Lent 2015 Issue 5

12 February 2015 Vol. 16 Lent Issue 5

The

Cambridge Student

Second-years across Cambridge this week celebrated being halfway through their degrees with special ‘Halfway Hall’ dinners. Read more on page 19

Image: Mark Nelson

“Lowest drop-out rate” challenged by new stats

A

Ellie Hayward and Anna Carruthers Investigation and News Editor

n investigation by The Cambridge Student has revealed that national figures accrediting Cambridge University as having one of the “lowest drop-ou\t rate” in the country may be misleading when compared with official university statistics. The latter take into account students who intermit and do not return.

Significant variation in intermission across colleges was also revealed, with exceptionally high rates of intermission in colleges for mature undergraduates.

The figures indicated that the official Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) dropout rate – which is cited on the Student Welfare page of Cambridge University’s website as “amongst the lowest ... in the country” – does not

include many of those students who intermit but then do not return to finish their studies, a stance adopted as a result of the specifications of HESA. The process of intermission, which was previously known as degrading, allows students to take time out of their degree – usually a whole academic year – and return at a later date. This is normally granted for medical reasons.

A total of 947 undergraduate students have intermitted in the three academic years since 2011/2012, amounting to an average of 2.7% of all undergraduates during this period. Of these, 227 (24%) did not return to finish their studies.

However, it appears that many of these students who did not return to

Cambridge after intermitting are not included in the data provided by the university to HESA, which is used to calculate continuation rates across all Universities. For the academic year 2011/12, HESA presents Cambridge’s dropout rate as a total of 45 students, yet data provided by the University following an FOI request indicates that 83 students in that year intermitted and did not then return to finish their studies.

When contacted, the University stated that the discrepancy is “to be expected” as “the population reported to the HESA website differs considerably to the population of students for which we provided the FOI data.”

Continued on page 4...

Comment – Should students be in charge of their degree courses?: p11 Features – The tale of a one night stand: p17 Cartoon – Reflections on RAG Blind Date: p20 TV & Film – When film dates go wrong: p22 Books – Fifty shades of gender inequality: p25

12 Feburary 2015 the cambridge student

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News 2 The Cambridge Union Bicentenary debate starts year of celebration Anna Carruthers News Editor The Cambridge Union Society’s first 200-year anniversary celebration event, the Bicentenary debate, was full of tradition on Saturday night. However, it also looked to highlight the progress that the society has made, especially with regard to women.

The night’s motion ‘This House Isn’t What it Used to Be’ was debated by distinguished Union alumni in front of 250 ex-presidents and officers, in a generally light-hearted and sentimental manner.

Still stuck in the past?

The debate was also open to current students but the gallery in which they were invited to sit was not full to capacity. This may have been due in part to publicity which stated that seating priority would be given to those in black tie. This was required in order for a photograph replicating the 150th anniversary in 1965 to be taken.

Appearing to anticipate student discontentment with such arrangements, the Union stated in an email to members: “This event is the first of four Bicentenary events this year, and is the only one geared primarily towards former Union officers and non-resident

life members around the world.”

Speaking for the proposition, Lord Michael Howard, former leader of the Conservative Party, looked to place the debate in the context of other notable anniversary celebrations this year before proudly declaring that they “pale into significance” when compared to the Union. This, along with numerous other statements through the course of the debate, was met with loud cheers from the assembled audience, which was predominantly male.

Declaring himself the “commoner of the opposition”, barrister Gareth Weetman compared the debate to a “nightmarish, 10-hour long version of Newsnight” before arguing that the Union was a bastion of calm and open debate which cannot be found in institutions such as the House of Commons.

There was disagreement between the two female debaters, Baroness Ann Mallalieu and Baroness Hayman, who were also the first two female president of the Union. Whilst Mallalieu felt that time had led the Union to become “more puritan... less tolerant, more conventional”, Hayman argued that it was in fact “politer, kinder and more egalitarian”.

Photo: Robert Palmer Germaine Greer’s recent controversial

appearance at the Union was used by Lord Turner, in opposition, to argue that the society certainly had changed, pointing to the fact that she was previously hailed as a leading feminist.

He stated that she “used to be a feminist but has now turned into a batty old woman”.

When asked whether he believed certain topics should not be debated in arenas such as the Union, Lord Michael Howard told The Cambridge Student: “We have laws which prohibit racial hatred and that sort of thing, and so those laws have to be observed. But anything that is not prohibited by law I think should be allowed.”

When asked whether the Union could do more to encourage women, Baroness Mallalieu stated: “I was disappointed but perhaps tonight wasn’t a typical group of people there. I hope that when it’s a largely undergraduate audience that there are more women than there were tonight because there was still the same imbalance. When I was here there were only six or seven women who ever spoke. They just didn’t get up. They’d go and listen to the debates but not in huge numbers but they simply didn’t play a part. I hope they do now.”

The final result of the debate saw the Noes take a victory.

Statements were met with loud cheers from the audience, which was mainly male

Former college master attacks government anti-terror proposals Jack Lewy Deputy News Editor Former Master of Emmanuel College, Lord Wilson of Dinton, has attacked the government’s outlined anti-terror proposals for universities in the House of Lords this week. Wilson sits in the House of Lords as an independent crossbencher.

Speaking against the proposals, Wilson argued that planned concessions to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill would serve to stifle free speech, telling the Lords that “I don’t think it is going to work. You need the universities.

You need the challenge, you need the analysis, you need the intellect. It needs the fresh air of challenge and you are perversely protecting terrorism and radicalism by protecting them from debate and challenge.”

The proposed bill could give universities an impetus to prevent students from being drawn towards terrorism. This would be administered through a crackdown on extremism on student campuses.

Lord Wilson is not the only prominent

academic to speak out against the proposed counter-terror bill. This week it was revealed that more than 500 university professors have urged the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to urgently rethink her proposals to curb extremists on campus.

Professors and academics who have signed the University and College Union letter include Oxford mathematician Sir John Ball, Sir Tom Kibble, codiscoverer of the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson, and Professor Paul Gilroy, the author of Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack.

Lord Wilson has held various parliamentary roles, leading the Economic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s, and Permanent Secretary of the Department of the Environment, and later of the Home Office.

Between 1998 and 2002 he was Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Home Civil Service. He was appointed Master of Emmanuel College in 2002 and replaced in 2012 by former Director-General of the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds.

“You are peversely protecting terrorism and radicalism by protecting them from debate”

The House of Lords: the centre of debate

Photo: Berit Watkin

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 3 Major gender results gap in History Tripos sparks faculty investigations Jenny Steinitz News Editor Statistics from last year’s History Tripos results reveal that 91% of Firsts in Part I went to male candidates, with only 2 out 23 Firsts going to female candidates. This is despite the fact that there were almost an equal number of women taking the Part I exams as men.

Although last year’s statistics are particularly dramatic, recent information seems to suggest that high discrepancies between male and female results in Part I of the History Tripos are a recurring trend. For the last four years, the proportion of Firsts going to female candidates has varied between 25% and 36%.

The problem goes beyond the last four years however, with internal reports from more than 25 years ago suggesting that the History Tripos had a serious gender problem.

However, the gap in results does seem to close to some extent in Part II of the Tripos. In 2014, for instance, Part II of the Tripos saw an exactly equal gender breakdown in the number of Firsts.

It is currently unclear why this is the case. One second-year male historian, who wishes to remain anonymous, speculated to The Cambridge Student

Gender inequality at the History Faculty

Image: Andrew Munn

that it was because of the lack of “exam bias” in Part II: “At an anecdotal level, I’ve always found exams pretty easy, yet many of my female friends prefer

coursework. Perhaps the existence of the dissertation and special subject in Part II, by changing the exam–coursework ratio, makes the course more favourable

“Nothing untoward” in Churchill JCR restructuring despite student anger Sam Rhodes Associate Editor Students at Churchill College have been outraged this week by the restructuring of the JCR. The changes involved almost halving the size of the JCR, and included the removal of the Women’s Officer from the committee, and the reversal of the recently passed motion to create a Disability Officer.

After the outcry, the role of Women’s Officer has since been reinstated, although Disability Officer remains a role limited to the welfare committee.

The restructuring process was twofold. Some roles were judged to be unconstitutional by current JCR President Freddie Downing, including both the Women’s Officer and Disability Officer roles, while several others were removed simultaneously by a consensus of the JCR committee, such as the External Officer.

Much of the anger has been derived from the method in which the decision was reached. Rather than the normal route of consulting the broader JCR either

through Open Meeting or Referendum, the JCR President instead approached the College Council (made up of senior members of staff) to pass the reforms. A survey taken of 50 students by Churchill JCR a week before the changes took place suggested that 88% of students were happy with the work of their JCR. The JCR President was able to approach the College Council on the basis of alleged consensus within the Committee, although members of the JCR present at the meeting have since questioned the streamlining proposals.

Students were first informed of the change via email on 28 January, giving them just over one week to react to the changes before manifestos were due for the upcoming JCR elections, which took place on 6 February.

Many female students were particularly angered by the removal of the role of Women’s Officer, especially given the 70:30 male-to-female ratio at Churchill College.

The current President of the Churchill Women’s Society commented to The Cambridge Student: “I was very shocked to hear about the abolition of

Many female students were angered by the removal of the role of Women’s Officer

to female students. Saying that, it would be good to see some hard evidence so we have a better idea of what’s really going on.”

TCS has requested the statistics on the gender breakdown of dissertation results, and is yet to receive them.

Academic Secretary to the History Faculty, Dr Magnus Ryan, commented: “The History Faculty is keeping the matter under close surveillance and has been conducting detailed enquiries.”

The History Faculty’s Gender Working Party will be meeting on Friday 13 February to discuss the issue further.

A second-year female historian, who also wished to remain anonymous, commented to TCS on the results: “It is disappointing that although the History Tripos has almost equal numbers of male and female candidates, there are still huge disparities between the highest marks awarded.

“Despite increasing attention being given to the participation of women in STEM subjects, in History, and potentially other Arts subjects, there is still a gender bias when equality in numbers is achieved at admission.”

This comes as the Royal Historical Society highlighted last month that only 20.8% of History professors are female.

the Women’s Officer position, not least because of the incredible work that Anna, the current officer, has achieved in her year in office. The move represented a practical and symbolic step back for feminist and women’s issues in a college in which women are numerically in the minority.”

She continued: “I am very pleased that, once the issue was finally put to a student vote, the position was re-established to continue its important work in the JCR.” Churchill JCR President Freddie Downing stated: “nothing ‘untoward’

In Part I, only 2 out of 23 Firsts are going to female candidates

has happened here at Churchill College”, pointing to a constitutional rule stating that 50 members of the JCR had to approve the creation of any committee roles. A motion to create the role of Women’s Officer received only 27 votes at an open meeting in November 2013, of 27 attendees.

Senior Tutor Richard Partington wished to state that “Churchill College unequivocally supports advocacy for disadvantaged groups”, but also emphasised that “students’ unions should be substantially independent.”

The JCR: a point of contention at Churchill

Image: Mike Peel

12 February 2015

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News

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4 Continued from page 1...

For example, students not included in the HESA data include dormant students (those who have stopped studying but are yet to formally leave their course), non-UK domiciled students and Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man domiciled students.

The statistics which were obtained

by TCS also revealed substantial disparities in the breakdown of the number of undergraduate students intermitting per college.

Girton has seen the highest number of students intermit, with 63 students having intermitted in the three academic years since 2011/12, 4.18% per annum as a proportion of the student body.

Homerton (55 students and 2.91%), Trinity (52 and 2.49%), and St John’s (51 and 3.13%) also had high numbers of intermission during this time period.

At the other end of the scale was Corpus Christi College, from where only 14 undergraduates have intermitted in the past three years (2.09% average degrading per annum). Similarly low numbers intermitted from Trinity Hall (15 and 1.31%), and Selwyn College (19 and 1.88%).

Speaking to TCS, the mental health charity Student Minds Cambridge (SMC) said this “highlights the ongoing problem of a disparate welfare system across Cambridge. More should be done to ensure that each college has the same baseline of welfare support available Image:Jack May via Infogram for students … When it comes to something as fundamentally important as mental health welfare, there should be consistency across all colleges, so that every student has sufficient support to enable them to complete their studies.”

CUSU’s Welfare officer Jack Wright, however, argued that a high intermission rate is not indicative of a poor college welfare system, since: “A student who feels they need to intermit and has their decision supported is far better off than someone being pressured to keep 11 working against their best interests.”

The high levels of intermission among undergraduate students at mature colleges is particularly striking.

At St Edmund’s Hall, which admits approximately 98 undergraduates a year, 31 students have intermitted in the past three years, amounting to 10.5% of the student body.

The other three mature colleges in the University also have consistently high rates of intermission: Wolfson College (34 and 8.4%), Lucy Cavendish College (34 and 7.87%) and Hughes Hall (11 and 3.6%).

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She continued: “Advice is targeted at undergraduates of 18–21 age bracket and not to those undergraduates and postgraduates of more mature years who have different financial, physical and emotional scenarios.”

