections.

Hatfield is the one remaining college not to have changed the wording of this position to something more gender-neutral.

All other colleges use the title ‘Senior Student’ or ‘JCR President’ to eliminate any potential prejudice.

Owen Adams, Pro-ViceChancellor (Colleges and Student Experience), stated of the issue: “Student participation is a key part of what makes Durham’s collegiate system unique and gives each college its own character.

“While the University provides financial advice and oversight for Junior Common Rooms and receives regular reports through its college councils, we support the autonomy of student common

rooms in ordering their own affairs.

“The University is fully committed to actively promoting equal opportunities for all our staff and students, eliminating discrimination and creating an inclusive and supportive work and study environment that respects the dignity of staff and students and helps all members of our University community to achieve their full potential.

The University “support the autonomy of student JCRs in ordering their own affairs” “The title of Senior Man at Hatfield College has been debated by the College Junior Common Room in the past and if there was a desire to debate this again, we would support and welcome the free and open exchange of ideas.”

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

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News

Durham Labour Club urge University and SU to pay all staff living wage Clara Gaspar Deputy News Editor Durham Labour Club (DULC) have renewed their campaign for the University and Students’ Union to afford all their staff a salary in line with the living wage.

The move comes one week after the national Living Wage Foundation’s announcement of a rise in the National Living Wage.

As of this year, the real UK Living Wage is £8.75 per hour outside London, while within the capital it is £10.20. These figures are an independently calculated representation of what people need to get by, as opposed to a government minimum.

This year, the DULC chose to target the SU with a petition, as well as using social media and distributing literature throughout colleges, requesting that the University pay all its employees the National Living Wage.

The petition, addressed to Gary Hughes, the Students’ Union’s Chief Executive, garnered over 200 signatures during the campaign.

In a statement published on Durham Students’ Union website, Charlie Walker, Opportunities Officer for the Students’ Union, also voiced his concerns with present wage levels.

He wrote: “The Students’ Union Assembly passed policy in 2014 to support the SU and the University paying all staff a Living Wage

but neither the University nor the SU have acted on the issue since then. I believe that this situation is unacceptable and that we both should pay our staff the Living Wage.”

He added: “The government intends to increase their National Living Wage to £9 per hour by April 2020. It’s time for Durham to get ahead of that and start paying a real Living Wage as set by the Living Wage Foundation, because it’s only fair to be paid enough to live on for the work that you do.”

The campaign for the wider University to pay all of its staff the National Living Wage has a long history.

“It’s only fair to be paid enough to live on,” says the SU’s Charlie Walker Durham University Labour Club launched its Living Wage Campaign in 2014, following a Freedom of Information request submitted by its members that revealed 13% of University employees were being paid less than the National Living Wage in 2011 (£7.20/hour).

In 2014, Durham University’s Students’ Union Assembly passed policy to support the Students’ Union and the University paying all staff a Living Wage. However, since then, neither Durham University nor the Students’ Union have made any commitment to

this policy.

Joe Dharampal-Hornby, CoChair of Durham University’s Labour Club has stated: “For years students have campaigned tirelessly for the University and the Students Union to pay all their employees a genuine living wage. Tuition fees are now £9,250/year, our Vice Chancellor earns £287,000, and rent in Durham is rising further, yet many staff are not paid enough to live on.

“This gross inequality is both unfair and quite frankly unsustainable. There was great enthusiasm around DULC’s recent campaign day, with over 200 students signing our petition specifically targeting the SU. We were delighted with their response, and will keep up the pressure to ensure the policy is fully delivered. Moreover, DULC will continue to take to fight to the University, to ensure its pay structure rewards all its staff, not just a privileged few.”

“Postgrads have not had a pay rise in nearly 10 years,” adds Sabrina Seel The issue of pay has been also raised by Sabrina Seel, the Postgraduate Academic Officer.

“Postgraduates have not received a pay rise in nearly 10 years. Lots of them work almost twice as many hours per week than they are paid for by the Uni-

▲ Palatinate has covered similar campaigns in the past, including the front page of no. 739 (Palatinate Archives 2012) versity. Postgraduates deserve fair pay and conditions.”

In April, Education Secretary Kirsty Williams stated that “Universities should pay the living wage as part of a “civic mission””.

So far, the Universities of Ox-

ford, Cardiff, Glasgow and LSE are a few of the higher education institutions that have pledged to pay all their staff in accordance with the Living Wage Foundation’s salaries.

Undergraduate college fees top £8,000 for first time The charge for a fully catered ensuite room with a double bed will be £8,119, despite student finance being lower for many students in their final year. This price sees college residence fees breaking the £8,000 threshold.

A catered ensuite room with double bed at St Aidan’s will cost £8,119 ▲ Students gather at the Science Site to protest the accommodation

fee rise in last fortnight’s 100-strong demonstration (Ruby-Rae Cotter)

Sophie Gregory News Editor Durham college accommodation costs for undergraduates will next year exceed £8,000 for the first time, with finalists returning to St Aidan’s College required to pay up to £8,119 for a room.

An email sent to all St Aidan’s students outlined the price of living in college for finalists and non-finalists in the 2018/19 academic year. The costs stand at £7,420 for a fully catered single room without an ensuite, while ensuite rooms for finalists will cost £7,883.

Non-finalists will be expected to pay £7,183 for a standard single bed room, £7,643 for a single room with double bed and £7,879 for a fully catered, ensuite, double bed room.

Luke Hollander, JCR President of St Aidan’s College, told Palatinate: “Not so long ago, during my undergraduate studies, students were shocked to see fees go above the £7,000 threshold, so to see it reach £8,000 in such a short space of time is very concerning.

“This will unfortunately have a big impact on colleges in terms of pricing out students from low and middle income backgrounds from living in, an issue which the University appears to be indifferent to.”

Though this is the first time undergraduate college fees have exceeded £8,000, postgraduate accommodation has long been above this level, with some Masters students having to pay upwards of £9,000 for their living-in rent.

In a previous statement to Palatinate on college fee rises in general, the University’s ProVice-Chancellor (Colleges and Student Experience), Owen Adams, said: “The cost of providing our College residences rises year on year and we have to review prices on an annual basis to ensure we can continue to provide a high standard of accommodation and services.

“In consultation with student representatives, the University

has agreed that residence charges will increase by 3.5% for the 2018/19 academic year.

“All students have been informed of our decision and they have also been advised how to access financial support should they need it.

“We strive to offer good value for money to our students. We continue to invest in our colleges to offer an excellent student experience.”

Heard anything newsworthy?

Email us:

news@palatinate.org.uk

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Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

News

Durham Good News

As Palatinate reaches its 800th edition, we reflect on some of Durham’s more positive news stories

Castle CCA auction raises over £5,000

St Cuthbert’s Hospice fireworks event raises £20,000

Record number of Grey students volunteer at activities day

Jack Reed Deputy News Editor

Tania Chakraborti News Editor

Clara Gaspar Deputy News Editor

A black tie charity auction or-

On the 4th November, £20,000 was raised for St Cuthbert’s Hospice fireworks event at Framwellgate school.

Two weeks ago, Grey pupils came together to put on a Sport and Arts Day for children with learning disabilities.

ganised by University College has raised over £5,000 for Castle Community Action (CCA), a group which focuses on improving sections of the local area in Durham.

The auction took place in Castle’s Great Hall on the 4th November. It was attended by around 200 people who each paid £16 for the opportunity to attend and bid at the auction. £2,225 of the money was raised through town hall fundraising while the rest was made through the charity auction itself.

The highest auction bid was close to £500, paid for a holiday home in the south of France.

Other prizes ranged from a holiday in Normandy, to Durham University Charity Fashion Show tickets, to guaranteed formal spaces for next year.

In addition to this, members of the Exec were auctioned off as a ‘date with the Exec’ prize.

The money raised went towards CCA, which is composed of five separate sections: Secondary and Primary Education, Elderly Care, Homelessness and Community days.

The group was formed with the intention of aiding and benefitting different areas within the Durham community. This aim reflects the motto of the college ‘non nobis solum’, which translates to ‘not for ourselves alone.’

The Hospice helps those These volunteer days with life-limiting illnesses have been running for over three years Durham University student society Purple Radio were approached by the charity to provide music for the gig.

Over 3000 people attended the event at £5 per head, raising a significant amount of money for the charity. St Cuthbert’s Hospice provide specialist palliative care for patients affected by life-limiting illnesses.

The Hospice approached Purple Radio at the end of September to provide music for the event.

More than 3,000 people attended the event at £5 per head Head of Production Emily Kilner said: “we arranged a meeting, then sent a proposal of some options of how we could help.” Many members of the station attended the event, including Station Manager Alok Kumar and Assistant Station Manager Liam Procter.

St Cuthbert’s Hospice commented that “excellent music” was provided “throughout the night”.

Although these voluntary days have now been running for over three years, on a termly or twicetermly basis, the last event attracted a record number of volunteers.

Some 25 Grey College students provided a day of activities for the school children, whose disabilities ranged from mild to severe learning disabilities.

They began the day in Maiden Castle, where the children were taught dance, circus skills, sitdown volleyball and parachute games.

After their lunch the children were taken to the JCR where painting, pool, giant Jenga, table tennis, Twister, board games and music had been set up and organised by another Grey Student, Eadaoin McRandal.

“The children get to have a lot of fun and get to use college and university facilities” Emily Thomas, the organiser of the day, highlighted the good that these events do for the wider community.

She said: “The children get to have a lot of fun, receive a lot of attention from volunteers and get to use university and college facilities.

“What I really love is seeing the children all playing and chatting to all the volunteers in the JCR, it’s so lovely, it feels really welcoming and how college should be – part of the community and not just a halls of residence.”

▲ Fireworks delighted at the St Cuthbert’s Hospice event

‘A Taste of Syria’ raises £400 for Médecins Sans Frontières

A Taste of Syria was held last Saturday, in John’s Leech Hall. The event, run by Durham for Refugees, raised over £400 for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

the work of Médecins Sans Frontières.

Prior to the event, Durham For Refugees ran cooking classes for students, led by Syrian women.

The cost of the ticket was spent on the food provided and donations amounted to £400 in total for Médecins Sans Frontières, a non-governmental organisation that provides medical aid in conflict zones, natural disasters and epidemics.

was provided by seven local Syrian refugee families and the restaurant Lebaneat.

During the event, poetry was read by one of the Syrian refugees, Hasna, and a talk was given about

Alannah Travers, Co-President of Durham for Refugees, told Palatinate: “It was really great to see students and settled refugees mixing”.