Jack Wright also expressed concerns about the wider implications of the process of intermission: “My main concern with regards to intermitting is that when intermitting is treated as a cure-all, the fact is students with chronic illnesses will be pressured to intermit against their wishes and against medical advice that says the problem will only get worse.”

He added: “If such students’ degrees are being impacted by a chronic illness, they need to be helped to access the extended study options that exist here, rather than being advised as if they can be cured in a year.”

TCS also obtained the breakdown of students who intermit per subject, which highlighted several significant differences in the rates of intermission across different subjects.

For certain subjects, including Archaeology and Anthropology, PPS, Maths, and English exhibited consistently high rates of intermission were exhibited. For example, in the past three years 55 English students have intermitted, compared to seven Geography students.

SMC argued that more information is needed before any action is taken.

“We need to find out more about the real, personal student experiences of degrading / intermitting. This may involve looking at the pressure put on (or not put on) students by academic staff to intermit against their will and the interactions students had with the colleges whilst they were away – and if this relationship affected their decision to return.”

As previously reported by TCS, a petition was created by the ‘Degrading is Degrading’ (DiD) group in 2011/12, as part of the Disabled Students’ Campaign. The petition aimed to secure the removal of the requirement for intermitting students to reside outside of Cambridge during their intermission. It also looked to reduce disparities between some colleges’ intermission processes.

The petition suceeded in renaming the process from ‘degrading’ to a less negative term, ‘disregarding terms’, made official by a change in the Statutes and Ordinances of the University.

Esther Leighton, who has previously served as the Disabled Students’ Officer for the University, told TCS: “The DiD campaign had some huge successes, but there is still a phenomenal amount to do... The name change was a symptom of a problem with the system, and while the name has changed and some aspects of the system have, more should be done to improve the experience of intermitted students.”

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 5 Harvard bans sexual relationships between staff and students Stevie Collister-Hertz News Reporter

relationships” between professors and university students.

It has prohibited all relationships Harvard University, in Cambridge, between undergraduates and faculty Massachusetts, has taken steps this members, as well as between graduate week to ban “sexual and romantic students and their direct supervisors.

Welcome to Harvard, stay away from the Prof!

This includes graduate students who are “in a position to grade, evaluate, or supervise the undergraduate student”.

This follows similar changes in policy from Yale University, the Universities of Connecticut and Arizona State.

The chair of the panel at Harvard that recommended a change in policy defended the decision, telling Bloomberg: “Undergraduates come to college to learn from us ... We’re not here to have sexual or romantic relationships with them.”

Currently in Cambridge, some colleges give their own advice on relationships between staff and students.

For example, a statement of policy on Murray Edwards’s website says that “any romantic or sexual relationship between a member of staff and a student raises serious questions,” Meanwhile, Trinity College describes such relationships as “compromis[ing] … the normal professional relationship between a Senior and a Junior Member of the College”.

While neither of these colleges explicitly bans such relationships, both require members of staff to inform college officials. Murray Edwards adds: “wherever practicable, the outcome will involve the removal of the staff member from direct professional responsibility Image: Daderot for and contact with the student.”

One student who spoke to The Cambridge Student believed that the University should take a stronger stance on student-staff relationships, saying that they “are fundamentally exploitative and come from unequal positions of power.”

Nonetheless, not all agreed with this.

Caitlín Milliken, Women’s Welfare Officer at Peterhouse, said on the idea of an introduction of Harvard-style prohibition at Cambridge: “It’s important to avoid predation of vulnerable students but [I] don’t think that limiting freedom is the way of achieving that.”

This sentiment was echoed by another undergraduate who felt that “as long as [a relationship] happens outside of your discipline then I don’t see there being any problem regarding conflict of interests or protection issues”, whilst others criticised the paternalistic nature that an outright ban at Cambridge would imply.

However, such rules do seem to have an effect, with one spokesperson telling Bloomberg that the ban at Yale, which was introduced in 2010, had resulted in “some faculty” being disciplined.

Thus, questions continue over the nature of relationships between university staff and students, and consequently the role that the universities should play in regulating them.

Steps taken this week ban sexual and romantic relationships between professors and students

Cambridgeshire lab raided over cancer drug “not fit for humans” Rachel Balmer Deputy News Editor

patients currently taking them should seek their doctor’s advice.

A spokesperson for the MRHA, which is part of the Department for Health, said that UK patients have bought GcMAF on European websites at the cost of 450 euros for a month’s supply, and the agency is highlighting its concerns on the continent.

David Noakes, the founder and Chief Executive of Immuno Biotech, who manufactures the product in Guernsey, responded that the product was “totally safe” and accused the MHRA of

A Cambridgeshire laboratory has Government been raided to stop production of an unlicensed cancer treatment, the blood agency product used to make GcMAF, which is seizes considered “not fit for humans”.

10,000 vials A government agency seized 10,000 vials from the testing laboratory on Milton High Street, believing that the products were also contaminated and made with non-sterile equipment.

The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) said the blood plasma starting material that the manufacturers were using was labelled as “not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products”.

The MRHA Director of Inspection, Enforcement and Standards, Gerald Heddell, said: “These products may pose a significant risk to people’s health. Not only were the manufacturing conditions unacceptable but the originating material was not suitable for human use. [They] are not licensed medicines and have not been tested for quality, safety or effectiveness”.

Heddell advised that people should not start treatment with these products and Cancer drugs have been labelled as unfit for humans

“complete ignorance”.

He argued that the product has been repeatedly tested, including at government laboratories and the University of Florence, and the company has written 31 research papers on GcMAF. Noakes also defended the company’s chief scientist, a biochemist with a PhD, who had been subject to criticism from the MRHA. In relation to the safety of the treatment involved, he said that “It’s totally safe – and it works.

It is a human protein made naturally by healthy people. It only works for 50

diseases and it only works for about an average of 60% of the population, but that’s still a better result than pharmaceutical drugs.

“The MRHA does not want to see this product on the market because its job is to maintain the monopoly and stick up for vested interests in the pharmaceutical industry”.

The MRHA issued a public health warning after it closed down production in the Cambridgeshire laboratory.

Guernsey authorities have also banned the importation of the treatment.

Ed Freestone, Guernsey’s chief pharmacist, said: “There is no current information suggesting the product has caused direct harm to anyone’s health”.

There is a great impetus on drug manufacturers and large pharmaceutical companies to invest in cancer drug research, despite accusations that overseas pharmaceutical companies from India have been replicating the research of British pharmaceutical companies and universities in the field of cancer drugs.

The National Cancer Research Institute, made up of government and charity organisations, recorded spending on cancer research of £503 million for Image: Faungg 2013, the last year with data available.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 6 College Watch

Emma

St John's

Tit Hall

Jesus

The release of Emmanuel College’s May Ball tickets sparked outrage across the college. A launch event was held on February 3rd to announce the theme, ‘Naturalis Historiae: An illustrated guide.’ The tickets were then released at 10.30pm, but sold out in just over fifteen minutes. Many current Emmanuel students failed to get a ticket and were, in the words of a first-year, ‘surprised and upset that we couldn’t get a ticket to our own May Ball.’ Some students felt angry that they had missed out on purchasing a ticket for themselves, while other students bought the maximum of eight tickets in order to sell or exchange.

However, the Emmanuel May Ball Committee were quick to assure current students that they would all be given the chance to purchase a ticket for themselves through making contact with the committee ticketing representative.

A campaign at St John’s is currently underway to challenge the college’s policy on same-sex rooming for second-year undergraduates. Under present college rules, if first-year students wish to live in a set during their later years of study, they must do so with a member of the same gender. The College cites concerns of privacy, given that in order to reach one room, you must first walk through the other. The policy has drawn particular opposition from a number of transgender students within the college, who resent the rule’s genderbinarist implication and lack of flexibility for those who feel uncomfortable selfdefining as a particular gender. One first-year student commented: “We’re the only college who has it set up that way”, adding that it was looking hopeful that the JCR would back the proposed change of College policy.

Students wishing to vote in the Trinity Hall JCR elections have been repeatedly prevented from voting. Initially, students using Google Chrome were unable to access the poll as the security certification on the CUSU website had expired. Some individuals were able to cast their vote by clicking the ‘proceed anyway’ button, following warnings of an unsafe link, but Vice President Solene Fercocq dissuaded people from doing so. She stated: “This has meant that some people were deterred from voting and as such any results published tonight will be invalid.” As a result, the election was postponed. Further issues then arose regarding the lack of a RON option. A new, separate ballot was created containing just the RON option.

Votes made on the original date were not counted and so all students were asked to vote again.

All talk of Kanye West, Beyoncé and Beck has been swept aside at Jesus College after notable alumni band Clean Bandit won in the ‘Best Dance Recording’ category at the Grammys.

The perennial May Ball act of yesteryear have clearly moved on to bigger and better things, prompted by the success of their record ‘Rather Be’ has more than 200,000,000 views on YouTube and was number one in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks over the summer of 2014. The win represents something of a catharsis for the college, after alumnus Alexis Taylor, member of the electronica band Hot Chip, lost out to Daft Punk’s seminal record ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’ in the same category in 2009.

Reports that the ‘funky chicken’ of Jesus’ crest is what inspires such an affinity for dance music in its undergraduates remain unconfirmed.

Elsa Maishman

Olly Hudson

Anna Carruthers

Sam Rhodes

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 7 Christian and Islamic societies explore questions of faith Shipilta Mathews and Imran Marashli Deputy News Editor and News Reporter The theme of religious exploration has preoccupied Cambridge recently as Explore Islam Week, organised by the University of Cambridge Islamic Society (ISoc), began on Monday. This followed the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union’s (CICCU) week of talks entitled ‘The Search’.

ISoc’s Explore Islam Week consists of talks, an interfaith dinner and an open prayer meeting. On their part, CICCU explored “who Jesus is and what that could mean for us today”, through lunch time, evening and international talks.

Ali Shalchi, President of ISoc, explained that Explore Islam Week “aims to promote a greater understanding of Islam by allaying misconceptions and providing a lens into Islamic practices and doctrine. At a time of rising bigotry towards religious communities we seek to foster unity amongst faith societies, bringing communities together in recognition of our commonalities.”

Salchi also highlighted how the events aimed to “emphasise the purity of character and religious tolerance” of the Prophet Mohammed and to “spread an

understanding” of Islamic heritage.

Explore Islam Week began with ‘Who Is Muhammad?’, attended by non-Muslims and Muslims alike. One Christian attendee said: “I feel that there’s a lot more on women’s rights and animal rights that I now know about in Islam, and also a lot about poverty [...] I knew there was some overlap, and in terms of poverty the Christian message and that of Islam seem to be fairly similar. Although I think that there are some fundamental differences, like grace versus works in getting into heaven, and also perhaps how liberally you can interpret scripture. But there are definitely a lot of similarities”.

Student reaction to the Christian initiative ‘The Search’ has also been positive. Isabel Leach, the Interfaith representative at CICCU, commented: “I really enjoyed The Search, mostly because of the chats I had with people; while I like the talks, what I really love is the way they act as conversation starters ... about things that are so important in life.”

Victoria Mackay, a student at Gonville and Caius College, also spoke positively about the talks: “I took some friends along to the lunchtime events and they found it really interesting to hear the opinions of Christians about tricky topics like science and suffering. My friends

“We seek to foster unity amongst faith societies”

Do they need a map? also commented on how welcome they felt to the events, no matter what they believed.”

Leach also told The Cambridge Student that there are further opportunities for interfaith dialogue in Cambridge’s diverse student community: “There are various specifically interfaith activities at Cambridge. A lot of them are on a friendship-group kind of basis, so

Image: Imran Marashli people meeting up in small groups to discuss how their different faiths address big topics, or reading the Qur’an and the Bible together, but there are wider initiatives organised by the societies as well.”

“I’ve had some really interesting and eye-opening conversations with people from various faiths, or none, at several of the interfaith events I’ve attended.”

Overseas nurses to solve Addenbrooke’s crisis Olly Hudson Deputy News Editor

decision to join us.”

Pressure on NHS services, particularly A&E, have been the subject of much political dispute between Labour and the Conservatives as the General Election campaign intensifies. Labour have accused the government of presiding over an NHS “winter crisis.”

Just last week, Prime Minister’s Questions saw heated exchanges between Opposition leader Ed Miliband and David Cameron who accused Mr Miliband of seeking to “weaponise the NHS” for political gain.

Addenbrooke’s has announced that a record number of nurses have been recruited following the success of the hospital’s overseas recruitment drive.

Some 110 new nurses are set to boost staffing levels, after The Cambridge Student reported last month that chronic staff shortages had resulted in the declaration of a major incident at the hospital.

The welcome news follows the recommendations of a Nursing and Midwifery taskforce, formed in early 2014 when chronic shortages were first identified. The latest recruitment drive now brings the total figure of nurses recruited overseas since August of last year to 200, with a further 25 set to arrive from Spain.

In a comment to Cambridge News, Chief Nurse Ann-Marie Ingle said: “Like many Trusts across England, we are working hard to recruit additional nurses in the midst of a national nursing shortage. We are making steady progress and it’s fantastic to welcome over 100 nurses this month. We are hugely appreciative that they have made the Dat sweet brutalist architecture tho’

England’s performance is markedly better than Wales and Northern Ireland

Figures released by NHS England this week show that 88.3% of patients were seen within the four-hour target at major A&E units, again short of the government’s target of 95%. In total, 92.3% of patients were seen within the target period across all A&Es. Nonetheless, England’s performance remains markedly better than Wales’s and Northern Ireland’s, where figures released in December showed that the target was being met in just 81% and 76.7% of cases respectively.

Tom Wilson of Homerton College,

who previously told TCS about his experience of waiting more than four hours in A&E during September, welcomed the latest recruitment drive as “great news”, though added: “It still won’t solve the problem of in-patient wards being full (I had to sleep in day wards), but it is a good start, they always make the best of tough circumstances.”

Emma and Ella Mi of the Cambridge University Conservative Association committee welcomed the news, commenting to TCS: “We are pleased to see the success of Addenbrooke’s recruitment drive and the hospital’s proactive attitude in addressing the increasing pressure on services.

“The Conservative Party is committed to boosting nursing education and training in the UK, as a long-term solution to staffing shortages.”

Chairman of Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats, Reece Edmends also told TCS: “Addenbrooke’s was stretched to breaking point this winter and desperately needs this metaphorical shot in the arm. Nationally, our manifesto will promise an extra £8 billion for the NHS for 2020, plugging the funding gap outlined by NHS England. The NHS is a Image: David J. Morgan priority: it can – it must – be supported.”

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

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Science & Research

9

Unlocking the perfect night’s sleep Max Gray Science & Research contributor A good night’s sleep is very important.

And not just because being a blearyeyed zombie failing to pay attention in a 9 a.m. lecture is less than ideal.

Consistently poor sleep has links to depression, something to which Cambridge students are susceptible.

Moreover, being well rested keeps your immune system in better order. It’s worth learning a few simple pointers to improve your sleep, and your health: Stop using devices before bed That blue light produced by LCD screens can supress melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep. So stop checking Facebook or binge-watching Netflix an hour before sleeping.

good nights sleep. Being awake causes a build up of adenosine (a by product of metabolism), which is one way your body recognises when it’s time to sleep.

Exercise increases the levels of this metabolic by-product – making it easier to sleep when you do go to bed.

Caffeine and alcohol Life would be worse without them, but try to limit consumption. Caffeine keeps you awake, that’s why we drink it, by increasing your heart rate and working as an adenosine blocker, the effects of which can last for 12 hours. Alcohol might seem to work like a sedative, but it will tend to prevent deep sleep, causing fitful, poor-quality sleep. So don’t go to the bar every night, and try to abstain from coffee, at least after lunch.

Establish a routine Your body gets used to a consistent sleep cycle. If you get into habitual times of sleeping and waking (pick whatever suits you, you don’t have to get up and go rowing at 5 a.m.) you’ll feel sleepy when it’s bedtime and wake up naturally every morning.

Try a snack A quick bite before bed could help your slumber. Foods rich in the amino acid tryptophan (most protein rich foods) are ideal. The body converts tryptophan into melatonin, which is key to maintaining a healthy sleep cycle. So try an evening snack of some milk, yoghurt or cheese (cheese-dreams are a myth, by the way).

Exercise Yes, it’s cold and miserable outside – but you can exercise indoors too. Being physically tired works wonders for a

Have a nap A long day, running around between lectures, before spending too long in the library writing an essay can leave you

1

Rebecca Kershaw Science & Research Contributor

The similarities between cancer and the galaxies of our universe may not be immediately apparent, yet the University’s Institute of Astronomy is working with Cancer Research UK on an unexpected collaboration. One thing the fields of oncology and astronomy do have in common is the mind bogglingly large numbers involved when counting either individual stars or cells in the human body. The two fields are looking to each other to learn new ways of dealing with their incredibly large and diverse data sets. A new interdisciplinary project, called PathGrid, is developing software to automate the analysis of biopsy tissues in the search for cancer, stromal and immune cells using the image analysis principles used by astronomers in the search of new stars.

The image processing techniques used to distinguish individual stars from images captured by enormous telescopes is being applied in pathology for identifying cancer cells from microscope images. This project has enormous potential, improving diagnosis and prognosis in cancer treatment, but could hale a new era of so called ‘digital pathology’, enabling efficient diagnosis in regions without access to oncology specialists.

A blearyeyed zombie failing to pay attention in a 9 a.m. lecture is less than ideal Tired of counting sheep?

Image: enki22

in need of more sleep. So have a quick Writing your concerns down with a nap. It’ll help with that sleep-deficit, and brief plan of what to do about it can be probably improve your productivity. a big help.

Don’t take your worries to bed When you’re stressed (and we all are), your body produces noradrenaline, a hormone which makes your heart race, and raises your blood sugar – not ideal for when you’re trying to sleep. So do try to de-stress before bed, and then put aside your worries until the morning.

2

The process of drug discovery has transformed dramatically in recent years. The traditional drug screening process, testing whole libraries of small chemical compounds, is simply too costly, time consuming and inefficient. The advent of genome sequencing now allows pharmacologists to test candidates, including some complex biological molecules, against specific biological targets that are shown to influence a specific disease.

Now, a collaborative project involving Cambridge Systems Biology Centre and the Department of Biochemistry is bringing this process one step further.

Eve, an artificially intelligent robot, has been developed to screen 10,000 compounds per day which are intelligently selected using statistics.

Moreover, Eve learns to make the most efficient use of its time and resources.

This level of intelligent automation promises to significantly reduce the time and to produce a promising lead – reducing both the risk and cost of drug discovery.

Eve can also be used to test the already approved drug compounds against a range of other targets, including infectious or rare diseases, which maximises the investment into these drugs and impacts even more patients.

Bed is for sleep Don’t get into the habit of watching TV in bed. It diminishes the association between being in bed and feeling ready to sleep.

Give these things a try, and see if you feel less exhausted by the end of term!

3

Researchers at the Cambridge Planck Analysis Centre at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology have knocked 100 million years off the age of the first stars, based on new images of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). The CMBR, first discovered in 1965, is the radiation ‘noise’ measured in what we see as the dark spaces between stars, and is now observed on earth at microwave frequencies as part of the CMBR due to the expansion of the universe. The European Space Agency’s Planck satellite released data this week and the first photons to escape the dense cosmic ‘fog’ and therefore exhibit polarisation (vibrating in a specific direction) have been detected by the Plank satellite, fixing the time of this ‘end of the Dark Ages’ with more precision than ever before possible. There is however one problem with this discovery: it conflicts with the current theory that the formation of large stars was the source of UV-radiation. The 100 million year shift has therefore opened up a new area of investigation in cosmology as “we would have needed additional, more exotic sources of energy to explain the history of reionisation,” according to Professor George Efstathiou, Director of the Kavli Institute of Cosmology.

The patterns made by cancerous cells in the human tissues are like those made by stars in the sky

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Editorial 10 The unfathomable happiness of a 2.ii.

Letters to the Editor

Jack May Editor-in-Chief

Dear Editor

Dear Sir

I was present at the Cambridge Union bicentenary celebration as President in the Easter Term 1964 and congratulate Ann[a] Carruthers on her coverage.

While the organisation was excellent the event was less satisfactory than it might have been. The failure to provide name badges for the participants made conversation difficult.

The pre-debate dinner at St John’s was marred by a poorly prepared speech from Vince Cable the only ex-President in the present cabinet. He misrecollected events from his days in the Union, where he was heavily defeated for the presidency a year before he was finally elected, and told jokes that bore no relationship to Cambridge or the Union.

The actual debate was amusing but light on recollection or other serious content. The choice of speakers was lamentably unrepresentative. Six of the eight, including the two ladies, were from the 1960s and early 1970s.

There was no speaker from outside England, so belying the cosmopolitan nature of the Union, despite the presence of Ian Binnie, the Canadian supreme court judge, and Mani Aiyer, a former government minister in India. When the debate was opened to the house, Aiyer was disregarded when he raised his hand to speak.

I am a generally tolerant and relaxed fellow, but I must take issue with a slight in your paper that has caused many of us in the Church of England grave offense [sic]. In an article describing the (treacherous) debate on disestablishment of the Holy Church (‘“Sinister plot” to disestablish Church of England’, Vol. 16, Lent Issue 2), your writer referred to The Bishop of Leicester as ‘Revd Stevens’. There may well be a Rev’d Stevens in the ranks of clergy, but that is no way to address a Bishop and Lord Spiritual. The Bishop of Leicester would suffice.

TV & Film Editor

Grace Murray

Social Media Managers

Yema Stowell Ru Merritt

Fashion Editor

Maddy Airlie Chief Sub Editors

Books Editor

Alice Mottram

Megan Proops Char Furniss-Roe

Lifestyle Editors

Jessy Ahluwalia Lucy Meekley

Directors

Food & Drink Editor

Julia Stanyard

Ciara Berry Jemma Stewart Siu Hong Yu Hazel Shearing Thomas Saunders

Sport Editor

Charles Martland Flora McFarlane

TCS Top Dogs

Elsa Maishman Alice Mottram Ellie Hayward Ashley Chhibber Rebecca Alldridge Freya Sanders

W

e all know about our mental health problem. The first issue of this newspaper this term reported on the “unnecessary pressure” felt by a majority of students, in that the 2014 National Student Survey showed only 55% of Cambridge students find their workload is manageable. As Murray Edwards JCR’s Academic and Welfare Officer Charlotte Furniss-Roe commented, “trying to balance work, social life and sleep is difficult.”

The reading week campaign covered on this term’s second front page offers one solution. It has a commendable aim in trying to better support those amongst us who do suffer from mental health issues, may be as high as 20%, according to the National Union of Students. Its support thus far, however, has seemed limited, though the success of the Week Five work boycott remains to be seen.

In the same week, I wrote that “giving students space to thrive in their extracurricular activities” is a good aim to which we should strive. I went with the idea that “they may not be as highachieving, but they’ll be happy”.

That’s great, and happiness is a fairly uncontenstable ‘good’, and we should all strive for it, but clearly we’re struggling. As the story on our front page shows, some colleges have seen as many as one in 10 undergraduates intermit on average in the past three years. For many of the 947 undergraduate students who have intermitted since 2011, it’s less about happiness, and more getting through each day as it comes.

What can we do to ameliorate these concerning statistics, then? How can

we make sure that the number of intermitting students who don’t return in the next three years is lower than the 227 from the past three?

It’s a difficult question, and one to which nobody seems to be able to offer a definitive answer. William Hewstone wrote in this paper that “Cambridge’s pressure shows we’re getting it right”, and to a certain extent, he has a point.

The reason our qualifications have such purchase in the real world, is that Cambridge is really, amazingly, awfully, impressively tough. Our degree certificates are as much a statement of ‘if I can put up with three years of this, imagine what else I can do’ as they are of any academic achievement.

The question then becomes, as Associate Editor Sam Rhodes and former Editor-in-Chief Ashley Chhibber debated in this paper, “should we continue to lie to Cambridge’s hopefuls”, or should we more honestly admit that “it’s kind of about learning things but mostly it’s about being crazy stressed for three years and being okay with this. Good luck.”

But for those facing serious mental illness, that’s a pretty grotesque response. ‘Batten down the hatches and see you on Graduation Day’ isn’t good enough. The best response we can give may be that Associate Editor Freya Sanders gave in her piece ‘What have you done today?’

Don’t do that essay. Miss that lecture.

Skip that seminar. Look up that book on Wikipedia. Punt. Sleep in if you can’t face getting out of bed. Go for a coffee.

Get a 2.ii. Disappoint your parents.

In spite of what many have said, it’s not about being the best. It’s not even really about being happy. It’s about being healthy. Start there, and the rest will, eventually, come.

Sleep in if you can’t face getting out of bed.

Get a 2.ii.

Disappoint your parents.

Yours faithfully, CJM Bell Editor-in-Chief The Tab Cambridge

Corrections

The Editor would like to apologise for any spiralling confusion relating to the misattribution of cats on page 11 of Issue Two in our ‘Creature feature’.

Our correction in last week’s issue, stating that the predominantly white cat pictured in Issue Two belongs to Char Furniss-Roe, Chief Sub Editor, is, in fact, incorrect. We have been reliably Yours sincerely, informed of this by Misss. FurnissRoe’s mother, who is eager to clarify Charles Lysaght that the family does not own a cat. The predominantly white cat belongs to Former President of the Cambridge Jenny Steinitz, News Editor, as originally Union Society stated in Issue Two. Easter Term 1964 We also wish to apologise to Charles, Sport Editor Flora McFarlane’s dog, for Like what we’re doing? Let us know at labelling him as “a bit of a poser”. We editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk sincerely regret any resultant upset.