Sophie Gregory Deputy News Editor

Over 200 people gathered to celebrate Syrian food and culture “It was really great to see students and settled Over 200 people, students and local people, gathered to celebrate refugees mixing” Syrian food and culture. The food

▲ Several members of the Purple Radio management team look on (All photographs courtesy of Jess Dunning)

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

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News Features

Mental health ranked as top priority in Raise Your Voice campaign Affordable accommodation and eliminating sexual violence also feature as major concerns

Ben Sladden News Features Editor Prior to formulating their five-year strategy, Durham Students’ Union ran a Raise Your Voice Campaign to gauge student opinion on how to fulfil three main aims: “We will make student life easier and fairer”, “We’ll build communities and create citizens” and “We’ll transform education”.

poor support process and inflexible provisions for mental illness), housing issues, financial stress and sexual violence to name a few that we will be working to address.

“We know, for example, that poor quality housing, a key part of our new strategy, has a hugely detrimental impact on students’ mental and physical health.”

Besides mental health concerns, 39% of students surveyed underlined the need for high quality affordable accommodation, for both livers in and out.

“We’re in the housing market, but we’re not a voice in the housing Some 32% of students chose fighting campus market” sexual violence and Despite the claims that student politics is “out of touch” and “self- harrassment as a top aggrandising”, the Raise Your Voice priority Campaign has drawn attention to the priorities of students on both Durham and Queen’s Campuses.

Raise Your Voice sessions were carried out in Durham and Stockton last month.

The research highlighted that half of students surveyed from both campuses, when asked to identify “Which out of these three are the most important areas for us to focus on and will be the biggest problem or concern over the next 5 years?”, cited mental health as the main priority.

The debate over accommodation has reached new heights in recent weeks, following the University’s decision to raise fees against the SU’s campaign for a freeze.

Palatinate also reported that St Aidan’s finalists are now required to pay up to £8,119 for a room – the first time undergraduate college fees have surpassed £8,000 (p5). An additional protest is planned for 29th November.

Some students have said the fee hikes make Durham inaccessible to those from a lower socio-economic background.

The SU’s Rosa Tallack wants to establish a Tenants’ Union this year An additional college fees Rosa Tallack, Welfare and Lib- protest is scheduled for eration Officer, spoke to Palatinate the 29th November about the specific measures the SU plans on taking in tackling the problem – an issue she describes as “especially close to my heart”.

Rosa spoke of the need to ensure “students have access to the resources, support and advocacy they need, when they need it.

“Personally, I have priorities this year around improving student support across campus, including scrutiny of services, as well as championing peer led support.

“Our Postgraduate Academic Officer, Sabrina, is tackling the issue of support for postgraduate students, who are often particularly vulnerable in this regard.

“Our strategy recognises that there are many elements of student life here in Durham that need to be tackled in order to improve mental health – academic stress (e.g. unreasonable deadlines,

In relation to the private market, Rosa said the SU could help ensure some oversight over the quality of education “by providing a platform for students to bring together the knowledge, experience, issues and ideas they experience as tenants, so that we can facilitate developing solutions and partnerships.

“We’re in the housing market, but we’re not a voice in the housing market, so this year, I want to establish a Tenants’ Union, so that we are.”

In response to Palatinate’s question “are you surprised at the results of the Raise Your Voice Campaign and it’s focus towards housing in particular,” Durham Campus student Daniel Mercieca responded: “I am moderately surprised... I am in my second year of

living out and have experienced poor quality housing both years.

Students in Stockton ranked different priorities than their Durham City counterparts “This year the repairs have been swift and to a high standard but last year repairs for things like a shower took up to two weeks.

“This is an issue which affects nearly all students and is not being resolved. I’d say the elevated pricing excacerbates the issue of quality.”

The third most popular option in answering this question was “eliminating sexual violence and harassment on campus”.

32% chose this option as the biggest concern for the Students’ Union over the next five years.

In answer to the question “which are the most effective and impactful ways we can create communities and help students become good citizens?”, Durham and Stockton students differed in their priorities.

Though both campuses emphasised that “ensuring the University consults with students on decisions which affect them” is the top priority, Durham students then ranked “creating opportunities for students to get involved in community projects” as second place and “encouraging political engagement” as third.

For Queen’s Campus, priorities were ranked differently, with “creating opportunities for students to get involved in our work” and “creating opportunities for students to get involved in community projects” ranked respectively second and third.

“The elevated pricing of accommodation acts to exacerbate the issue of quality” In answering the question“which of these are most important to you, or are the ones you see as truly transforming education?”, Durham students ranked their top priority as “widening participation (helping students into HE who wouldn’t usually consider studying at this level)”.

Their joint second priority was reported to be “reducing the at-

“

Poor quality housing... has a hugely detrimental impact on students’ health

”

tainment gap (levelling the playing field)” and “better assessment feedback”.

Answering the same question, Stockton ranked “better assessment feedback” as their top priority, “diversifying the curriculum” as second and “more accessible courses (cost)” as third.

The Raise Your Voice Campaign is part of the student consultation that will steer the Students’ Union in their decision making this year.

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

8

The 800th Palatinate

Durham war heroes, ice hockey behind the Iron Curtain, and “lefty” Palatinate Sir Harold Evans edited The Times and Sunday Times, has been voted the nation’s greatest ever newspaper editor, and was knighted for his services to journalism in 2004. To mark Palatinate’s 800th edition, he shares his memories of taking over the paper a mere three years after its creation...

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agical Durham. No-one forgets the incomparable vista from the train when the curtain of hedges parts on the drama of the rocky wooded peninsula, “half church of God, half ’gainst the Scot.”

When I heard from the editors that this is to be the 800th edition of Palatinate, I had the wild notion that carefully laid one on one, the thousands of pages in 800 editions, and the hundreds of thousands yet to come, could be fashioned into a tower, a landmark of Durham college life captured by journalism as it was lived and preserved for generations.

In 1950 the Union Society debated a motion that “the journalist is a man who has sold his soul” The science labs and school of architecture could design an indestructible structure for placement outside the Palace Green Library, where a few of us ambitious inkstained wannabees had shivered in a cold room pasting up columns of type that originated on clapped out keyboards.

Of course, my fanciful Palatinate Tower would be embedded with electronic links so that a

visitor could summon to a central screen anything from the archives – a video of Hatfield’s Will Carling scoring a run for the Colleges; Trevelyan’s Mow Mowlam confronting terror as Secretary of Northern Ireland; Hunter Davies chatting with Paul McCartney; Justin Welby’s last sermon at St John’s before being invested the Archbishop of Canterbury; James Bond at Hild Bede while still Roger Moore.

I was at Castle in 1949, one year after the founding of Palatinate, though at the time I didn’t realize it was so freshly born: where was the heralded curiosity of the journalist? The colleges then had an infusion of real war heroes; freshly demobbed National Service men in our twenties; and fresh-faced high schoolers reeking of cleverness.

As a teenager in Manchester, hot with competing newspapers, I’d set my heart on being a reporter. I daren’t think of getting involved with Palatinate in my first Durham year when my exserviceman’s grant depended for renewal in a second year on my wrestling Leviathan to the ground and remembering all the conditions covered by ceteris paribus in elaborate models of the British economy. Ceteris paribus indeed, blown up by Brexit blowhards.

Anyway, in 1950 I could not spare the time to be at the Union Society the night the members debated the motion that “the journalist is a man who has sold his soul”. I read about it in Palatinate and it may be this report spurred me to drop in on the 1951 editor Derek Harrison (St Cuthbert’s Society).

I didn’t see people falling over to help him – only three on the masthead – so I volunteered to do proof-reading and paste-up chores. For this, Derek rewarded me with the title Assistant Editor and an interview as his possible successor with the owners of the paper, the Student Representative Council (SRC).

▲ Sir Harold took a complaint from the Durham Conservative Association very seriously, totting up the column inches given to each political society. Over a period, no single club dominated (Palatinate Archives, 1951)

I shamelessly touted my experience as a weekly newspaper reporter at 16 who’d flogged round the streets of the cotton town in Ashton-Under-Lyne, and founded a magazine in the RAF. They were more interested in how good I was at arithmetic.

Truly not very, but enough to reckon that the plan some of them had to cut the number of pages from ten to eight would equal fewer readers, fewer advertisers.

I argued that a new editor should be allowed to raise the cover price and add two pages – more sport, more features, more news around town.

I had no newspaper management experience. They would be taking the risk of digging a bigger hole. So I salute members of the SRC who agreed. Every one of these brave discerning undergraduates went on to fame by taking risks to revive giant industries in decline (that last bit is called journalistic licence).

I tried out for the hockey team and had the bruise to testify they were not deeply interested in peace with anyone The experiment worked thanks mainly to undergrads flexing muscles in the new open pages. Derek Holbrook, who went on to run labor at ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries], wrote a gossip column, Ian Rodgers, a gadfly poet got enough practice to fly his verses in BBC radio spaces.

It was his idea to do a solid study of the pubs, identifying one over Framwellgate Bridge where you could debate capitalism with Marxist coal miners. We were proud of gown reporting on town, but we were nothing like as assiduous as more recent editors. Has hate crime increased in the area?

Ask Palatinate.

I can say, hand on heart, that two experiences at Palatinate were pivot points.

The fifties were convulsed by how serious a menace was international communism. Mao had taken over China. Stalin had tried to starve us out of Berlin and snuffed out democracy in Eastern Europe. North Korea had invaded the South. Everyone despised the redbaiter Senator Joe McCarthy, but he had some real fuel for his

▲ Evans speaking to a Durham University audience on his role in exposing the Thalidomide scandal, as part of Netflix documentary Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime (Jacqui Morris)

fabrications and his odious witch hunts.

In this fevered period the Durham ice hockey team accepted an invitation to take part in the Ninth World university Games in Romania. Behind the Iron Curtain! The Warden of the Durham Colleges and the Academic Council of professors vetoed their departure.

The student body rebelled.

The official argument that the travel would disrupt studies was a whitewash. The real reason for the fear was that the Durham skaters could be suborned, bullied or blackmailed into pro-communist peace statements. I had tried out for the hockey team and had the bruise to testify they were not deeply interested in peace with anyone.

The uproar gave the new Palatinate lift-off. My shorthand came in handy for covering the speeches but the editorial I wrote supporting the team was a toothless on- the -one hand, on- the other. I cringed when I read it later.

Lesson One: Editorials must lead.