Editorial Team: Lent Term 2015 Editor-in-Chief

Jack May

Associate Editors

Colm Murphy Sam Rhodes Freya Sanders

News Editors Deputy News

Science & Research Editor

Shreya Kulkarni

Comment Editors

Albi Stanley Rebecca Moore Brontë Philips William Hewstone

Jenny Steinitz Anna Carruthers Interviews Editor Rachel Balmer Shilpita Mathews Features Editors Jack Lewy Tonicha Upham Olly Hudson Catherine Maguire Columns Editor

Julius Haswell Amelia Oakley Elsa Maishman Chase Smith Sian Avery

Investigation Editor Ellie Hayward

Theatre Editor

Harry Parker

Dispatches Editor

Technology Editor

Sam Raby

Will Amor

Design Editor

Daisy Schofield

Production Editor

Thomas Saunders

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment 11

No

Nailya Shamgunova Comment Contributor

F

irst of all let’s talk about the immediate context: the recent student-led campaigns to prevent the Philosophy Faculty removing Marx from the second year curriculum.

I want to make it clear that I am not a fan of Marx. At the same time, neither am I a fan of excluding him from the Tripos – not least because I don’t want Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill to be excluded from it in the unlikely event of

Having a tantrum won’t get us anywhere

a Marxist dystopia ever happening. If an author is important to the development of a discipline, they should be studied.

And, whether one likes it or not, Marx is quite a milestone.

However, campaigning to change the course, or prevent a change from happening, is not the same as dictating the contents of the Tripos. It is an example of the student body working alongside academics to come to a consensus and develop a better curriculum, and the University actually already has structures in place to facilitate this dialogue.

Every department has a variety of student representative roles, which often include attendance of various Triposcontent related committees. I can only

Paying gives a right to a better service, not what the service entails

Image: Ian Turk

speak for the faculty I worked with from first-hand experience, but I can assure you that students’ feedback is taken quite seriously. It’s not just a token thing academics have to do but would rather not. For example, my faculty, History, has been criticised for the lack of nonEuropean history offered. Regardless of whether these criticisms are well-founded or not, the Faculty put an extra effort into remedying the situation and created 16 new non-European lectureships.

Moreover, these new resources are used to create the new World History MPhil.

Changes of this scale are difficult to achieve from administrative and budget perspectives, and they don’t happen overnight. Due to various practical considerations, reorganising any Tripos takes years. Thus, any serious change should not be made on the whim of a particular group of students, who will have left before changes are passed, but a considered decision made by academics as a result of concerns flagged by student bodies. Changes should be based on the long-term benefits that they would bring for successive generations of students Moreover, undergraduates constitute only half of the student body of the University. Any Tripos is ultimately dependent on the resources of its faculty, and those resources both depend on, and provide for graduate students as well. Thus, if the undergraduates deem

a particular resource wasteful, but it is useful for graduates, undergraduates don’t have a right to dictate what to do with that resource.

While collaboration is very important, it should be the academics who make the ultimate decisions. Students, especially undergraduates, do not have enough experience either of their subject or the administrative aspects of running a department to bluntly control the contents of their Tripos. Academics, every single one of which is a former undergraduate of a university, have spent their entire careers working in their respective disciplines. They are well placed to appreciate both sides of the issue and to participate in a dialogue with the current students.

“But undergraduates pay!” some would exclaim. Yes, they do. In my opinion, paying for a service gives a right to a better service, not what the service actually entails. I strongly support more contact hours and better stocked libraries, as we do pay a lot for our education and are entitled to good quality.

However, I do not support students who believe if they shout loud enough they should be able to dictate the contents of their Tripos. If you are so unhappy with what it entails, why not invest your student loan into a more suitable program elsewhere?

Should students be in charge of their degree courses?

Yes

Hayden Banks Comment Contributor

C

ambridge is renowned for its traditions, in all their weird and wonderful forms. Upon arrival I anticipated glamorous formals in grand halls coupled with picturesque punts down the Cam and I wasn’t disappointed. What I didn’t envisage was the quiet sense of steely ambition students were harnessing to combat some of the less renowned traditions, namely those related to our academic lives, which let’s face it are fairly important here in Cambridge.

First there was ‘Whose University’, an activism campaign which aims to make student the priority of our institutions (seems reasonable). More recently the controversial ‘End Week Five Blues’ has risen to the fore, with the aim of diluteing the mental-illness inducing intensity of eight-week terms by instating a reading week half-way through – make your own minds up on that one.

In this light, I suggest we focus on one seemingly archaic aspect of university which we may be overlooking. In some

ways, it is perhaps the most central, the stuff we slave over every week and try to articulate intelligently on during supervisions: the content of our degrees. In recent weeks, the removal of Marx from the Philosophy course has sparked accusations regarding the authority of professors in their own domains. Yes, they’re world experts.

Yes, their research is often groundbreaking. But they’ve done it – read the books, written the dissertations, sat their finals, and now it’s our turn. We’ve demonstrated a passion for our subjects and this passion should enable us to have a greater input into what we’re dedicating our lives to for three years.

The University of Cambridge states on its website that it is committed to ‘encouraging and developing enquiring minds’. It becomes extremely difficult to achieve this when, week in week out, we scramble to the libraries with the same reading lists and the same recommended texts with no personal input into the topics covered. Without trying to sound too Marxist myself, it’s time power was given to those who need it most.

As a somewhat disillusioned HSPS student, the course is definitely varied and theoretically challenging, but I couldn’t help feeling in my first term that it is dangerously detached from

Without trying to sound too Marxist, it’s time power was given to those who need it most.

the real world. I read flippantly of ISIS progress in the Middle East and watched the atrocities of the Charlie Hebdo scandal unfold, as a break from my own intellectual engagement with the rather dry 18th century political theorists that my essays demanded. Indeed even my Director of Studies himself recognised the need for an injection of the real world and surprised us all this term by dedicating ten minutes at the beginning of each supervision to discussion of current affairs. Some may disagree. Those who are content with their courses will skim through this article with no further action

Power to the people

other than a roll of the eyes at yet more complaining. But it seems ironic to me that I am lectured on democracy whilst we have no say on what we are learning.

We have student-run subject committees, subject representatives, boards and faculties aimed at improving student experience, but is it all just lip service? It’s time these committees placed greater emphasis on student opinions and let us vote on the content of our courses.

Tradition is all well and good, but Cambridge needs to wake up and start listening to its students.

Image: Boston Public Library

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment 12 The ravages of consumerism: Valentine’s Day at Lonely Hearts HQ Yasmin Omar Comment Contributor

T

he extent of the romance in my life can currently be reduced to my dissertation/autobiography on ‘impossible love.’ And I’m OK with that; 364 days of the year.

Until Valentine’s Day, that sadistic mistress, plunges me into a tumult of self-loathing, cackling at my demise.

Consumer society is no better: East Coast Trains, please kindly stop sending me deals for that “perfect romantic get

away”. Unidays, I beg of you, find it in your heart to abstain from promoting “sexy outfits to wow your Valentine”.

As for you, Sainsbury’s, slash your Ben and Jerry’s prices, because I’m going to need every ounce of saturated fat that I can squeeze into my veins to survive this miserable excuse for a holiday. Bitter? Me? Never.

On Galentine’s Day – yes I stole that from Leslie Knope, what of it? – I plan on transforming my room into Lonely Hearts HQ where I’ll blast out my ‘Girl Power Anthems’ and consume ungodly

Bridget Jones: sickening and predictable

amounts of calorific confectionary because, let’s face it, if anybody actually wanted to see me naked I wouldn’t be in this mess.

I feel I should point out that the concept of Galentine’s Day is something of a misnomer, in that it implies I will be spending the evening in a sororal circle of French-braiding and nail-painting. As a fourth year, my female friend count has plummeted to a shameful total of one: Ellie. So Galentine’s will be just the two of us, with me shovelling down all of the ice cream since she’s lactose intolerant.

Salted caramel, you’re the one for me.

The evening will begin with dramatic readings from seminal feminist texts – Butler, De Beauvoir, you know the drill – and then we’ll snuggle up in Disney pyjamas and watch a film.

Choosing the movie was an art in itself. De Rougemont claims, “happy love has no story” (I wasn’t lying about that dissertation), but I’m convinced it does. In the form of the saccharine garbage that is the romcom.

We decided we couldn’t seek solace in Bridget Jones or The Princess Diaries because they follow Hollywood’s darling ‘set upconfrontation-resolution’ structure all too tightly. In other words, the heroine unfailingly manages to secure her love object: Bridget ends up with Darcy and Mia gets her ‘foot-pop and kiss.’

Image: Alba productions Frankly, I don’t want to be reminded of

I’ll be gorging on ice cream, because if anyone wanted to see me naked, I wouldn’t be in this mess

E L C Y C T DON’ S! T H G I L T U O WITH

…AND AVOID A £30 FINE.

Bike lights available from CUSU for just £8.

Old Examination Hall, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RF.

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the existence of such perfectly tied-up plots when I’m huddled up in blankets, ugly-crying as quietly as possible to prevent my neighbours from cottoning on to the emotional turmoil I’m undergoing.

I suggested we watch Les amours imaginaires instead, precisely because it positively overflows with angst and awkwardness, as it is about those relationships that you construct in your head, relationships based on misinterpreted signs and a generous dollop of fantasy: basically, the only relationships us social freaks understand.

It saddens me to say that, this Valentine’s, I will be deprived of the exercise of deciphering the protagonist’s (dis)interest, Ellie having told me that I should stop being such a “goddamned film snob”, admitting that subtitles are “too much” for Saturday night entertainment. I eventually relinquished and we settled on Titanic.

No complaints there, my heart was Leonardo DiCap-tured a long time ago… “Hey Leo, long shot, babe, I know, but if you don’t have any models to spend your Valentine’s Day with, would you fancy drawing me like one of your French girls?”

So that’s my Valentine’s Day plan.

Unless, of course, if somebody reads this article, is touched by my gentle air of despondency and feels like crashing my pity party. Anyone?

12 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment

13 Cambridge’s animal testing is regulated and necessary Max Gray Comment Contributor

O

Even the cat thinks we need a break..

n Wednesday 4 February, Cambridge City Council accepted pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca’s plans to build a new headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus near Addenbrooke’s. This £330 million development plan has been subject to substantial objections due to the company’s use of animals in their pharmaceutical testing process.

Animal rights activists opposed this Photo: Brontë Phillips decision, which was delayed for over three months due in no small part to the petitions registered against it. However, despite protests, the City Council has now given its final approval to this new project.

Many research students in the life sciences use animals in their research, myself included. There is a large spectrum of how animals can be used in research, including habituating wild people’s room licences are long enough animals to human interactions, catching to accommodate a reading week, a wild animals for experiments that university wide reading week would are then released, using captive-bred allow colleges to coordinate better. animals and using purpose-bred lab Cambridge has stretched me in ways I animals (genetic-knockout mice etc.). didn’t think I could stretch, it has pushed Hardly anyone objects to observing me when I didn’t want to be pushed, and wild, temporarily captive, or habituated I’m grateful for that. wild animals. Especially since these are However, it’s also crushed my selfeither left alone entirely or fed to the point esteem and love of learning, and every Cambridge of being better off than wild animals. term on a cycle destroys my ability to can’t keep Intuitively, however, it seems that the function as a normal human. Reading pretending line is crossed at the point when animals week has allowed me to take a breath it’s “one-size used for research are unduly harmed. and regain my dignity.

The debate then turns on deciding Cambridge students come in all shapes fits all”. what constitutes “undue” suffering, and and sizes, and this is absolutely how it which animal is being tested on. Can should bet. However, the Cambridge we permit the suffering of a lab-rat as term comes in a ‘one size fits all’ package. a sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a A reading week would remove barriers terminally ill child with cancer, and their for students who find this model hard to family? Although extreme, this is the fit into, likewise giving students who are choice you’re faced with when morally managing their workload effectively a quantifying AstraZeneca’s new HQ as chance to revise or delve into interests less relevant to their exams.

Academic standing should not be measured in how stressed the courses makes its students. A Cambridge degree is not about giving the illusion of academic rigour; it is about providing the best possible education. Cambridge’s reputation can only be hurt by failing so many of its students and we must make changes.

To those who say a reading week would never work and would destroy Cambridge, I’m afraid in a small corner of the university, it’s already here and it is successful.

For the first time, I’m starting Week Five ready to learn – which is what we all came to Cambridge to do in the Animal Testing creates great tv characters Image :Pinky and the Brain Cartoons first place.

I get a reading week: Everyone else deserves one too Kate Champion Comment Contributor

A

s one of a handful of students who have a Lent reading week, I feel lucky. I am dyslexic and depressed, and struggle with Cambridge’s intense terms. I know I am one of many. I believe that all students would benefit from a reading week. I do Natural Sciences Psychology Part II, and it has been running a Lent reading week for as long as 10 years.

My reading week allows me to organize my notes, digest half a term’s material, get seven full nights of sleep, get over a cold, get in two full days of testing participants for my experiment, get some baking done, and do a few essay plans. Most importantly, I feel ready to face the next four weeks of lectures.

Normally at this point of term, I see a huge drop in my productivity, motivation and mood. However, because of my reading week, I feel refreshed, energized and productive.

We must think carefully about what we want from our reading week. Some lecture courses in my subject chose to continue lectures during the reading week. Students I spoke to worried that supervisors would pile on more work.