Justin Welby gave sermons at John’s before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury; James Bond was at Hild Bede while still Roger Moore Lesson Two came from members of the Durham Colleges Conservative and Unionist Association. They had long complained their events and speakers always got short shrift in “lefty” Palatinate. We took it seriously. Local ad-

vertisers were uneasy. We spent hours measuring column inches given to all the political clubs (pictured below left).

The grievance had no grounds, but the exercise made me acutely aware that an editor had to be like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. I’d spoken in Union political debates – without anyone being moved one way or another – but something had held me back from explicit allegiance to any political party. I stuck to it.

Palatinate persuaded me not to pin on a party badge The Palatinate experience persuaded me that pinning on a party badge would make it easier to have solid reporting and reasoned argument discounted as party propaganda.

Enough. This sounds too much like the beginning of a term paper. Discuss. Do not write on both sides of the paper.

Happy 800th!

Sir Harold Evans, MA Dunelm, former editor of The Sunday Times (1966-1981) and The Times (1981-2) is Editor at Large at Reuters.

His books include Good Times, Bad Times; My Paper Chase; and Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters.

Documentary Attacking the Devil, about his role in exposing the Thalidomide scandal, is available on Netflix.

(Portrait: Jason Bell)

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

9

The 800th Palatinate

“The most fun I’ve had in my life without taking my clothes off” Hunter Davies, OBE remembers avoiding his studies, impersonating rowers, and smashing a Castle stainedglass window with an orange

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ooking back at my longlegged life writing books, columns, shifting words generally, I think the most fun I ever had in my life, without taking my clothes off, was editing Palatinate.

This happened in 1957 and happened really by chance. I thought until then I would do something safe and boring like teaching, which would please my mum.

I found myself putting up my hand, saying “please sir, let me fill your hole?”

The roommate I had at Castle was giving up a little job he had as advertising manager of Palatinate, a nonsense really – there were hardly any ads in those days. I thought it would look good on my CV, if ever I applied for any sort of job. Playing football, playing shove

ha’penny at the Buffalo’s Head, and getting drunk were my main activities, but were unlikely to impress possible employers.

I went in one day with the latest adverts to the Palatinate offices which were then in Hatfield, as the editor was at Hatfield. Big drama. Lots of clutching of heads. There was a hole in the page. Something had fallen through. What the heck – no one one swore in those days – are we going to hecking do?

I found myself putting up my hand, saying “please sir, let me fill your hole?”

I went back to my room in Castle and wrote a piece pretending to be a boat club hearty. I had just been to a boat club dinner in Castle where I threw an orange through a Medieval stained-glass window.

(Durham Book Festival)

Not my fault. Rubbish glass.

It was in the first person. “Gorrup, was sik out of winder, went down to holl, had brake fast, was sik again...” Actually I just made that up, as I haven’t got a copy, but it was that sort of pathetic Just

William sixth-form humour. Which always amused me. Still does. And I even get paid for it now.

Next issue I wrote a pretend day in the life of a theology student, as we had so many of them at Durham in the fifties. Then I did a science student, trailing to the labs.

I called the column ‘A Life in the Day,’ turning round the old cliché. I then progressed to features editor of Palatinate and then, oh joy, oh rapture, became Editor. In 1958 I joined Kemsley Newspapers as a graduate trainee – which very soon after became Thomson Newspapers. Then in 1960 I joined the Sunday Times.

In 1977, twenty years after I wrote that first silly column in

Palatinate, I pinched the title and the format when I was editing The Sunday Times Magazine. A Life In the Day, at the back of the magazine, is still going – though it is serious now, the day in the life of real people.

So thank you Palatinate. And thank you Durham. Good job I didn’t waste my time doing serious, sensible, studying-type activities...

Hunter Davies, OBE, was at University College, 1954-1958. He currently writes three newspaper columns, on Money in the Sunday Times, on football in the New Statesman and in Cumbria Life, on any old thing.

He has also published 98 books.

His memoirs, The Co-Op’s Got Bananas, which covers his Durham days, is now out in paperback, Simon and Schuster, £8.99.

George Alagiah: “Our sense of fun always got the better of us” The BBC newsreader on ‘Golf Ball Typewriters,’ being thrown in Van Mildert’s frozen lake, and having a Palatinate computer named after him Eugene Smith Editor-in-Chief

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eorge Alagiah, OBE is a man with little time on his hands.

Currently in the thick-end of both a novel and a documentary, he squeezes in a half-hour chat with his old newspaper during his journey home from presenting the BBC’s News at Six. He’s just revealed to the nation that international development secretary Priti Patel has abandoned a trip to Uganda for a dressing-down from the PM; he nearly broadcast she was to be forced to resign, he tells me, but his team “weren’t absolutely sure we could stand it up”. Sure enough, five minutes into the interview and my phone flashes with a BBC News alert announcing her resignation.

Alagiah squeezes in a chat with Palatinate during his journey home from the News at Six Studying politics at Van Mildert from 1975-78, Alagiah “loved” his time at Durham. One immediate memory is his college’s old tradition of those whose birthday it

▲ An especially artistic edition from Alagiah’s editorship – Issue no. 294 (Palatinate Archives, 1976)

is being thrown in the lake: “my birthday’s in November,” he sighs, “so there were a couple of times I broke ice as I went in.

“Pretty hideous, but it was one of those college rituals, you know.”

He stumbled on the editorship of Palatinate in his first year, and held the position for a year after that. “God knows what possessed me – I had a lot more confidence

than I do now, probably – but I stood for election, and amazingly I got it.”

Under his watch, he says, “there was always a kind of attempt at being serious, and then… our sense of having fun got the better of us.

“I tried to give it a more journalistic edge while I was Editor.

I don’t know how much I succeeded, but I introduced a sort of op-ed [opinion editorial] page, where we could really take on some fairly heavy topics.

“I remember tackling stuff like cystic fibrosis, which has still not been solved but there was a guy at Durham who was working on it.”

He’s not entirely sure he was always fully in control of the paper, though. “I remember there were at least two days before we had to go to press when I spent my whole life, the whole day, traipsing up and down from college to college collecting articles that hadn’t been handed in on time.

“I’d tell myself I was in charge but in fact there was a woman called Anita Scott, who was our ‘manager,’ or something like that, and she sat in front of this massive, great big thing called a Golf Ball Typewriter, which in its time

was state of the art but it was literally a metal golf ball.”

In stark contrast to the technological prowess of the current Palatinate office, replete with Apple Macs, this typewriting golf ball had “all the letters round it and it sort of swivelled round and smacked into the page, and there you had your copy”.

He and Jeremy Vine “chuckle at the idea we were both at Durham” Rather fittingly for this doublepage spread, Alagiah adds: “The other thing I’ve got to say is there’s some pretty illustrious people who’ve gone through and I’m not talking about myself at all. I mean, before I got there, there was Hunter Davies… and then Harold Evans, of course, very famous.”

Alagiah meanwhile worked with fellow alumnus Jeremy Vine when they were correspondents in South Africa, but although the pair of them often “chuckle at the idea we were both at Durham,” Alagiah was unaware Vine edited the same student newspaper.

When I tell him he and Vine share the honour of having a Palatinate office computer named after them, he laughs. “Yours is a lot

faster and crashes a lot less than Jeremy’s,” I say. “So you’re the more popular of the two.”

He chuckles again. “Well that’s as it should be!”

George Alagiah, OBE, has presented the BBC’s News at Six since 2007, having previously been an awardwinning foreign correspondent for the corporation.

▲ Alagiah in 2009 (Shared Interest via Creative Commons)

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Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

The 800th Palatinate

Two words: ‘Seize Love’

Radio 2, Eggheads and election-night graphics would be lost without him – as would have been Palatinate in Epiphany Term, 1986. Three decades on from his editorship, Jeremy Vine offers some heartfelt advice to the University’s present undergrads...

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think my face must have fallen.

Sitting opposite Professor Tim Burt, the popular and long-serving Master of Hatfield, I checked to see whether he had noticed.

He was meeting me at a pizza parlour in London to talk about an honorary degree in Civil Law. Apparently that is the way the University recognises any graduate who has spent more than a decade playing records by Thin Lizzy.

At first I was chuffed. Getting an honorary degree from the University I love (the one that knocks Oxford and Cambridge into two cocked hats, as if that even needs saying) was a true moment of personal pride. The excitement was only dented a little when Prof Burt said that having a degree in Civil Law did not mean I could go around arresting people at will.

But that was not when my face fell. As I accepted the news with a butterfly-thrill in my stomach, already thinking of the joyful moment the train crawls into position opposite the cathedral, the Master added: “And of course the great thing, Jeremy, is that you will not have to make a speech.”

Durham knocks Oxford and Cambridge into two cocked hats, as if that even needs saying “No speech at all?”

“Nothing. You just sit there in the Cathedral and accept the degree.”

Oh. At that point my smile definitely dropped. My sister is an actress, my brother is a comedian. The three of us are drawn to any raised surface because (for reasons I do not understand) we think a stage means people want to hear us speak or act or tell a joke. Surely, if you are in a vast, vaulted space with two thousand graduates and four thousand mums and dads, and someone calls your name, you want to say something? Just one thing?

Of course I could not express the thought to the charming Professor.

If my crest had fallen he did not see. An objection would make me look like an ego-tripping muppet.

The person who says “I will come if you let me address the multitudes and show off a bit” would be seen as a hideous bighead.

But quietly it gnawed at me as the ceremony approached. If

▲ Palatinate is not the only newspaper with fond memories of Jeremy Vine: this photo was taken in 1987, one year after his graduation (Jeremy Vine)

I were to speak ― suddenly jump the shark and say something, not a proper speech but just something ― what would the something be? What single sentence sums it all up? The journey from gorgeous Durham (1983-86, the same three years The Smiths existed, the quintessential student band) to the fatal rockface of the BBC? What single phrase would explain it ― help a student keen on the same things to make the same journey, avoid the same mistakes?

If the speech could not be twenty minutes or even twenty seconds, but just a word or two, what would those two words be?

When well-known people are asked to address schools and colleges, they unconsciously echo each other. Every single time. In Philip Larkin’s phrase, they do not mean to but they do. They always say: 1. I’m jolly successful 2. You can be too 3. You just have to follow your dreams They usually take twenty-five minutes to say it when they have been asked to speak for ten. And I used to think #followyourdreams was good advice until a friend told me he kept having dreams about being a serial killer.

Anyway, I am convinced that a person whose dream has died is

in a far worse state than one who accepts early on that accountancy may be a more practical option than lion-taming. No, I reckoned there was something better to be said.

I thought #followyourdreams was good advice until a friend told me he kept dreaming about being a serial killer Around me, over the years, I have noticed a tragedy. It unfolds in the lives of those people, male and female, who focus on what they do in their working hours to the exclusion of all else (for a long time I was one of them).

They meet the person they love when they are twenty-two but decide he or she must give way to the extra night at the law firm or the business trip to Madrid. “Love will have to wait,” they tell themselves.

Love is less useful than money.

Love will not pay a gas bill. Love is always there, ready to be re-activated. Love is just a Tinder-swipe away.

In their late thirties, the wings of tragedy flutter. They are successful now, these people, but find there is still no time for the candlelit dinner. They left their true love a dec-

ade before. Now the two meet in a London café. One says, “You are so successful, running your own company, honorary degree, the whole thing.”

The other replies: “And you’re married.”

“Two kids. Really happy. You should see them.”

“I’d love to.”

And they fall into silence, the steam from their Americanos brief-

▲ Palatinate issue no. 398, edited by one ‘Jerry Vine’. The edition broke the news of Hatfield maintaining its all-male halls but Castle admitting women for the first time (Palatinate Archives, 1986)

ly misting the window as the office workers troop past in step, the army no one can ever leave.

So I knew what the speech had to be. It only needed two words. I would accept my honorary degree and say into the cold cathedral air – “Seize love.”

The moment came. Professor Burt called my name, the parents and students clapped politely. I heard someone make polite remarks about Radio 2 and Newsnight. Then I stood, heavily, those two words on the tip of my tongue.

There was a moment of confusion, a jiggered move of the left heel for which Bruno Tonioli would certainly have deducted a point.

Instead of turning to the audience and speaking, I swallowed and turned. Someone shook my hand and smiled, my shoulders dropped and the moment was gone. I never said the two words.

I have said them now.

Jeremy Vine is a presenter, broadcaster and journalist, best known for hosting his own show on BBC Radio 2 and renowned for his exclusive reporting from war-torn areas across Africa.

He has also presented such programmes as Eggheads, Crimewatch and Newsnight.

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

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Comment responds to the waves of sexual assault allegations Page 12

Comment

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Student journalism: innovative or indulgent?

Helena Snider

Student publications show that young people care Some critics think student journalism is pointless. Yes, people read The Tab, because, after all, who wouldn’t want to know which Harry Potter character most aligns with their college atmosphere?

The Tab does what it does well: it entertains (apparently over 11,000,000 monthly readers globally, according to their page).

Fun, silly, trivial, yes – but not what people generally associate with earnest student journalism.

I’m talking here about the kind of student journalism that you would envisage pre-Tab days. The type that’s earnest, conscientious, noble, and that has a somewhat small readership. In other words: Palatinate.

Imagine twenty or so stressed students sitting in a seminar room on their Tuesday evening, discussing whether a broken window on Hawthorn Terrace constitutes a good news story, and that’s essentially an accurate depiction of what most student journalism entails.

The University doesn’t want a bad press. That’s why recent Palatinate pieces hold such power So what do student print publications try to do, and why do they bother? With online news easy to access (and often free), it seems needless to have students writing on current affairs when there are experts out there who arguably have better resources, training and wider knowledge.

It might be tempting to launch into a frequently reproduced speech about the importance of students making an impact through investigative-led pieces.

Yet I am not claiming that student writing is going to help solve global issues – and this is a fact of which I’m sure everyone on the Palatinate editorial board is wellaware.

I am not suggesting that student journalists, when writing pieces

about terrorism, international security, or Trump’s latest shenanigans, are adding anything significantly new or innovative to the debate. Much of the time, student journalism is neither earth-shattering nor widely impactful.

Student journalism provides a voice for the issues that students care about on campus – and surely the fact that students are looking out for each other helps maintain some level of accountability in Durham.

Student journalism is about discovery and sharing for curiosity’s sake The University does not want a bad press, and this is why recent pieces like ‘Durham University: money-grabbing, shameless, and shambolic’ hold such genuine power in a small academic community.

Concern for whether the University then acts in response almost misses the point. We want a culture in which young people care about things. At some point down the line, it became cool to be dispassionate, cynical and indifferent. This sense of cynicism has long been associated with youth culture.

Older generations characterise us as unhappy and disaffected, and too lazy or self-involved to do anything about it. See any op-ed about the ‘Snowflake Generation’ by a patronising middle-aged man in The Telegraph, and you’ll see what I mean.

Student journalism is the proven antithesis of this view. Student journalism is about caring. It’s about discovering new things and sharing them for curiosity’s sake.

It’s about spending hours poring over edits or trying to master InDesign when you should be writing essays in the library.

The benefits of student writing lie in the skills harboured from this research, and also, most significantly, in the process of students engaging in the outside world, through whichever means possible.

Student journalism shows ‘the adults’ that we care and are willing to take responsibility for our future. That we will not be taken advantage of or go unheard. And this is where the power lies. Even if no one reads it at first.

Alexandra Beste

More ‘student’ than ‘journalism’, to be brutally honest The irony does not escape me here: a student writing an article for a univeristy newspaper arguing against student journalism? It seems I’m making the opposing side’s case for them, just by stringing these words together.

Arguably, however, criticism is best delivered from within, and perhaps the principal aim of this article is to reconsider the selfproclaimed merits of student journalism.

The term ‘journalism’ itself requires clarification. Journalism is bound to the pursuit of truth through unbiased and accurate research and investigation. Yet you would be hard-pressed to find a student exclusively and wholeheartedly motivated by this sense of obligation.

Often, it is only reporting on reported news CVs need to be filled, and little else looks as shiny as a university newspaper or magazine. And so the emphasis in ‘student journalism’, though we (Illustration by Faye Chua)

desperately want to place it on the latter word, should really be laid on ‘student’.

Of course, there are certainly students driven by a genuine desire to write, but they cannot fully devote themselves to the cause of journalism. Multiple commitments to academia and other extracurricular activities also demand attention, and unavoidably result in time constraints and a split focus.

Low readership begets wanting journalism If the roots of student journalism are in question, then so are its fruits. Entirely original, individual reporting appears to be missing in student articles on topics ranging from politics to sports, science, and business, as they largely draw on prior stories or secondary sources for facts, statistics, and quotes.

This borrowing robs the journalistic process of its key tenets. It is no longer about event attendances, interviews, and field research. Instead, we aggregate information and mould it anew.

In its most honest definition, student journalism is reporting on reported news.

Here I flip to the other side of the coin – the reader. Or, as I dare to suppose, the lack of one.

How often do you see a student newspaper being read, compared to how often you see one merely lying around?

University news struggles to reach its target audience.

Palatinate can serve as a case in point. The fortnightly paper publishes 4,000 printed copies of each issue for Durham’s nearly 18,000 undergraduates and postgraduates.

Low readership, if nothing else, must surely reflect an existing apathy towards student journalism.

News-enthusiasts turn to prominent, reputable press agencies instead of student papers for their information, while students otherwise indifferent to reporting remain indifferent, despite the propinquity of their university’s papers.

The journalist’s voice shouting into the void is an undeniably disheartening image, especially when taking the students who are turned away from university press writing into consideration.

Many undergraduates and postgraduates have ideas, notions, and important things to say – but do not perceive student journalism as an adequate medium. Even as I am writing this very article, I do so with the assumption that only a small minority of students at best will ultimately read it.

Perhaps, however, the matter of student journalism is less a twosided coin, but rather a doubleedged sword. Student journalism begets low readership, which in turn begets wanting journalism, which lacks accountability and engagement with its readership.

If this is the case, then student journalism needs to make greater use of its main assets, starting with local news. By affecting all attending students, the news in and around university gains a relevance, which needs to be fostered through veritable live coverage. This should not be the job of any group of people other than student journalists.

The most impactful reporting emanates from local news: investigative journalism. At its core, investigative research serves as an indirect check on institutions and authorities. Universities, while being centres of learning, are also money- and influence-wielding establishments that require a counterweight to protect the interests and rights of students, faculty, and other members of the university network.

Perhaps there is some unfulfilled potential Journalism is obligated to truth, but beneath this commitment lies a deeper sentiment for change.

However, in the case of student journalism, both the writers and readers often fail to uphold their part in bringing about change.

Without proper scrutiny, student readers are kept disengaged and unaware; without active readership, there is no one for the reporters to inform and inspire.

The flaw seems inherent in student journalism, but perhaps the vocation has an unfulfilled potential. And so I leave you with an appeal – an appeal to prove me wrong.

HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION?

Tell us what you think by emailing us at comment@ palatinate.org.uk

12

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

Comment

We must stop excusing drunken male behaviour Sam JohnsonAudini

I am tired. I am tired of having the same conversation with male friends over and over again.

I am tired of men that think it is acceptable to touch me on nights out. I am tired of being made to feel unreasonable when I talk about it. I am tired of men that excuse those men that have been inappropriate towards me or other female friends.

I want to make it clear: I do not care if he is a ‘good guy normally’. I do not care if he ‘drank too much’.

I do not care if ‘he does not know better’.

“There is always one guy in every group that is a bit off with women” I care that I am forced to accept unwanted groping and sexual advances as normal on a night out.

I care that my female friends and I feel unable to talk about our ex-

periences, without having men explain to us that this is normal.

In order to have an open and honest conversation about sexual assault and harassment at university, we have to address the drinking culture. This culture that tells some men that after a few pints all girls are fair game – ready to be treated like meat. Nothing reminds you that spaces do not belong to you like someone groping you on a night out.

“I don’t care if he’s a ‘good guy normally’” Efforts to downplay groping and other forms of assault and harassment are everywhere.

On last week’s Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop described an abuse of power by a male MP as ‘not high level crime, compared to say Putin or Trump.’

The only woman on the show that week, Jo Brand, responded by explaining: ‘It does not have to be high level for women to feel under siege in somewhere

like the House of Commons [...] if you’re constantly harassed, even in a small way, that builds up and that wears you down.’

There is obviously a large difference between the House of Commons and Durham nightclubs , but the conversations we need to have remain the same.

Being groped on a night out might seem like a minor issue, but when it happens nearly every time you go out you start to change your behaviour.

It does ‘wear you down’, as Brand claimed, especially because often you do not feel able to (Tim Dobson)

call it out in a cramped, dark club, faced by a guy twice your size; you often feel powerless. You can start to go out less, change the clubs you go to, dress differently, but even these changes do not make a difference.