Do we want an eight week term that includes a reading week by removing content from our courses? Or do we want to sacrifice our holiday breaks?

Psychology simply starts three days early, and finishes one day late. Another colleague suggested that the extra weeks should come out of the summer holiday, as the winter and Easter breaks can provide crucial study and rest time for many students.

There will also need to be administrative and accomodation changes. While most

it will also be their primary oncology research centre. On balance, you’d have to be heartless to wish potentially preventable disease on any other human, but if that prevention comes at the cost of the lives of a few thousand animals – what then? Does the balance fall in favour of the animals or those future patients suffering from cancer?

Contrary to sensationalised belief, the Home Office strictly regulates the use of animals in research laboratories, and any research has to go through rigorous ethical approval before it can begin. Cambridge Against AstraZeneca Planning (CAP), one of the groups protesting the HQ development, state on their website that AstraZeneca “goes against the spirit” of EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. This is simply not the case. All research is legally required to follow that directive to the letter.

In any case, laboratory animals, such as those who will be in the AstraZeneca labs, are incredibly well treated. If you ever visit a vivisection lab, the animals are kept in better conditions than most pets. No invasive procedures are allowed without the inclusion of a trained veterinarian in the project, at which point adequate anaesthesia is used to prevent excessive pain or suffering. Rather than shutting down labs, animal rights activists should be spending their time enforcing these vital ethical standards and making sure minimal suffering is inflicted on the animals being tested.

It is, for the foreseeable future, illegal to develop new drugs for the treatment of human illness without first testing those drugs on animals.

So if you do object to animal testing, figure out a way to safely test new drugs, and then campaign for the change of drug,approval laws.

Objecting to a new pharmaceutical HQ will only impede the progress of vital medical research.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Interviews

14

“You always think you’re ok”: Bill Oddie, depression, and wildlife in Britain Julius Haswell Interviews Editor

B

ill Oddie, an alumnus of Pembroke College, returned to Cambridge earlier this week to speak to the Union. Ever the gentleman, he made lots of time afterwards for interviews, and I was able to catch him just before he left to ask him some questions about the big areas in his life, including his Cambridge student life, his time at the Footlights and his later career.

I asked him if he could describe his life at Cambridge: “Firstly I had no idea what I was coming to and why. My dad guided my school career, and got me to take the exam for a fairly high-powered school in my area, in which it was kind of expected that you’d try for Oxford or Cambridge. I astonished my headmaster by getting a place at interview, but I hadn’t really the faintest idea about what was going on!

“So up I came to Cambridge and as I recall in that first year I wasn’t very happy at all because I didn’t really know where I fitted in. Fortunately I made one or two friends in a similar situation.

“I was most fortunate being at Pembroke because Peter Cook had been there and set a tradition for doing comedy shows and that sort of thing, and so it was something I knew I wanted to

That shirt..... do because I had started writing comedy songs and sketches at school. But I was fortunate that the Pembroke smoker was a cut above all the other colleges.

“By the end of my first year I knew I could hold my own on the stage. By my second year I felt confident enough to go for the Footlights and duly got in. I was never at college. I lived in the footlights clubroom!”

A keen birdwatcher, Bill has presented many shows on birds on TV, and was a presenter on Springwatch for three

Image: Bryan Ledgardww years. He has often spoken about the conservation of wildlife in our country, so I asked him what the biggest problems facing us are in conservation.

“There’s no question really that this government and landowners who own shooting rights are the biggest canker on the wildlife on Britain. People who own bloody great shooting ranges invite all their mates down to ‘have a shoot’.

Those people really don’t give a damn about conservation. For them wildlife is there to be exploited.”

Oddie has spoken publicly about his manic depression and how it has affected his life. But he told me of problems that still face sufferers of mental health issues: “One major thing I’d say, and I’m sure many other bipolar people would agree with me, is that you don’t get long enough with a GP. You get the subtleties, and not long enough to figure out what’s going on at all. It makes recovery far, far harder.

“One of the main things is that if somebody goes to the GP with manic depression, then contact should also be made with the family. It is as much about them as it is about the person diagnosed.

It really applies to a manic period where you’re telling everyone you’re fine, and in fact you’re more that fine.

“Your family is constantly telling you that something’s wrong but you always think you’re ok. It can really affect your loved ones, so they need to be a real part of the recovery.”

He did have some positive things to say about how we deal with mental health issues: “There’s been so much stuff on the TV and radio about it that you can’t pretend to not know about it.

“There’s now good treatment out there, and now that there’s been good enough publicity, people are able to recognise their problems and make a start in dealing with it.”

Let’s hope he’s right.

For rich landowners wildlife is there to be exploited

Born in the shadow fo the Holocaust: Survivor Eva Clarke at the Union Julius Haswell Interviews Editor

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you’ve heard about the war now. You had two daddies, and one daddy was killed in the war. But I found more and more things out as I got older.”

A recent statistic came out which said that only 20% of schoolchildren know about recent genocides, and only 80% of schoolchildren have heard of the Holocaust. When I put it to her, she had her views on the statistic: “I was very surprised by this statistic. I know that a lot of work goes into raising awareness by various organisations, for example

va Clarke was born in Mauthausen Concentration Camp in 1945.

Her mother was taken to the camp just before its liberation, and Eva was born one day after the gas chambers had been blown up. It is incredible that she has survived, having been born into such an environment.

She now goes around Europe telling her story and warning against current and impending genocides, and her recent visit to the Cambridge Union gave me the opportunity to ask her about her life.

I asked her just how aware she was of her mother’s past when she was growing up: “That’s one of the main questions people ask me. I was very aware, because when I was a little girl I didn’t have extended family anywhere I was always asking my mother of her life growing up.

I would ask about her schooldays and her holidays. Interspersed with the small family stories she would tell me small snippets of her wartime experiences as she felt I could cope with the details.

Only ever tiny bits. I can tell you the very first thing she ever told me. She took a deep breath and said: “Right, well Mauthausen memorial

the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and the Anne Frank Trust for whom I speak.

But there are many many students whose schools have had survivors come in to speak to them, or have been to the camps with the Holocaust Educational Trust. I am not saying the statistics aren’t true, but I was very surprised to learn that they are as high as they are. But yes it is very important to be aware of and to learn from the holocaust to prevent anything from happening again. The things we learn from Auschwitz and other camps

can be used in conflicts all around the world to stop genocide.”

She also made her views on the way I do think a that Germany deals with its history law against very clearly. While Germany does have Holocaust laws against inciting hatred with the use of Nazi symbols, it doesnt have a denial law against Holocaust denial. I asked is rather for her opinions on the law. “Although I appropriate wouldn’t want it to be a crime anywhere in Germany else, I do think it’s rather appropriate in Germany. In Austria it is also very appropriate I feel.”

When I went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, I felt at times uncomfortable, as no behaviour seemed appropriate. Smiling didn’t seem appropriate, neither did sitting down to have lunch because we were constantly being made aware of the history of where we were sitting.

She said: “I sympathise with your problem. Visiting a place like that can have different effects on many people, but in order for people to visit one needs to have a visitors’ centre, loos, and a place to eat food, otherwise people won’t come. Some say we need to let places like that rot, but I think they need to be maintained so people can get a proper Image: Wikimedia Commons education about what went on.”

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Dispatches 15 Wandering through Jerusalems: How I didn’t settle the issue of settlements Dorota Molin Year Abroad Columnist, Israel

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he woman repated the word I just used to describe her home.

“A settlement?” Her surprise took me by surprise. We were talking about Pisgat Ze’ev, the largest residential area in Jerusalem, located in the east of the city. The majority of international organisations define the place with this term. Yet a local resident was taken aback by it – she

said she had never come across this designation before.

And this was not the first time I found this matter rather unsettling. Could I at least settle the bare definition? A ‘settlement’ is an Israeli residential area in territory which had until ’67 been behind the Green Line, under Jordanian control. To this, Israel would respond that on this territory, Jewish settlements had existed before the establishment of the state in 1948, and were then internationally recognised.

They would also point out that there is one united Jerusalem, the capital.

A UN official would object that Israel agreed in 1993 on borders roughly following the Green Line. For the Palestinian Authority, the settlements pose a problem for the capital they envision in East Jerusalem. Needless to say, these neighbourhoods change the demographic map of the city.

But while political debate is boiling, people in the Pisgat Ze’ev settlement don’t read ‘The Cinderella’s Guide to National Security’ to their children.

Instead, they take them to the playground. Or at least – residents I have interviewed do. Because for them, the choice of house isn’t a matter of ideology. Most important was cheaper rent (could be two-thirds compared to the centre) and good service. When I ask them to what extent it isimportant for them to understand the legal and political background, they don’t have that much to say.

This has taught me something: there is a difference between national policy and people’s private life. While deciding whether the policy can or cannot be justified legally is important for politics, on a human level, we must Image: Dorota Molin avoid categorising people by ideology.

Sitting on the fence

Settlements also bring benefits: services and transport

The same dichotomy seems to exist on the other side too. Wandering around the Pisgat shopping centre, I bump into a Palestinian family. They tell me that they come here often for shopping, and that they have good relations with locals. It is true that many Palestinians have a sense of political claustrophobia, with Jewish neighbourhoods springing up across East Jerusalem. But settlements also bring benefits: good services and transport. According to Reuters, there is a growing trend for Palestinians to more into Jewish settlements, precisely for this reason.

I walk around Pisgat’s modern centre. This place wasn’t established by fanatics who invaded private houses at night. It was planned by the government for land that by-and-large had not been utilised. Someone else says to me: “It’s hard to talk about settlements on the whole. Every single one is a separate legal case.”

And so I leave Pisgat, knowing that it’ll be a while before the dust settles, seeing it’s hard to settle on definitions.

I don’t want to get off the fence. I can see further from here. It’s high, like the security barrier between the settlement and the Arab neighbourhood.

Book yourself a holiday Meggie Fairclough Dispatches Contributor

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ravelling to different countries is about breathing in a different way of life; it is about seeing how different people live, with the sights, sounds and smells seeping into your skin and percolating through your pores, rather than just capturing a brief moment in time. Travelling is also about experiencing the present, instead of reminiscing on places been or concerning yourself for the future of what you are going to take home. This is why I have never taken photographs of the sunset over the Grand Canyon or the sharks in the Maldives, or moved any of the shells that littered the beaches of Zanzibar. I never went to New York to get the T-shirt, or adventured on a safari in South Africa just to say that I’ve ‘been there and done it’. Instead, I took a book. If you truly want to remember somewhere, the best thing to do is read when you are there.

A flashbulb memory is a striking emotional event that makes you recall in detail where you were and what you were doing at a particular time. I find that books achieve something similar.

The first time you read something that makes you think ‘wow’, it becomes so

evocative of a time and place in your life that it is ingrained deep within your psyche.

I remember reading the following lines from To Kill a Mockingbird, from the top of a mountain in the Alps; “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

These two events are now inescapably connected in my mind. This quotation immediately transports me back to snow-numbed fingers and the scent of rich hot chocolate, and likewise whenever I feel the winter chill tickle my nose, I feel the rough pages of Harper Lee’s book and hear Scout’s Southern drawl.

Reading books in various countries is also as a great way to keep a type of diary. You can wreck books, so they become your own portable scrapbook.

There is nothing better than finding a beermat from Spain lodged in a copy of Pride and Prejudice, or a ketchup stain from a long-eaten McDonalds from Chicago smeared across The Bell Jar. Having emotional ties to places need not be material, but just something that serves as a connection to a memory of distant lands and past selves.

Looks exactly like the Deep South to me...

Image: Artur Staszewski

12 February 2015 the cambridge student www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 16 Doing it long distance: Is it even possible?

Fran Hughes Features Contributor

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idnight is approaching on 14 February 2014, and I’m sat at the back of a train that was supposed to arrive in Swansea 15 minutes ago. After the train has crawled along at a painfully slow pace for another hour, there is an alarmingly loud thud, and we stop again. The train operator announces in a cheerful Swansea accent that, “We appear to have run over somebody’s shed roof. Sorry about the sudden halt.”

Eventually, the train arrives at my destination at three in the morning, following two subsequent collisions with trees on the track. For myself and anyone else trying to keep up a long

Love knows no borders

distance relationship, travelling on Valentine’s Day 2014 during the storminduced disruptions was a pretty tortuous experience. I can remember several moments of despair on that eight hour journey when I angrily thought of fellow Cambridge students who complain about having partners in London – oh, if only!

Despite all this, I am in fact glad that I have been in a long distance relationship whilst at Cambridge. The kind of working environment that we are in tends to encourage a little bit of hermithood, but I can happily retreat to the library for evenings on end without feeling guilty, whilst friends around me try to juggle time with their partners, friends and supervision work. Once my boyfriend attempted to visit me for a week during term, rather than our

standard two weekends, and it was a complete disaster. There are only so many times that he could make me tea, pat me on the back and admire my beautiful posture as I hunched over my desk all day, frantically trying to write a particularly terrible essay. I ended up feeling like I’d failed at my work, and failed at being decent company too.