There is always one. One guy in every group that everyone knows is a bit off with women. ‘Lovely’ when sober, but two pints down and he’s ruining your female friends’ evenings with unwanted advances. Call him out. When your female friends talk to you about it the following morning, do not excuse him. Do not tell them that normally he is a nice guy or that he just acts like this when he is drunk.

“You feel as though you are the problem” Firstly, this tells your female friends that you do not deem this behaviour unusual – you think it is a normal part of a night out, which is terrifying. Secondly, it silences those friends. It tells us that you

do not think these actions are important and you do not value us, women, and our experiences.

Tell him. Take him to one side and talk to him about the way he treats women. Explain that there are boundaries. On nights out keep an eye on him. Protect your female friends. We should not be thrown under the bus for you to have a fun evening. These conversations are not easy. They never are. But they need to happen.

Every part of the conversation surrounding sexual assault has become dominated by excuses.

Ironically, it robs the perpetrators of their agency. It silences the victims and makes it harder for us to speak out. When you are told that the person who assaulted you is actually ‘lovely’, you feel as though you are the problem. You feel as though you are being unreasonable for talking about it.

We need to centre conversations surrounding assault towards those who have experienced it and work towards a culture that condemns the perpetrators.

Sexual harassment at work: a perennial problem Munia Muzammel Shethi In a letter sent to Harper’s Bazaar in 1908, a woman described how she was offered a job as a stenographer on the condition that she went on ‘pleasure trips’ with the doctor that was hiring her. The wife ‘doesn’t mind’, so the doctor claimed.

A century has passed. Until October, it may have seemed improbable to some that women could face such ordeals in the twentyfirst century. After all, haven’t women gained absolute equality?

But, following the Harvey Weinstein revelations, it is clear that women’s place at work is still threatened by sexual harassment.

Why do women still have to face sexual violence in the workplace?

Following a series of allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and rape against Weinstein, women from all over the globe felt inspired to share their similar stories on social media using #MeToo to show the magnitude of workplace harassment. These latest revelations of sexual violence against women in the workplace

have brought out the same old victim-blaming trope.

The same questions are being asked: Why didn’t they disclose it earlier? Why didn’t they go to the police? Did they dress and behave appropriately? Did they encourage it?

The workplace is built upon patriarchal traditions of exploitation These questions have been raised countless times. However, it is interesting to consider firstly why these questions are even being asked to begin with and, secondly, why women still have to face sexual violence in the workplace. Although the reasoning behind the former is slightly more complicated, both of these questions can be traced back to a common origin.

Unbelievably, married women in the UK have only been able to own property in their own right for just over a century. In the UK, before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, women were unable to be the legal owners of the money they earnt.

Women were legally denied economic agency and often their bodies were treated as commodities. They were thus often mere objects of exploitation and The dowry system,

which is still rampant in some countries, is a reminder of that.

In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, when women in the west first gained property rights and started to enter the workplace, the age-old paradigm of patriarchal domination was threatened.

Women’s participation in wage labour meant that the husband or father no longer remained the sole breadwinner. It meant that women now had a voice in the family.

As small a change as it was, it threatened the traditional construction of the family, which posed a problem for women wanting to work. However, harsh economic reality compelled many working class women to enter the workplace – a place which by then had ingrained the idea that the woman’s place is in the home.

So toxic was the working environment in the late-nineteenth century that it was a widely held belief that most prostitutes were former factory workers who had been sexually exploited at work.

It is no surprise that the female workers were deemed to be of bad character. This not only made it easy to exploit the women, but also disincentivised women from joining the workforce. So, today when a woman’s character is questioned whenever an act of workplace harassment is brought to light, we can see echoes in the past.

In her journal article, Mary Bularzik describes how female workers in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century who faced a range of sexual violence, including rape, were ‘promised jobs’ before being ‘threatened with loss of jobs and blacklisting’. In response to resistance to one of his unwanted sexual advances, the disgraced Harvey Weinstein once allegedly threatened that if the then future Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o wanted to make it as an actress she would have to put up with ‘this sort of thing’.

Women are still asked to have a ‘sense of humour’ In response, women are asked to have a ‘robust attitude’ and ‘sense of humour’, amongst other things. There are echoes of the situation from a century ago.

Women still face sexual violence in the workplace because the working environment is built upon patriarchal traditions of exploitation. It is not restricted to the confines of the Hollywood Hills.

Around 40% of women working in the fast food industry have been sexually harassed at work, and this experience of harassment for women ranges from the fast food industry to the military.

Up until the 1910s, one of the most common arguments made in

(Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr)

opposition to allowing women to vote in the US was that it would be unfair to unmarried men because a married man would then have two votes, as the property votes as her owner votes. Since 1957, thanks to women’s movements and organised activist efforts, women have been allowed to serve on federal juries, and since then enormous changes have been made.

We are aware of the arguments made in opposition to women’s basic human rights back in the 1910s which later collapsed, and now we too are witnessing similar reactionary forces using terms like ‘feminazi’ to impede the process of equality, and to undermine those who have the temerity to challenge, retaliate against and fight sexism. Perhaps this means we are in the long but last bout of patriarchy.

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PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

Profile

“Many of the happiest experiences of my life were when I was Chancellor of Durham” For our 800th edition, Profile catches up with iconic former Chancellor Bill Bryson

moment in which they realised: “I’ve done it!”

Bryson also celebrates the opportunity to be “part of a community” of academics and students which the role of Chancellor brings.

When questioned on his stance towards the changes the rises in college accommodation fees will bring to the student community, Bryson is understandably uneasy in committing himself to an answer on a situation he knows little about.

Izzy Ardron Profile Editor Holly Adams Deputy Profile Editor “I adore Durham, as you know,” laughed Bill Bryson, OBE, the award-winning author of Notes from a Small Island (1996) and former Chancellor of Durham University.

Yet when asked about his own university experience at Drake University, Iowa, Bryson reflects on his longing to escape and explore.

In 1972, after two years of his degree, Bryson made the decision to leave Iowa for a four-month trip around Europe.

“I have never known America in a worse place than it is now” He recalls: “I was a bit impatient to be grown up and to get out into the real world because I really had not gone anywhere other than across town for university.”

This was to be the first of Bryson’s many trips to the continent, and inspiration for his book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991).

When asked about his favourite place his travels have taken him, Bryson is quick to answer: "Britain."

Bryson describes in more detail how “over the whole course of my life I have to say Britain because obviously it changed my life. I was completely smitten”.

Bryson here reminices on the “lucky accident” of meeting his wife, Cynthia Billen, outside the psychiatric hospital where he worked.

Travel has shaped both Bryson’s work and his life and he stresses the importance of travel for young people.

Travel, to Bryson, offers an “additional perspective”, a chance to re-evaluate our own cultures and sometimes ask, “Why don’t we do that where we come from?”

As a dual citizen of both the US and Britain, Bryson expresses his thoughts about the political and social climate of the two countries, stressing “I have never known America in a worse place than it is now."

Not only does Bryson find the Trump presidency deeply

“What more could you possibly ask for?” from your university town

▲ Bill Bryson, one of the best-loved chancellors in Durham’s history (Durham University) worrying, he suggests that issues such as gun crime and healthcare have become simply irreparable.

As for Britain, Bryson considers there to be an exciting dynamism providing new opportunities for travel and adventure to ordinary people.

However, with this dynamism, Bryson believes there is a growing culture of self-absorption and greediness: “People are so obsessed with their careers that sometimes they are not aware of other people.”

Nevertheless, in comparison to the isolated and naïve ‘Small Island’ Bryson first visited in 1973, Bryson celebrates the possibilities gap years and years abroad provide for young people to see more of the world; “A gap year is so important. It is a chance to grow up and see more of the world than you would have done otherwise” The conversation turns to Notes from a Small Island itself, the book for which Bryson is best-known in the UK.

Graduation is “the most magical week” Bryson admits ‘I don’t know’ why the book has garnered such popularity, unassumingly admitting to being “surprised” at how much the episodes have resonated with readers.

As occurs throughout our conversation, Bryson shifts the

focus of his answer to reflect more generally on his adopted homeland.

He suggests that Notes from a Small Island makes it clear that “I really do admire Britain”, whilst celebrating as “great” the fact that you can affectionately “tease” the British.

The half-admiring, half-joking tone of Notes from Small Island is arguably what has given rise to its popularity; it reads like being teased good-naturedly by a longstanding friend.

However, Bryson recognises that his comedy hasn’t always quite hit the mark.

Of his book The Lost Continent, which focuses on America, Bryson concedes he was “too hard” on his home state of Iowa.

Although Bryson would “stand by” his account, he regrets that the Iowa he presented was too onesided, focusing more on a “rustic,” “dopey” depiction of Iowans at the expense of including their “decency” and “wholesomeness”.

Bryson’s regret over his depiction of Iowa led him to revisit the state in his memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid to “redress the balance”.

This ability to recognise and reflect on his mistakes not only makes Bryson an amusingly self-deprecating writer and interviewee, but also an incredibly human one.

It is this fundamental human approachability which perhaps

explains why Bryson remains an enduringly popular Durham Chancellor.

Remembered for being heavily involved with the student life of the university, one of Bryson’s self-professed “great moments” as Chancellor was the Durham acting masterclass he organised with Russell Crowe in 2011.

A University education should be “free at the point of use” Bryson admits his surprise at pulling off an event he “never expected to happen”, and celebrates the “wonderful” Crowe, describing a photo he has of his children with Crowe in a Durham bar, all three of them “fairly intoxicated”.

This combination of celebrity glamour and down to earth humour has cemented Bryson’s place as a Durham icon.

Another feature which has become a recurring legacy of Bryson’s tenure as Chancellor is his appearance in numerous graduation photos.

Bryson admits he expected to find Congregation a more “boring” aspect of the role, shaking 800 hands “day after day for a week”.

However, his expectations were overturned, experiencing graduation as “the most magical week”, in which he had the privilege to see students receive their degree certificates, at the

However, Bryson’s reflections on the cost of the UK-wide student experience do convey his enduring affiliation with the student community.

He criticises tuition fees as “very worrying”, arguing that universities, like the NHS, should be “free at the point of use”.

Bryson also recalls being struck by “how white” Durham was during his Chancellorship, and advocates diversification of the Durham student body.

He indicates his support for seeing greater racial and economic diversity at Durham, as well as more “accents other than the Home Counties”. Bryson’s recollections of Durham are, however, overwhelmingly positive.

From the friendliness of the Durham locals, “who would say good morning to me like I was the Lord Mayor”, to being “completely bowled over” by the city on his first visit, Bryson wholeheartedly celebrates the city, university, and its people.

Bryson praises Durham as a place where the university is comfortably “integrated” in its host city, where the students are “bright, motivated, engaged”, and which benefits from being “isolated” in creating a close, community atmosphere for both study and socialising.

Bryson concludes his remarks on Durham posing the question “what more could you possibly ask for?” in a university which unites setting with a “first-class education”.

The same could well be said of Bryson, as one of the most involved and well-loved figures in the University’s recent history.

14

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

Politics

Politics News in Brief: What you missed

Kenyan election ‘sham’?

Undemocratic Democrats?

Interest rates doubled

Catalan leaders arrested

FBI Russian probe

Etienne Caswell

Katherine Evans

Matilda Jacobs

After the Supreme Court annulled Kenya’s August Presidential election, a second one was held in October. This second election however, only saw a 40% national turnout, with the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta winning 98% of the vote.

The election was evidently a sham, bringing Kenya to breaking point as threats of violence persist throughout the country. The faith that Kenyans have in their political system is lower than ever.

That a thriving and relatively strong global economy can be undermined by its own political system in such a way is a warning to us all.

On November 3rd, Senator Elizabeth Warren fuelled claims made by former DNC chief, Donna Brazile, that Hillary Clinton struck an “unethical” deal with the party in August 2015, well before her official presidential nomination.

On CNN and then PBSNewshour, Warren, who endorsed Clinton, confirmed she believed the 2016 primary “process was rigged.”

The deal saw the Clinton campaign provide a financial lifeline for the cash-strapped DNC in exchange for controlling the party’s finances, message and key staff positions.

On Wednesday, Warren tried walking back on her claims: “while there was some bias”, overall the primary process was “fair.”

The Bank of England, Nationwide and TSB have announced a rise in interest rates from 0.25% to 0.5% to curb inflation.

This is welcomed by the 45 million homeowners in the UK with savings, but not by the 9.2 million with variable rate mortgages.

Some could be faced with an average monthly increase of £11-12 in repayments.

Low income households may be disproportionately affected, as they are likely to have already borrowed money to cover the cost of rising food and fuel prices.

These effects may be exacerbated following predictions that interest rates will rise again over the next three years.

The world watched following the October referendum as Spain cracked down on Catalonia. Rajoy’s government has since taken control of all regionally devolved powers in the region.

This prompted the exile of many pro-independence politicians, including the ex-president Carles Puigdemont, who El Pais reports was helped out of the country by a backroom operation, seemingly in order to avoid Spain’s charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement.However, Puigdemont and multiple other colleagues have since turned themselves in to Belgian authorities. Having been bailed on November 5th, they are now awaiting a ruling by the Belgian courts.

The Trump-Russia collusion story has again deepened. On 30th October Paul Manafort, Trump’s chief election campaign director, was charged by the FBI. The charges relate to money laundering and failure to disclose both assets and links to the Ukrainian Government prior to the campaign. Although these charges are not in relation to Russian Collusion, the consensus is that the FBI will attempt to use these new charges to turn Manafort against Trumps inner circle – with hopes he’ll reveal information previously held back.

This is yet another development in the Trump-Russia saga, which is sure to continue for the foreseeable future.

(Peter M Njoroge via Flickr)

(Megan E. Kreger via Flickr via Flickr)

(Lotina marcus via Flickr)

(Imagen Primero via Flickr)

(DonkeyHotey via Flickr)

Paradise Papers exposed Alex Dickson Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper responsible for leading the Panama Papers investigation, has yet again managed to obtain a treasure trove of investigative journalism. Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the so-called Paradise Papers reveal further evidence of how some of the world’s largest multinational companies, richest individuals as well as public officials have invested money in offshore tax havens.

The involvement of the royal family has raised a few eyebrows as to how royal finances are being managed. The Queen’s private

estate was found to have invested millions of pounds into a Cayman Islands fund, whilst Prince Charles’ was also found to have a stake in a Bermuda-registered business, although this did address environment sustainability, one of Charles’ lifetime passion projects.

“

The involvement of the Royal family has raised a few eyebrows

”

( Michael Gwyther-Jones via Flickr)

Whilst investing offshore is not strictly illegal, many have understandably questioned whether the head of state’s money should be sitting in tax havens. Thus, these findings have led to calls for more transparency and scrutiny into the management of royal finances.

Across the pond, the names of Trump’s inner circle have also emerged in the papers. Trump himself tweeted last week that he planned to “bring back trillions of dollars from offshore”, yet it seems that he had best start with his cabinet members, such as Rex Tillerson and Steve Mnuchin, who had previously kept their company profits out of reach in tax havens. The papers also show a financial link between Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary, and a Russian gas business partly owned by Putin’s son-in-law.

The revelations this week have not been met by nearly as much public protest as with the release of the Panama Papers last year.

Wealthy individuals are likely embarrassed by their associations with such a public investigation, however it is unclear whether these revelations will force a governmental policy change.

Rhodri Sheldrake Davies Deputy Politics Editor

Tom Cameron Rhianna Cameron

Cabinet chaos Jack Parker Deputy Politics Editor Scandals involving several major figures in May’s cabinet have pushed government the closest it has ever been to collapse.

“ ”

Crescendo of chaos

The International Development Secretary Priti Patel resigned following a controversy surrounding unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials, including the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while on holiday in the country in August. Mrs Patel’s actions have raised concerns about ministerial transparency, with Labour calling for an investigation to assess whether she breached ministerial code. Her promise to send part of Britain’s foreign aid budget to a region the British government doesn’t recognise as Israeli suggests Mrs Patel may have been following her own personal motives.

The Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon also stood down, his personal conduct falling “be-

(Bond via Flickr) low the high standards” expected of those serving in the Armed Forces. Sir Michael had been accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour by the Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom.

Meanwhile, the controversy involving First Secretary of State Damian Green has deepened with the claim that pornography was found on a computer in his parliamentary office in 2008. The accusation, denied by Mr Green, came days after he was implicated in claims of sexual harassment.

These are all accusations that have surfaced within a fortnight – a crescendo of chaos is starting to build around this government, but is collapse inevitable?

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

15

Politics

Predatory culture in the corridors of power exclusively at her side of the house.

Labour too, has it’s serious problems with sexual hierarchy, harassment and abuse. Backbencher Kelvin Hopkins had been suspended from the party following allegations of harassment. Anonymous activists have created an online platform to disclose incidences of harassment and assault, called LabourToo, partly in response to the party’s NEC failing to set up an independent investigation into abuse.

Kate McIntosh As allegations of sexual misconduct against the high and mighty of Hollywood made their way across the Atlantic last month, the British political establishment was readying itself for the same storm.

It made landfall on 29th October, when vigilante political commentator Guido Fawkes leaked a list of 40 MPs accused of various acts of sexual misconduct, compiled by junior Conservative researchers.

“

“ Serious problems

with sexual hierarchy, harassment and abuse

”

The list – which is unpublishable in the UK – includes an MP who allegedly impregnated and forced an abortion on a young researcher, and several senior ministers accused of being “inappropriate” or

“handsy” with journalists or backbenchers. These allegations have been firmly denied by many on the list, who outed themselves in the hope of killing the story before it travelled further.

So where has Theresa May been? A watershed for women in parliament this may be, it’s also most likely not what she – the second woman Prime Minister in British history – would like to be remembered for. She has called for “a new culture of respect at the

(Elena Onwochei-Garcia)

centre of public life”. But now her own Cabinet is in the spotlight.

Damian Green has been accused, and Michael Fallon was forced to apologise for behaviour that “fell short”. He was replaced by Gavin Williamson, ex-Chief Whip, as Defence Secretary. It’s an odd choice, given that now more than ever before May needs a loyal Tory majority.

Yet May’s pleas aren’t directed

Calls for openness about the nature of the allegations

”

Politics’ problem with sexual abuse goes far beyond the corridors of Westminster. And the nature of party politics and grassroots activism means that coming forward is a minefield of potential embarrassment and further harassment. Some party members have been made to feel that call-

ing out harassment would be a betrayal of the party itself. In a radio interview Labour’s Bex Bailey revealed that she was raped by a man in a senior role, at a Labour party event, and when she reported it she was told a formal complaint would jeopardise her career prospects.

The death of veteran Welsh Assembly member Carl Sargeant earlier this month has prompted calls for more openness about the nature of allegations. Sargeant, who it’s thought committed suicide, submitted several requests for information from Welsh Labour, after he was sacked following allegations of harassment.

Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet, has spoken out about what he sees as a “witch hunt”. In response to Gale’s scaremongering, long time women’s right campaigner and ‘mother of the house’ Harriet Harman said “No, it’s not a witch hunt – it’s long overdue.”

Harman’s right; it’s becoming clear that the culture of abuse is massive in scale and deep-rooted in nature. Thus, attempts to correct present and past wrongs must themselves be radical, allencompassing and relentless.

Political Debate: Should the voting age be lowered to 16?

Yes: It should be lowered No: It should remain 18 Eric Sargent The act of voting is central to the legitimacy of any healthy democracy. When the state regulates the manner in which individuals are free to live their lives, it is your capacity to influence these rules and regulations that separates democracy from tyranny. The British government determines how vital services like the NHS function, how our armed forces should be used to protect us, what fundamental rights individuals have, as well as many other things. These questions are of no lesser importance to a 16 year old than anyone else, that we should deny them a chance to contribute their voice on any one of these issues is absurd.

“

One’s right to vote, to engage in democracy, is completely inalienable

”

Already a great deal of trust is placed in 16 year olds. In the eyes of the law 16 year olds are mature enough to marry, to consent, to enlist, to gamble, they are but a year off from being allowed to drive.

Each of these things have dramatic repercussions both for the individual and for society, but we permit them to do these things because they are not children, because they can handle it.

“

A great deal of trust is placed in 16 year olds

”

Even if, in some few instances, we cannot trust some to vote responsibly; age is no great way of limiting this. Indeed if our greatest concern was having responsible voters, we should presumably test voters of all ages for their responsibility before we allow them to vote.

But we do not, because one’s right to vote, to engage in democracy is completely, totally, inalienable.

Nathan Cinnamond

Cameron McIntosh Politics Editor The Labour party has accused the Government of filibustering an amendment seeking to lower the voting age to 16.

The private member’s bill proposed by Labour MP, Jim McMahon, sought to give all 16-year-olds the right to vote in general elections, local elections and referendums.