It’s far better to put concentrated bursts of affection into a short phone call or weekend away.

From three years of long-distance experience at long-distance, I’d say that the hardest thing to reconcile is the work difference. Most of our arguments have stemmed from me feeling irritated when I call him on my way back from the UL, dragging books during an enormous sugar crash, whilst he describes how he “hasn’t been up to much, just lectures, watching TV, the usual.” Quite often he has got upset because he has felt that I prioritise work above our relationship.

We’ve established certain rules: One – Skype is the devil, Two – If one of us puts the phone down on the other they are obliged to ring back after five minutes to apologise; Three – We know that we’re probably going to have an argument during weeks four and seven; Four – When I’m being a miserable, irritable and unreasonable mare, it’s Cambridge speaking, not me; Five – Everything will be fine once the Image: Gabriel Davies train pulls into the station.

Excuse me, I’ve lost my phone number... Can I have yours?

The endless search for Prince Charming Meggie Fairclough Features Contributor

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he idea of finding a ‘one true love’ has become a pretty intrinsic part of all young girls’ lives. We are raised with fairy stories of falling in love, from that first glance, which is followed by a dance, song, proposal and ‘hey presto’, you soon find yourself living in a swanky castle in no time at all. Easy enough right?

Wrong. I blame Disney; we all can’t be princesses and meet our Prince Charmings, but the lure of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty lets us pretend we can be just for a little.

Cambridge hasn’t helped me in any case to grow up and away from this dream. To my innocent eyes, the river, gilded choirs, cobbled lanes and green grass made it all seem like stepping into a Disney film rather than a university when I first arrived.

Envisioning myself waltzing around St John’s, draped in scarves and long dresses or attending masked balls, I was nder the spell more than ever. Cambridge

invited me to become the princess I always wanted to be and search for my one true love alongmidnight streets or by kissing the occasional frog.

As Disney princesses throughout the ages would sing, ‘I wished upon my dream’; but the reality now is that my dream never came true (cue the collective sigh!) It wasn’t that I didn’t wish hard enough, or look in the wrong place, but, now it seems that’s all true love really; a dream.

Love may be rocky and not exactly ‘true’ in the expected sense. This is not a bad thing, but just the way of life, and the reality of it is that we may find love in more unexpected ways whether this be a blind RAG date, or even a drunken night at Curry King.

I believe that we need to maintain the dream of finding true love even if it isn’t real. We must preserve the dream of finding true love in Cambridge. If we were to pop the bubble and destroy the notion of finding true love, and true love’s first kiss, what good is it?

We would be taking away Gatsby’s ‘green light’; the apparently unattainable

spark that isn’t real, but causes us to reach out to try to get it. This is a vision that is motivating, driving and if we extinguish it to Cambridge princesses what will they be able to strive for?

Even if this light is futile, ‘we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’, and as a result have something to strive for; something that is achievable even if faraway. If there is no dream of true love, there will be no hope for true love; there will be no Cambridge.

I now know that finding my true love at Cambridge is more of an illusion; a dream that is unlikely ever to happen.

Even though I know that true love may perhaps not be a reality, I still choose to believe that it is out there, somewhere.

I am stubborn and like the chase of something I can’t quite grab; I like striving to reach the unreachable. Yes it is a dream, but isn’t it a dream worth living for?

So where is love? Does it fall from skies above? It may not be under the sycamore tree, but, still, pretend it is, Does love only exist in fairytales? and go and have a look!

Image: Karen Horton

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 17 My purrfect Valentine’s Elsa Maishman Features Contributor

Are you an appendix?

‘Cause I want to take you out!

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e aren’t all lucky enough to have a hot date on Valentine’s Day. But who needs humans when you have pets to fill that hole in your heart? Not convinced?

Constant availability. Pets don’t have work to do, places to be, or God forbid, people to see that aren’t you. At any hour of the day or night, your pet will be there for you, no questions asked.

Unconditional love. I once accidentally stood on my cat’s tail. Five minutes later, he was on my lap, love instantly restored.

If you have food, you can do no wrong.

Pets don’t eat chocolate. It’s actually bad for them. So all the more for you.

Granted, you’ll have to buy this yourself.

No Judgement. For a cat, a productive day entails sleeping for 19 hours and eating. So when your day follows the same pattern, he’s in no position to judge.

Silence. Despite the claims of dieI like your shirt... hard animal whisperers, pets can’t talk, But it would look meaning they can’t disagree with you, contradict you, or point out your failings. better on my floor The fluffy factor. Unless your pet is a fish/ snake/ferret, they’re most likely covered in fur of the fluffy, make-your-daybetter-with-just-one-cuddle variety.

Selflessness. Want to watch Miranda for seven hours straight? No problem. Pets don’t have favourite shows, so you’re 100% guaranteed to work. always in control of the entertainment.

Are you a banana?

‘Cause I find you a-peeling

Features’ best chat-up lines

Image: Alex Brooks Shuttleworth

Are you a dementor?

‘Cause you take my breath away

All Heart Images: Chernface141

The tale of a one night stand Susanna Worth Features Contributor

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he twelve words every girl wants to hear their grandmother say to them on the phone: “Well it’s a bit too late to send you to a convent...”

A self-proclaimed nymphomaniac at the age of 17, it’s fair to say that I’ve had a few too many problems on the boy front than my mother would be comfortable knowing.

I mean, we’ve all been there: you turn up at the library ready for a fun-filled evening of work, sit next to the empty seat where someone has left their stuff, only to have it filled an hour later by last week’s conquest and with you looking like a sexual predator.

This is fundamentally what is wrong with Cambridge. At other universities, the likelihood of you running into anyone you’ve ever made out with is more of a pipe dream than a day-to-day struggle. While in first year the realities of spending the next three or four years

with the boy you fell for in Freshers’ Week don’t really seem real, they will do when you come back term after term to the knowledge that you are still not on speaking terms.

Equally, apply these problems to the thespian community and you’ve got the same problems magnified. Effectively founded on nepotism, everyone has a friend in common and gossip travels fast.

Take what happened at the Fringe: I went home with someone, they accidentally came on my arm, and on the same day they told their friend about this, midshow, mid-scene, in front of a LIVE audience. And who says that Romance is dead in the modern age?

There also seems to be a particular time limit on such flirtations, a grace period. ADC after-parties mark a certain climax in affairs that is immediately dropped and forgotten about with the following show. After bumping into my DoS on the walk home, covered head to toe in Fullers Earth and wearing the makeup of the day before, I realised that it really does pay to be selective with

Have you got any Irish in you?.... Would you like some?

Fated to visit Sainsbury’s literally every time you do

Bumping into your DoS on the walk of shame is never great

your extra-curricular activities...

In a similar sense, it seems that in Cambridge you constantly have to be on guard for every stage of romance being captured by the amateur paparazzi of your friends, photo-shopped to include lipstick kisses and emoji dribbling, and then circulated amongst the first years of your college. Oh how I wish I was somehow kidding.

With its thin walls, claustrophobic colleges, and a worryingly high

Image: Racchio

proportion of students who liken themselves to figures in Renaissance poetry after bribing £20 for you and their friend to be set up on RAG blind date, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Cambridge was some kind of social experiment designed to break students through a pummelling of personal boundaries and an expectation to have “a thick skin and an elastic heart”. It isn’t, but sometimes it pushes you to right to the romantic limits.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 18 All Experiences Matter

From start to finish: Anatomy of an essay crisis

Chris Page Columnist

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Chase Caldwell Smith Features Editor

Reasons to be cheerful

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ell, it’s been depressing recently, hasn’t it? This column, I mean. Someone quite legitimately pointed out to me that the issues I deal with about welfare problems at Cambridge hardly make the most comfortable or pleasant reading. So I thought this week I’d shake things up a bit and try and take a positive look at welfare.

Raymond Williams put it well when he said in his essay, ‘My Cambridge’ that “[w]e read golden reminiscences of Cambridge so often... I have to include this other kind of fact: Cambridge can break you up, to no good purpose: confuse you, sicken you, wring you dry.”

That being said, it would be wrong to say that progress on welfare problems isn’t being made.

Things have improved since I matriculated back in 2009. For one thing, we now have a rudimentary step towards tutor training. For those who may have missed the status quo, college tutors received minimal training for their role as welfare providers.

Some training did exist, and it was optional. Anyone who’s had a skim over the testimonies on Cambridge Speaks Its Mind can see a recurring theme of tutors being unable to provide proper support.

For years, a long standing CUSU campaign for tutor training banged its collective head against a brick wall until, last year, it succeeded in a first step.

It was announced, to surprisingly little fanfair, that new tutors would undergo a training programme, incorporating support from the Disability Resource Centre, the University Counselling Service, and other support networks.

Note that it’s only new tutors who will be trained; existing tutors won’t be. But it still gives me a reason to feel hopeful.

It’s a foot in the door and suggests that the University and colleges are open to a broader discussion about improving the welfare system, and that’s a definite positive.

We should be under no illusions.

More work needs to be done to bring the Cambridge welfare system up to the standard that students deserve, and to correct the inconsistencies that cause so many people so many problems. But progress is being made, even at a glacial pace. It’s a step, however small, in the right direction.

The full version of this column is available at www.tcs.cam.ac.uk.

Your tea has gone cold, tragedy of all tragedies.

This requires immediate action

e’ve all been there – it’s noon and there’s six hours to go until the deadline. You’re tolerably comfortable, perched on your college-issued swivel chair. The light is good, your tea steaming, your laptop cracked open at a jaunty angle. It’s time.

Step 1. Unbridled optimism You enthusiastically open a new document. Its blankness is beautiful – a canvas waiting for you to paint the fruit of your intellect upon it. Wow, this will go well.

Step 2. Some positive procrastination You take a look at the font. Is Calibri appropriate? How would your name look in Times New Roman, perhaps?

Step 3. A little more reading You are ready to dig in. Or are you? You remember, inconveniently, that there was that one other book (or twenty) on the reading list that you didn’t quite get to. You saunter over to your bookshelf and peruse.You’ve got time, after all.

Step 4. More tea Book flipped through, quotations noted down, you’re ready again. But what is this? Your tea is cold. Tragedy of tragedies: this requires urgent action.

Step 6. Mild despair Four hours to go. There’s still time, theoretically. You type the first sentence,

Dissecting a dissertation

Dissertation dissection and then the second. Was that really how you wanted to begin? Not catchy enough.

This is harder than you first thought.

Step 7. Competitive suffering It’s time to abandon your essay, momentarily, to send an assortment of messages: “My essay isn’t going too well, how’s yours?” “Lol, 50 words in and three hours to go. What is my life?”

Step 8. Inadvertent naptime Glancing back at your meagre introduction, you’re tired – why did you decide to type your essay in your room?

Because there’s a fluffy bed, that’s why.

It calls you. You listen.

Step 9. Despair part two Hair matted to one side of your head, fully clothed and confused at the lack of sunlight outside of the window, you

Photo: Vande Walle Ewoud

Image: Vande Walle Ewoud wake up in a frenzy. Fumbling for your phone, you check the time. One hour to go. Covers flying, you stumble back to your desk and start typing madly.

Step 10. The finish line A minute to go and it’s done, miraculously, against the odds. Tea cold (again), laptop fan buzzing angrily from the ferocity of your efforts, you open Hermes and cobble together a passably rational email. You almost forget to attach the essay. But with ten seconds to go, you press the send button.

Sheer bliss.

You retreat back under your covers with a fresh mug of tea, finally finished, until an hour later you log back into Hermes only to discover that you’ve emailed the wrong address.

An open book: Being Catholic in Cambridge Stephen Bick Features Contributor

T ‘I want to become a monk’ isn’t the best conversation starter...

he most basic thing I could say about my life is that I’m completely convinced of the love of God for me and for everyone. I try and live my life in response to that, failing drastically, but still with the hope that I might be able to imitate that love a little bit. This is something I experience as the absolute first premise of my life, and it’s really difficult to communicate, as the few of you who haven’t already stopped reading this will soon discover.

My daily life probably looks very similar to yours. I study music at Caius where I’m choral scholar, I like going to the pub and I have essay crises and get lost in the UL. Lots of ‘Christian things’ I do are almost invisible, like having a prayer time when I wake up, but some things are perhaps more noticeable. I spend most of Sunday in church, either at Fisher House or at Caius singing Evensong, and I try to dress up some and take time off, to make it a special day.

I don’t have sex; I don’t even go out with people – not because either is bad, but because I’m considering becoming a monk (this is not a good conversation

Fisher House starter). I definitely don’t think I’m better than you because I’m a Christian, but I do believe I look at the world differently to the average student. I don’t make a big distinction between the religious and the secular, and I like having the freedom to be open about my life.

I think the decision to respect and listen to each other is one of the most serious issues we are facing in public life at the moment, and I get frustrated when I see people refusing to do this, in

Image: Via Fisher House conversations and in the student press.

But I could hardly say I feel oppressed here – I have Christian friends in Syria who live on a knife edge, so life’s not so bad, really.

I like making spaces for us to talk about issues of faith, and I organise ways for people to get together and talk, especially between Christian denominations.