Ill-tempered debate ensued in the chamber, forcing the Deputy Speaker to interject, “this is not a football match.” Tory MP Philip Davies mockingly suggested that Labour would enfranchise 10-year-olds if it could and the bill was blocked from progressing to a vote.

We have put this divisive issue to some of our writers, asking if the voting age should be lowered.

What should be rightly established at the head of this debate is that both sides agree such a concept as a ‘voting age’ should exist. That is, below a certain age one is, by one metric or another, unfit to cast a ballot. What we are then discussing is at what age we suspect the typical person becomes able to contribute a meaningful vote.

“

Certain rights must be earned reather than assumed

”

To the proposition I ask: why 16?

The initial response is naturally framed around the presumption of rights. ‘If 16-year olds can work full time, pay income tax and have consensual sex then they ought to have the right to vote!’ Proponents are conceding much more than they should care to, for an argument like this must be made in principle.

16-year-olds cannot, with equal

justification, buy alcohol or drive a car, so the argument for ‘consistency’ cannot be made without arguing to lower the legal age for these activities as well.

“

16 year olds cannot buy alcohol or drive a car

”

Now that we have established that certain rights must be earned rather than assumed, I would like to make the bold statement that the average individual below 18 years does not have the necessary first-hand life experience to consider most, if not all, of the pledges of a party-political manifesto. Furthermore, voting for a candidate because he appeared with Stormzy is not a substitute for this. Indeed, the high youth turnout in the snap election is promising, and clearly indicative of an engaged group of people. But let us not pick the fruit before they are ripe.

16

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

SciTech

Durham Police gain a Hart but can’t lose their soul

Harry Llweyen Deciding who to keep in custody and who to release on bail is often a difficult decision for the police and probationary services. The consequences of getting it wrong are serious. To help make betterinformed decisions, Durham Constabulary has introduced an Artificial Intelligence (AI) aid system.

The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) was first introduced in 2013 after being trained on over 100,000 custody events.

(Pexels) It classifies suspects into three groups: those with low, medium, or high risk of reoffending, and then monitors reoffending rates in the future.

It continues to be used as a decision-making tool in bail decisions within Durham Police today, though there has been some criticism of this latest AI member of the Police. So how does Hart work? How useful is it? And will it replace human decision altogether?

The AI will see classifying an offender as low risk, who then reoffends, as a costlier mistake than classifying someone who does not reoffend as high risk.

This shows in the results, since the former scenario happened in only 2 % of cases, whereas the latter occurred in 12 %.

The AI itself carries out statistical analysis using 34 predictors, most of which relate to the offender’s prior criminal history. Some concerns have been raised over the inclusion of postcode and gender as predictors.

Frederike Kaltheuner, policy officer for Privacy International, told Mashable that a “subset of the population [...] have a much higher chance of being misclassified.”

Worryingly, arrests in a targeted area would then be used to ‘improve’ the model, which could further increase the weighting of postcode biases.

A similar algorithm used by US Police has been criticised for racism due to the inclusion of ethnicity as a predictor.

ProPublica published a report in 2016, claiming the US algorithm forecasted excessive negative

outcomes for black suspects.

The technology firm that created the algorithm denied these allegations, but the room for controversy over these predictors is apparent.

Hart does avoid such issues, since predictors of address and gender are combined with the other 32 predictors in thousands of combinations before a result is obtained. This means that no single predictor has an unavoidably significant impact, and ethnicity as a predictor is completely excluded to avoid racial bias.

The move suggests a direction towards increasing reliance on AI by UK police Sheena Urwin, the head of criminal justice of the Durham Constabulary, who wrote a paper in 2016 assessing the learning algorithm, explained to the BBC that “the AI was only a tool to ‘support officers’ decision making”. In fact, a full record of the machine’s process to arrive at its decision is recorded for later

examination by officers.

The introduction of Hart suggests a direction towards increasing reliance on AI by the UK police, and the system is currently being adjusted to remove one of the postcode predictors.

Despite some inevitable criticism, this trial has been widely regarded as successful, and Durham could soon be seen as the birthplace of AI systems for assisting officers.

This does not mean that AI will become the sole decision maker for the Police. “It’s important to stress that accuracy and fairness are not necessarily the same thing”, Mr Kaltheuner said. This highlights the primary flaw inherent in these AI systems: the decisions they make is only as effective as the information they use.

Whilst Hart may become increasingly accurate in its predictions, this does not necessarily mean that it can ever replace human judgement which is based on local or recent information not accessible to the machine.

In fact, perhaps it never will.

Reader’s Scigest

Inferior: Angela Saini picks apart women’s representation in science

Martha Bozic SciTech Editor

Jack Eardley SciTech Editor

Taking on the spirit of reflection, this week Scigest considers some of the major scientific breakthroughs in the 25,450 days since the publication of the first edition of Palatinate.

A lot of things may be said about the differences between genders.

Some, like a man’s ability to parallel park a car or a woman’s legendary multitasking skills are patently absurd. Others seem so woven into society that they could plausibly hold some truth, even if it is unpleasant to consider it.

Angela Saini was invited to Durham by Palatinate Scitech to give a talk discussing women and their portrayal in science.

The talk was based on her new book Inferior: How science got women wrong which is a critically acclaimed, careful and insightful dissection of the evidence on both sides of the discussion of gender differences.

Charles Darwin, the brilliant scientist behind the Theory of Evolution, famously believed in significant biological differences between genders even towards the end of his life. It was his view that whilst women were

Twitter has controversially doubled its character limit Scientific discoveries, have been coming thick and fast after centuries of relatively nothing.

In the space of 70 years, DNA was discovered, and the human genome project was completed, sequencing all human DNA. Dolly the sheep was cloned, and died six and a half years later. Man walked on the moon and traces of water were recently discovered on mars.

Meanwhile, Twitter has controversially doubled its character limit.

Perspective can be a good thing.

morally superior they could not compete intellectually with their male counterparts. He saw the enormous social divide between genders in Victorian England and concluded that biology must be the answer.

Darwin, however, should be read in the light of the society he was raised in. As many will know, women could not vote, could not easily own property and could not be members of Parliament. Even the scientific community was not exempt from the patriarchy as Marie Skłodowska Curie was not permitted entry to the French Academy of Sciences even after receipt of her second Nobel Prize in as many fields.

Darwin should be read in light of the scoiety he was raised in Many scientists have studied chimps and concluded from the clear patriarchy in their society and the strong genetic overlap with humans that the human

patriarchy was a biological inevitability. It was only after scientists decided to study our other close relative, the bonobo, and observed the obvious matriarchy that they realised the story was perhaps not quite so simple.

Saini believes it is not surprising that a great deal of scientific research claims to have found neurological or biological differences between genders, often with questionable methodology.

Recent scientific work, done both on psychometric testing and tribal culture, has suggested that if differences do exist between genders, they are most likely too small to be confidently measured.

The Mosuo women’s kingdom in Western China, for example, is a functioning example of a human female matriarchy. In this society, women not only hold disproportionate power and control, but behave with a lot of the characteristics we often consider masculine in the

(Angela Saini via wikimedia commons) the western world. They are openly promiscuous and the lead members of families; women are listened to simply because they are women.

Saini, however, does not offer a conclusive explanation for the presence of patriarchy in the vast majority of human societies.

She only says that patriarchy was created and not inherent; that it had a start point and, similarly, it will have an end.

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

18

Sport

“The real story is even more remarkable”

With the 30th anniversary of the 1988 Winter Olympics approaching, Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero talks to Devon Harris, a key member of the original Jamaican bobsleigh team Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero Sport Editor

“I

took a bunch of pictures during the Olympics and lost my camera during the Olympics, so I never did see them.”

This detail barely registers as a footnote in Devon Harris’ account of the 1988 Winter Olympics following our 45-minute long discussion, but it sums up the scarcely believable story of the original Jamaican bobsleigh team.

As one of the principal members of that side, however, Harris has a memory far clearer than any photograph.

He still remembers, for instance, his reaction when he first heard about the idea to create a Jamaican bobsleigh team.

“That it was the most absurd, ridiculous idea ever conceived by a man. I just remember thinking ‘No-one can get me to go on one of those things’.”

It is a story which has since been immortalised in the hugely popular 1993 film Cool Runnings.

Harris points out there are “very few accuracies” in it, but even so, he is far from resentful.

“It says ‘Based on the true story of the Jamaican bobsled team’ and I think it should have read ‘Very loosely based’.

“If you look at the bigger picture, it has given our story a really long life. There are a bunch of big stories from Calgary; there’s our story, there’s Eddie the Eagle, there’s Dan Jansen, there’s the Battle of the Carmens, Katerina Witt and Debi Thomas.

“Eddie just had a movie being released, but all of those stories were as big as ours. Ours turned out to be the biggest because we had a movie made five years afterwards.”

Harris dreamt of running for Jamaica at the Olympics from the age of 15. Even after becoming an officer, he refused to abandon that objective. With the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul on the horizon, he ran five miles every day before reporting for duty.

If Harris’ ambitions were far-fetched, then his route to the Olympics was even more extraordinary.

George Fitch, Commercial Attaché for the American embassy in Kingston between 1985 and 1986, came up with

the idea for a Jamaican bobsleigh team. Surprised at Jamaica’s non-involvement in the Winter Olympics given their obsession with the Summer Games, Fitch suggested bobsleighing because of the nation’s sprinting prowess.

He needed a team, however, and after approaching top athletes and sports clubs without success, he turned to the military. As the army’s 800m champion, Harris was one of the first in line.

“There’s a philosophy in the army that says officers must always participate,” he tells me.

“So the colonel figured he’d send his young, fit officer to make up numbers, and it didn’t quite work out the way he anticipated because I went there with every intention to make the team.”

But the dream was almost over before it started. Harris and his team had met the requirements for the Olympics by taking part in a race in Austria, but the IOC threatened to disqualify them 10 days before the Games in Calgary.

“We didn’t have enough experience, which is true, we didn’t have enough experience.

[We] had no business being in a sled, we know that now, but you couldn’t have told us that then.

And now the rules have changed significantly.”

Thanks to the intervention of

“

I remember thinking: ‘No-one can get me to go on one of those things’

”

Prince Albert of Monaco among others, they were allowed to compete. But as Harris says, “you’ll never have another Jamaican bobsled team, because nobody will be able to repeat what we did”.

How much training had they done prior to the Olympics?

“Not a whole lot. All of us, the four of us, that was really our first exposure to bobsledding. The team was selected in September of ’87, and the first time I went on a bobsled track was in Calgary in October of ’87.

“We trained in Calgary initially, then we went to Austria, spent

▲ Harris is now a motivational speaker, but he still has fond memories from Calgary 1988 (Wikimedia Commons) maybe four weeks in Austria, did one race against the ‘B’ teams from some of the major nations, went home for Christmas, went back to Lake Placid, spent the month of January there, and then we went to the Olympics. That’s it.”

The team could not anticipate the reception they would receive when they arrived in Calgary.

“It was crazy, almost to the point of being distracting. One person would ask for an autograph because they recognise who we are, and then there’s a mob.”

Harris and his teammates were originally only due to race in the two-man event, but, after competing in the two-man in Calgary, they wanted a fresh challenge. Despite never having raced in a four-man bobsleigh, they decided to try it.

There was just one problem: they needed a fourth teammate.

“Chris Stokes, who was not on the team, came to watch his brother [Dudley Stokes] race... We go “Hey, we should all enter the four-man so we can win a medal.

Chris, you’re a sprinter, right?””

The first two heats in the fourman event were underwhelming for the Jamaicans, but then came the third heat, with nearly 40,000 spectators watching on. Harris tells the story of that day.

“On that day, the second day, the third heat, it all just came together. 5:35, I think, was the start of the top, [it] turned out to

be the seventh fastest. The loading in the sled was perfect, you just [thought] “Yeah, this is it”.”

But then disaster struck when the sled hit the wall after the eighth corner.

“I’m sitting there right behind Dudley, in the second seat, head down in the sled. We came out of corner eight and we hit the wall, it’s never good to hit the wall but I’m thinking to myself ‘That’s fine, it’s a long straightway between eight and nine, so we’ll be okay’.

“And then we hit the wall again, just before hitting the corner and getting onto corner nine.

“Then, as we came around the end, the sled was rising at the point where it should have been going down. So I’m not knowing any of this, I just know I’m in the sled and we’re coming around, and the next thing I know I’m on my head.”

Did he not fear for his life?

“My thought was ‘Wow, how embarrassing, we’ve just crashed in front of the entire world’. And I know how awful it looked on TV, [but] I wasn’t scared for my life at all, I was just embarrassed that we had crashed.”

In Cool Runnings, this is the moment where the Jamaicans pick up their sled and walk to the finish line with their pride intact as applause rings out. But this could not have been further from the truth for Harris as he led the team off the track, even if people were hugely supportive.

“We came to a stop, and I crawled out and I realised we hadn’t crossed the finish line so there was no finish time, the Olympics were done for us basically.

“Track workers came, and then we started walking on the breaking stretch, just trying to exit stage left as quickly as we could.

But then, people just started to cheer… “We love you, we love you”.

“I was leading the pack, one guy reached over and shook my hand, I shook his hand and then I was shaking every other hand, heading for the breaking stretch.

But yeah, it was the lowest point of the experience.”

Although Harris sees that crash in the third heat as the nadir of the Games, he looks back on what the underdogs accomplished with “total pride”.

Does he still think it’s an important story today, then?

“The real story is even more remarkable than the story as depicted in the movie. I think it’s still relevant today because people still have dreams that they are free to go after.

“If there’s one thing that our story tells it’s that it’s okay to go after those dreams, even if you fall short.”

You can read a full version of this interview online at www. palatinate.org.uk

PALATINATE | Thursday 16th November 2017

19

Sport

Durham’s top 10 sports graduates A s Pa l a t i n a t e ce l e b r a t e s i t s 8 0 0 t h e d i t i o n , w e re f l e c t o n t h e a ch i e v e m e n t s o f s o m e o f t h e U n i v e r s i t y ’ s m o s t s u cce s s f u l s p o r t i n g a l u m n i

Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero James Martland Will Jennings Will Greenwood Greenwood, a Hatfield alumnus who studied Economics, is certainly one of Durham’s most successful graduates, having been a key player in the squad which won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, scoring a few vital tries. He currently works in punditry and writes for the Daily Telegraph.

Nasser Hussain Now a presenter and commentator on all things cricket for Sky Sports, Hussain is best known for his spell as captain of the England cricket team between 1999 and 2003.

He scored over 5000 test runs and, whilst later captains such as Strauss, Vaughan and Cook have led the team to greater success, Hussain oversaw England’s rise

to third in the test rankings and helped set the foundations for these future triumphs.

Phil de Glanville After completing an Economics degree, de Glanville went on to represent England 38 times in a mixed and international rugby career. Despite being restricted to more of a squad role, de Glanville excelled during the tour of South Africa in 1994 and was appointed captain – albeit for a limited period – in 1996. The centre enjoyed a distinguished domestic career at Bath, playing 189 times.

Holly Colvin Colvin’s international career begun before she even started life at Durham, with the spinner becoming England’s youngest ever Test cricketer aged 15 in 2005.

After enjoying an eight-year career with her country, Colvin retired

at 26 to assume the position of Women’s Cricket Senior Officer at the ICC, a role that has seen her apply her more academic skills honed at the University.

Charlie Hodgson Hodgson stands out as the leading rugby Premiership points scorer of all time. Now retired, Hodgson also holds the record of the most consecutive starts for England, when he played 18 times in a row between 2004 and 2006. Despite living in Jonny Wilkinson’s shadow at times, Hodgson still managed to forge himself a very impressive career for both club and country.

Cordelia Griffith Still a student at the University, Griffith’s cricketing career remains in its preliminary stages.

Nevertheless, the 22-year-old has already enjoyed success in the domestic circuit, representing

Surrey Stars during the 2016 Kia Super League and playing alongside England players such as Nat Sciver and Tammy Beaumont.

Jonathan Edwards It is fitting that Edwards, an Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European champion triple jumper, studied Physics during his time at Van Mildert. Now a mainstay in the BBC’s athletics coverage, he has held the world record since 1995.

Sophie Hosking After graduating with a degree in Chemistry and Physics, Hosking won gold for Team GB in the 2012 Olympics lightweight double sculls with Kat Copeland. It was the second of six gold medals on Super Saturday.

(Illustration by Faye Chua)

Andrew Strauss Now director of England cricket, Strauss was one of England’s most successful captains. He inspired his side to home Ashes glory in 2009 and a first victory on Australian soil since 1986-87 to retain the urn. Strauss led the 4-0 rout against India which meant England claimed top spot in Test Cricket in 2011, and is widely recognised as one of English cricket’s finest ever batsmen.

Will Carling After graduating with a degree in Psychology, Carling went on to be appointed England’s youngest ever rugby captain, leading his side out in 59 Tests. In a venerable career, Carling’s leadership saw England win Grand Slams in the Five Nations in 1991, 1992 and 1995, a feat that renders the centre one of the greatest captains of the modern epoch.

Sport

Thursday 16th November 2017 | PALATINATE

The real Cool Runnings Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero speaks to Devon Harris, one of the original members of the legendary Jamaican bobsleigh team (page 18)

Top 10 Durham sports graduates We look at some of Durham’s finest sporting products over the years (page 19)

O2Touch rugby comes to Durham Ollie Godden Deputy Sport Editor

▲ Hatfield alumnus Andrew Strauss was awarded an honorary degree in 2011. We look at the University’s most succesful sports graduates on p19 (Durham University)

Winter football tournament to be held for disadvantaged groups from North East Ella Jerman Deputy Sport Editor On Thursday 23rd November, Team Durham’s Participation Football volunteering project will hold a winter tournament at Maiden Castle for a range of disadvantaged groups from the North East.

The Participation Football project encourages people from vulnerable populations to incorporate physical activity into their daily life in order to aid their recovery process.

Normally, the project runs weekly sessions at Maiden Castle where participants are given the chance to discover a sport they enjoy.

As well as improving their overall physical fitness, attending

these sessions gives participants routine and a chance to socialise with their peers.

These sessions have proved to have a positive impact on participants, particularly on their mental wellbeing.

Not only can attendees improve their physical health and fitness, but getting involved in team sport also increases self-confidence and provides relief from the addiction recovery process.

A wide variety of groups from across the North East have been invited to participate in next Thursday’s tournament, from cities as far away as Leeds to local teams from Newcastle, Gateshead, Durham, Seaham, Middlesbrough and Sunderland.

The event usually attracts between eight and ten teams of all

ages and genders, ranging from people with learning difficulties to those recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.

Each team will have between 10-12 players in their squad.

The tournament will run from 11am to 3pm next Thursday at Maiden Castle, followed by an awards ceremony.

Trophies and medals will be awarded to the winning team, but there are a number of other prizes also up for grabs including goalkeeper of the tournament and the Fair Play award.

A particular emphasis is placed upon fair play, namely behaviour towards referees (student vounteers) and teammates during the tournament, rather than just the score.

The aim is to encourage

positive attitudes, teamwork and sportsmanship.

Project leader Thomas Flint is hoping that next week’s tournament will continue the positive impact that the Participation Football volunteering project has already had on the local community.

“It should be a great experience for everyone involved and we’re looking forward to seeing who comes out on top in a competitive and enjoyable environment!”

Families are encouraged to attend the event to create a positive atmosphere.

If you are interested in refereeing matches in the tournament, or even helping run the weekly sessions, please contact Thomas at thomas. flint@durham.ac.uk.

The latest news from Maiden Castle is the arrival of O2Touch, the non-contact version of rugby, emphasising running, agility and handling skills.

Played on a flat surface, half the size of a conventional sports field, O2Touch is, to quote the website itself, “the game taking the world by storm” – and it’s hard to disagree with commercial leagues already set up in England, Scotland, South Africa and New Zealand.

The sport prides itself on its ability to provide a good test of fitness and cardiovascular exercise away from monotonous gym sessions on the treadmill and bike.

Moreover, the accessibility of the sport makes it open to everyone from beginners to veterans, a key facet reaffirmed by Programme Leader Roshini Turner.

Speaking about the possibility of implementing the sport of touch rugby at an even deeper level, College Sport Coordinator LJ Crawford described how the idea was to abide by O2Touch regulations for the first year of its existence in Durham.

If successful, the sport can then begin to be rolled out to an intercollegiate environment, provided that it does not tread on the toes of the rugby system already in place.

The sessions are running this term on Saturdays from 5-6:30pm on 3G1 and more information can be found on the weekly events hosted on Facebook.

Moreover, you can find out more information by searching DurhamUniO2Touch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Have a story to tell?

Email us: sport@palatinate.org. uk