I’m always open to listen, so don’t stay away because you disagree - have a drink and we can talk things out.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 19 Cambridge Curiosity Cabinet

Halfway Hall: A mid-university-life crisis?

Jessy Ahluwalia Features Contributor

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alfway through, and it seems like time is going faster than ever before. We had our Halfway Hall Formal at Homerton on Thursday, and it was an emotional night to say the least.

Most of the evening was spent looking round at friends, taking it all in with mixed feelings of panic and pride, contemplating what’s in store for all of us. I’m definitely not nostalgic for Freshers’ Week, but I do think back to those very first days and wonder what we would have made of our lives now.

There are so many awesome things

about Cambridge life that I will sorely miss come graduation. Whilst moving out of student accommodation will be glorious (no more sharing a bathroom with strangers), living alongside friends has been wonderful fun. Nipping in and out of each others’ rooms during bop preparation, chatting until midnight and always having a group to eat dinner with is an experience never to happen again.

There’s also the amazing five-week holidays we get here.

More to the point, leaving university means becoming an actual adult, with proper responsibilities. Marking the halfway point has really reminded me how fortunate we are to be here, and how different things will be when it’s over.

The electric lamp candle thing is half-burnt

All of this is not to say that I’m dragging my heels about leaving: in reality, it’s all quite exciting. In the not-so-distant future there will come a time for Cambridge life to end, and for the ‘Real World’ to not seem quite so scary anymore. Earning an actual salary and being able to buy things other than Sainsbury’s Basics is eagerly anticipated, and the extra independence is something I feel the need for quite regularly here.

It’s just that with all the internship and work experience applications flying around, it’s easy to get lost in the midst of it all. Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent the majority of second-year thinking about plans for the summer and how they will affect life after third year. Planning for the future can come at a cost of missing the present, and the present is pretty special.

So while I’m not terrified about leaving, my main concern is spending the next 18 months taking it all in. I want to do it all and experience everything Cambridge has to offer before it’s all gone.

Luckily we second-years still have time to do all the things we might have wished we hadn’t missed, so I for one am going to take some evenings off to eat cookies with friends, explore colleges, and enjoy it. There’s that old cliché of only regretting things you didn’t do, and I cannot imagine that meant those three Photo: Mark Nelson extra books on the reading list.

Guy Lewy Columnist Cambridge’s oldest residents Leaving university means becoming an actual adult, with proper responsibilities

Student Spotlight: The Light Entertainment Society Sam Raby Features Contributor

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on by people who wouldn’t otherwise be involved with theatre. The plays are all written by students and, most crucially, everyone passes the audition, with extra parts crammed in if necessary. This is what makes CULES great for me. No competition, just good fun.

Letting everyone in raises the legitimate concern that some of the plays might just be plain rubbish, but I honestly don’t feel so. The fact that vastly eccentric Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams was in CULES says a lot about how serious it is. I’ve been a pimp in Dracula and a gay king in the Little Mermaid. Next I’m playing a philandering Yorkshire milkman, a role which I will relish.

uditioning for student drama can be bloody terrifying. Whilst the brashly confident regulars pace around the room absorbing Are our the extract and fervently muttering to dramatics themselves, you’re left holed up in a amateur corner wondering what the point is beyond of trying in the first place. It was after belief? Yes. one too many of these that I turned to the Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society (CULES) and I haven’t looked back since.

CULES puts on two shows at the end of each term, one pantomime and one play. What makes it great for me stems from its founding aim: in the words of president Sam Cocking, “to bring theatre to those who don’t normally get to experience it.”

A varsity competition typically takes place against Oxford in each Easter Term. Whilst the final shows are targeted at students, CULES also puts on performances at primary schools, special needs schools and retirement homes. Not only is it geared towards an audience who can’t pop along to the Corpus Playroom every night, but it’s also put The curtain rises for a bit of light entertainment

Cheesy puns and slapstick moments are so prevalent that enthusiasm is all that’s needed to make the plays come alive.

The result is something which it is exceedingly fun to be a part. I distinctly remember that in my first ever CULES show the audience were in hysterics and even we actors were craning our heads around the curtain to laugh.

Are our dramatics amateur beyond belief? Yes. Was the last Varsity match called a draw due to a lack of line learning? Yes. But in a way, this is actually part of the fun. There is undoubtedly a value and a place for serious theatre in Cambridge, and lots of quality stuff is on. Equally, there is a place for light-hearted nonsense too.

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ambridge is home to some really historic trees, which are too easy to walk past without even noticing. Of course there are a lot of poorly backed-up myths, such as the tree in the middle of Trinity’s New Court dropping apples for Newton (despite it being a chestnut tree), but also many more legitimate stories.

The most dramatic plane tree in the city was probably planted quietly in 1802 to compete with the much more in-yourface planting of a much less exciting one in Jesus College (the University Orator dedicated it and there was a tree party afterwards), although we don’t actually know quite how old it is. Its bulk fills a side of the Fellows’ Garden at Emma.

Its branches leave the trunk and throw themselves downwards to the ground.

Some twist around each other, in one place rubbing each other so hard that the tissues have grafted together. Others curve elegantly towards the earth and – bizarrely for a plane tree – send out roots to reconnect with the ground and make a sweet ramp for squirrels.

Watching the entrance to the Lloyds outside Christ’s is a living fossil. This is a Ginkgo tree, a species so primal that it was already ancient when dinosaurs first evolved. It was thought long extinct

by Victorians, who saw Ginkgo biloba’s peculiar fan-shaped leaves embedded fossilised in rocks but nothing even slightly similar in a living plant.

When travellers saw trees with these leaves in a remote region of China where they had been tended to as holy

by Buddhist monks, they brought home seeds and a few gingkoes were planted.

Their strange revival and quirky biology have led to the gingko leaf motif, wrapped in DNA, being used as the Cambridge Plant Science department’s fitting logo.

If you like the shape of the leaves, this department in the Downing Site has impressively cultivated a gingko tree from a seed taken in Montpelier into a vine, which sprawls along the entire back wall of the department, and if you get far enough down Mill Road, the route becomes a very rare gingko-lined avenue.

It’s an incongruous sight to see the path to the outskirts of Cambridge framed by prehistoric trees, but a pretty one – go for a wander and see.

The full version of this column is Photo: CODYody available online at www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Cartoon 20

Cartoon by Miranda Gabbott

I’m struggling

and I don’t know

WHERE to turn.

Drop in, call, or email…

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

Games & Technology

21

Tinder: Yea or nay?

The evolution of ‘geek’

Ellie Coote Games & Tech Contributor

Miriam Shovel Games & Tech Contributor

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led me to my first conclusion: Tinder users aren’t choosy. Navigating through Tinder profiles revealed pet hates I didn’t know I had, and my own mercilessly superficial tendencies. Shiver me Tinder indeed, I do not like who I’ve become.

Feeling brave, I asked some of my sample what they are looking for on Tinder. I received a unanimous “I don’t know. What about you?” If you mentioned the word ‘Tinder’ to me I would immediately assume: upfront casual sex. It turns out, even with a screen for protection, most people are either too uncomfortable to be upfront, or are using Tinder for the same reason as I’ve been doing: procrastination.

Ignoring the fact that Tinder facilitates contract-style sex agreements that undermine healthy notions of consent and normalise superficial hook-ups, it seems a fairly harmless app that exists to give the average person a welcome little ego boost each time they receive a match. App-y dating.

cross the globe smart phone users are swiping right for a chance at love. But is Tinder revolutionizing our sexual relationships or is it a narcissistic procrastination tool that deflates the soul and inflates the ego?

In a world where we can’t wait for a browser to load without cursing eduroam or taking a snack break, Tinder provides an accelerated form of dating that meets this growing impatience. It’s sort of like a game of snap. Swiping right repeatedly until Tinder declares ‘It’s a Match!’ Then both parties congratulate themselves on being desirable, and move on with their lives.

Budding casual-sex hopefuls pop up on hundreds of phone screens in a determinate mile radius and are subjected to judgements. Physical appearance, attire, hair-style, physique, lighting, distance from the camera, selfie angle, proportion of selfies to group photos, proportion of club photos, holiday destinations, clichéd biographies, spelling, punctuation, grammar, preferred emojis, whether they say ‘hey’, ‘heyy’ or even opt for an audacious ‘heyyyyyyyyyyyyy’ all come into play, and that’s not even an exhaustive list.

These judgements aren’t what most healthy relationships are founded upon.

Taking a random sample, I swiped right to 50 consecutive men and within one minute had received 36 matches, which Oh dear...

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

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Shiver me Tinder indeed, I do not like who I’ve become

Image: Denis Bocquet

owadays, geek culture rules the mainstream: comics such as Spider-Man are made into blockbuster films, and people are wearing thick-framed glasses, even if they don’t actually have a prescription.

But geeks weren’t always cool: somehow, at some point, geeks reclaimed a term of ridicule and made it their own. So how did we get here?

If we turn to the history of the word ‘geek’, it appears to originate at some point in the late 19th century, developing from the related English dialect word ‘geck’, which meant ‘fool’. The first documented use of ‘geek’ dates back to 1916, when it was used to describe sideshow freaks in circuses or carnivals, specifically those circus performers who would bite the heads off live chickens.

These performances were often called ‘geek shows’.

William Lindsey Gresham used ‘geek’ in his book Nightmare Alley thirty years later to describe a sideshow performer.

By the 1950s, ‘geek’ was used to refer to unsociable weirdos who were freakishly devoted to something intellectual. The dawn of the computer age in the 1980s saw ‘geek’ become attached to people who had profound computer knowledge and skills, but few social skills. However, change was already in the air, as so aptly signaled by Huey Lewis’s declaration that “it’s hip to be square”.

By the 1990s, the loser geeks who’d spent the past decade sitting in darkened rooms, ruining their already terrible eyesight by staring at screens all day, began to display the fruits of their labour.

The computer industry was booming, and technology was progressing faster than anyone could have anticipated. Being a geek became a positive thing, suggesting an enviable level of knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm.

However, now it seems that the evolution of geek has almost come full circle. When I look at self-professed geeks, with their top shirt buttons done up and their perfectly shined shoes, I can’t help but feel that ‘geek’ has become more of a fashion statement than a personality description. It seems to be far more about the image than the actual substance. But hey, maybe I’m just jealous.

Image: Luís Educardo Catenacci

Can e-readers ever replace books?

Genevieve Cox Games & Tech Contributor

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ver found yourself trailing your fingertips along the dust-laced edges of antique bookshelves, tracing the ornate lettering engraved into the rustic spines of huge leather-bound volumes? Or leafing leisurely through vast manuscripts of printed words and images, carefully inked onto fine paper that has withstood the test of time and remains to be revelled under your touch?

The sight and feel of a book can animate your senses, can take you on journeys beyond the unknown through the beautiful words emblazoned on fragile pages, bound up in vast volumes and stacked on sooty shelves. But all that experience is now lost, deemed superfluous in an age where the Kindle and its competitors contest for the prime position in your hand.

No more do we linger along library shelves, searching meticulously for longed-for literature; nor do we waste hours scanning various bookshops to

find that one text that we must read. Life is far more simple nowadays; we can simply click a computer screen to buy a novel in a ‘one-click’ purchase, press a button to flick a page, and even type out annotations on a miniature keyboard, all built into the same handheld device that carries thousands of books in the space of a tiny novella. It even, rather handily, fits inside your bag. Kindles have become a must-have item for the dull businessman, the frantic student, the indecisive holiday-maker or the bored traveller.

The ability to hold a library of books, hundreds of authors, a multitude of genres and a wide-ranging selection of choices in the palm of your hand is a miracle. Not only do we save time, money and effort that it requires to find, buy and carry books, but we are also saving the planet, one rainforest at a time!

Thus the Kindle and its contemporaries are revolutionising the way we read, making it more economical, efficient and easier. But in the heat of this new technology rests a paradoxical crux: in

improving, enhancing and invigorating the reading experience, we are losing the true essence of what it really means to read.

What it means to indulge in the written word, to experience the bounds of a different world through the materiality of a tangible book and to telescope the entire verbal, oratory and tactile tradition of reading into a single voyage through physical pages of print. Despite its advantages in the rapidly-developing world of technology that we inhabit, there can be no doubt that the physical book will always retain an essential place in our hearts.

As the writer and animator Mo Willems once said, “A book, being a physical object, engenders a certain respect that zipping electrons cannot. Because you cannot turn a book off, because you have to hold it in your hands, because a book sits there, waiting for you, whether you think you want it or not, because of all these things, a book is a friend.

“It’s not just the content, but the physical being of a book that is there for you always and unconditionally.”

Try burning this

Image: Richard Unten

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

TV & Film

22

When film dates Is this the real love? go wrong Angelica De Vido

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he cinema is the only popular spot for a first date which actually requires you to say very little and hardly make eye contact.

It’s a fact which makes it the favourite choice of shy teenagers everywhere, but somehow our writers still found a way to experience some very awkward dates.

Thank you to everyone who contributed, and read on for their tales of woe.

“During The Wolf of Wall Street, I whipped out the classic ‘yawn and reach’ manoeuvre. My arm stayed round her shoulders, aching, for the next two hours – I cannot emphasise enough the extent to which nothing else happened (although her hair smelled quite nice).

Heck of a film though.” – Alistair Stewart “She brought her brother without telling me in advance. I still can’t watch 500 Days of Summer without cringing internally.” – Sam Rhodes “He bought tickets for Night at the Museum. Three rows apart. Trying not to take it personally, but I’ve only just recovered. I was 12.” – Brontë Philips “Didn’t know it was a date. He turned up in a suit with flowers. I turned up in trackies.” – Jenny Steinitz “We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and he insisted on waiting until the VERY end of the credits to see that extra 1 minute scene. It took forever.

There are so many credits. And I was so desperate for the loo. Like, beyond desperate – to that painful extent, you know?” – Freya Sanders “I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and within the first ten minutes the seats around us had been deserted by parents moving their children away.” – Alice Mottram

TV & Film Contributor

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ean-Luc Godard declares that “in cinema, there can only be love stories.” This is certainly Hollywood’s philosophy, but to what extent do – or should – films depict ‘real’ love? We all know the formula: boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy wins girl back; they live happily ever after.

Aside from routinely reducing representations of love to white, middle-class, heterosexual experiences (Richard Curtis, I’m looking at you), romcoms also promote unrealistically high expectations of love and romance that are rarely replicated in reality – just ask the people waiting to be swept off their feet Officer and a Gentleman style, or still searching for someone to fill the Ryan Gosling shaped hole in their unNotebook-like lives.

Then there’s the Sleepless in Seattle philosophy, which insists that two people who’ve never met (always a solid foundation for any relationship) are perfect for each other. Unfortunately, unless you’re Meg Ryan, waiting on top of the Empire State Building for your soulmate to come along is probably not a productive use of your time.

So if you’re looking for something

The love in these films in momentary, but no less valid and strong for it

Tom’s shirt would like to remind you of the plot Photo: sinemabed realistic this Valentine’s Day, Hollywood discovers that the girl he thought was has offered more complex views on his soulmate isn’t right for him after all, love. Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy as all of his fantasies collapse around dispels the myth that the initial intensity him. Back in 1994, Hollywood was of love lasts forever, instead exploring proving the same point in Only You, in the challenges of the everyday reality of which a woman searching for ‘the one’ a relationship and the crushing lows of finds herself understandably in love marital breakdown. Sacrifices are made, with Robert Downey Jr. instead. life gets in the way, and the love which Sadly, not all of us can have Robert survives is a momentary experience, but Downey Jr. pursuing us around Italy to one which is just as valid and strong. show us that love doesn’t always end Sometimes even finding ‘the one’ happily ever after. Still, every so often doesn’t lead to perfection. In 500 Days romcoms get it right, and give us love of Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in all its uncertain, complicated glory.

Film recommendations: A guide to the dos and don’ts Grace Murray TV & Film Editor

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here’s no disappointment quite like a film recommendation gone wrong. You glance over at your friends/date/cats and they’re dropping off to sleep, and suddenly you realise that your insightful commentary – “Did you know that they only used one shade of red in this movie?” – may as well have been background music.

If you’re planning a film night, follow this easy guide to recommending your favourite film without putting your friends off it for life.

“The year was 2010, the film; Deathly Hallows: Part 1. All was well until (spoilers) Dobby’s death scene when my date burst out laughing. I didn’t Stage 1: Selection offer him any more of my popcorn.” – Ellie Coote DO admit that you did promise to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary last week and “The film was all fine – pretty uneventful, haven’t actually ‘forgotten’. Just watch and not even that great. When we got it: you’ll probably end up singing along home though he just started crying to ‘R.E.S.P.E.C.T.’ with the rest. uncontrollably and sweating so I had to call him a taxi home and then help him DON’T recommend a package deal. down into it and home to his parents. You might enjoy making orc noises in The taxi driver thought I’d been really the extended cuts of the Lord of the mean to him and tried to cheer him Rings trilogy, but you’re in a minority up on the way back. Who knew Brave (except in Cambridge). Pick one film, could be so dramatic.” – Finn Dameron and maybe schedule an interval.

Don’t reenact the best scene.

It’s obviously rehearsed

One day this could be you

Photo: Channel 4 Press Office

Stage 2: Opening credits

Stage 4: The best bit

DON’T talk over the helpful voiceover which explains the plot. If you do, you will become the helpful voiceover that explains the plot for the next two hours.

You’ve been warned.

DON’T spoil it. This includes spilling the beans within five minutes because you just can’t bear to wait, re-enacting the scene with different and clearly well-rehearsed voices, and insisting that this is the ‘best bit’ when you’ve also said that about every other scene so far.

Stage 3: First 20 minutes DO check that everyone’s still awake.

If so, good job.

DON’T stare at your friends in anticipation of their reactions to the best scenes. You’re watching the film, not Gogglebox.

Stage 5: Post-film commentary DON’T immediately suggest the sequel.

If you’ve picked a winner, maybe one day somebody else might ask you for a recommendation.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Theatre 23 ‘Les Justes’

Review: ‘Pravda’ Harry Parker Theatre Editor

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iberals are conservatives, conservatives are driving change, newspapers are still being produced in Fleet Street, and Michael Jackson is black. Welcome to the topsyturvy world of the 1980s. When Howard Brenton and David Hare wrote their biting satire on establishment politics in the Thatcherite era, they did not intend for it to be subtle: Pravda (truth) is, after all, the name of the propaganda sheet of the Stalinist regime.

Instead, what they wrote was a modern Faust play, whose chief villain, Lambert le Roux (read Rupert Murdoch), is the physical embodiment of power-hungry capitalism. Its Faust is Andrea May, an honest newspaper editor forced to commit that most heinous of crimes: selling her soul to tabloid journalism.

Hazel Lawrence’s adaptation manages

Genevieve Cox Theatre Reviewer

to capture the ridiculousness of the play, though falls into the trap of going too far. Playing Lambert le Roux without any charm whatsoever, for example, is an interesting choice, since he does come across as more pantomime villain than believable businessman: between Malcolm Tucker and the PE teacher I was terrified of at school.

Despite some gripping moments, there is a pace in the script which is fundamentally lacking in the show, a problem which probably could have been solved by more rehearsal time and more efficient scene changes.

With characters named things like Elliott Fruit-Norton and Cliveden Whicker-Baskett, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Pravda is a simple comedy about broadsheet hacks. But there is a dark heart beating underneath the silliness, and it was unfortunate that this production failed to expose it in any kind

of meaningful way.

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Image: Johannes Ruckstuhl

Redressing the balance: Misogyny in comedy?

Sarah-Jane Tollan Theatre Contributor

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forced into performing a particular set: “We don’t say to every act ‘you have to do material on feminism.’”

A celebration of humanity, then perhaps? “That should be our tagline”, quips James.

Although highly aware and sensitive to the misogyny that pervades the comedy scene, they do not refrain from admitting that institutionalised sexism in Cambridge is rife. “I feel it’s just women that don’t believe they can get that first step up” explains Chris in response to the lack of female comedians on the student scene.

Providing “free space” to aspiring comedians is an agenda that seems to have paid dividends thus far; in the last show, three first time comedians performed to a jam-packed Newnham bar. “It’s great to be able to give people that slot, see them go on stage and

absolutely nail it”, enthuses Chris. “Or sometimes it’s just nice to be able to say to your mom: ‘I performed with Kate Smurthwaite!’’ Callie laughs, recalling her own pride at being listed on the same bill as one of the rising stars of the British comedy scene.

They glow with enthusiasm and anticipation at the future of the Smoker.

Performance bills are already filled for March and April, with a potentially ‘huge’ headliner for May Week that will join the illustrious list of names – Njambi McGrath, Rosie Wilby, Katie Smurthwaite – that have already graced the bill.

Incredibly committed and mindful of the ‘first step up’ that they offer, as well as the free space in which to do it, the team do have a single caveat: “If we think you’re a misogynist, you’re not going on stage”.

hough widely lauded and praised for its accessibility, the Cambridge comedy scene seems to only exist in the student consciousness “If we think in the form of the Footlights or the headliner-drawing Wolfson Howler. The you’re a Newnham Smoker, then, is a yearnedmisogynist, for addition and complement to a world you’re not that seems fixed and static. Billed as going on a ‘feminist comedy night’, the event, stage” organised by the Cambridge comedy group, No Fixed Abode, has enjoyed an overflowing turnout in its symbolic Newnham location.

Chris Page, Callie Vandewiele and James Wilkinson, the event’s organisers, are awed at the positive feedback from their brainchild. All successful comedians in their own right – Chris and James are regulars on the student circuit, and Callie specialised in improv in her native America – they have duly taken advantage of the freedom that the realm of comedy in Cambridge has to offer.

This is a stark contrast to the circuit in London, “where you are on the same bill as male comedians who think that rape is hilarious, or that harassing people in the audience is hilarious.”

It is the ‘feminist’ label which allows the Newnham Smoker to etch itself upon the public curiosity. “When I think of feminism I think of it as being an inclusive concept. Feminism falls down and at times needs to pick itself up.

But for me a feminist comedy night is open to all perspectives”, Callie muses when I ask her about the label, followed

by Chris’s reassurances that no act is Katie Smurthwaite is one of the rising stars to perform at the Smoker

Image: Steve Meddle/REX

harrowing play to watch in its refusal to let viewers relax, Les Justes appeals to the inspired intellect as it forces the audience to question themselves on the nature of subjects as diversely controversial as love, brotherhood, and justice.

The overarching tale of the true story of the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich incorporates the essence of humanity through its deeply psychological characters that truly immerse you into their inner souls whilst desperately struggling to free themselves of a world where “there is no justice” and no freedom. The play works on several levels of complexity: social injustice in a world of tyranny, the role of brotherhood and secret organisations, the relationship between potential lovers, and the conscience of the individual; intertwining all viewpoints into themes of deep contemplation, reflecting the very essence of Camus’s existentialism.

The set layout for the production was promising, with an attractive appearance of artistic arrangement and attention to detail: entangled rope lacing the ceiling with dangling lightbulbs and a hangman’s noose. Elaborate collections of book stacks and newspaper cuttings plastering the walls all promised great potential that was unfortunately unfulfilled in the lack of engagement with set or props – the purpose of several book piles, for example, was never explained. The lighting, however, was used to great effect, especially in prison scenes to build upon the mystery and fear in the play.

The set did, however, provide a necessary visual distraction and enjoyment, as Les Justes is often seen as a play that can easily become a series of endless, abstract and disconnected speeches on the nature of justice and humanity. Because the emphasis on human nature in the script is quintessential, the characterisation was crucial to the creation of an atmospheric tension that rose and peaked throughout the performance.

Overall, this production is a fantastic portrayal of Camus’s Les Justes due to its in-depth characterisation, and attention to detail. As a result, I found the characters absolutely believable, and their portrayal truly inspiring. It captured the essence of humanity, the struggle for justice and the ubiquitous fear in an atmosphere of terror and uncertainty.

The characterisation by the director and the phenomenal power of the actors encapsulated the strain of human nature amidst the broader and more elusive questions of justice, making it a memorable play that will definitely stay with you long after the final bow.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Music 24 Personal Playlist: Songs to get busy to this Valentine’s Day Miriam Shovel Music Editor

playlist. Warning: this song is pretty intense, so be ready.

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‘Warm Water’ – Banks A slowly pulsating beat and sultry female vocals make this tune a winner in the bedroom.

romantic atmosphere that Valentine’s Day is all about. Make sure the room is mood-lit to perfection, but avoid lind date may be over, but candles if you’re living in college Valentine’s Day is just around accommodation – fire alarms definitely the corner, and we all know aren’t sexy. what that means… It’s time for some serious lovin’. Here are my ‘Drops’ – Jungle suggestions for a perfect night.

This tune is perfect for a smooth and sexy warm up. Let’s get busy.

‘Let’s Get It On’ – Marvin Gaye This song has probably been on more ‘The Zone’ – The Weeknd ft. Drake sex playlists than any other, and with This seven-minute song is great if you good reason. In fact, there’s a high want to avoid interruptions (if you can chance that you were conceived to this last that long). song. Oh wait, maybe that’s too weird for you to find this song sexy. Oops.

‘Intro’ – The xx Sometimes lyrics can just add extra ‘Inside My Love’ – Minnie Riperton clutter to the sensual experience.

There really is nothing better than some If that’s the case for you, stick this slow R&B for creating that intimate atmospheric instrumental into your

In fact, there’s a high chance that you were conceived to this song

‘Come Away With Me’ – Norah Jones Riddled with innuendo, let Norah whisk Image: L.C.N øttaasen you away into the night. A perfect song Feel the love to be playing as you reach the pinnacle without the compulsory celebration of your crescendo. song that is ‘I Just Had Sex’?! One of my best friends makes a point of ‘I Just Had Sex’ – Lonely Island ft. Akon sending it to me every time he manages What playlist would be complete to complete the deed. Hilarious.

Interview: The Wave Pictures Tom Ronan Music Editor

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he Wave Pictures have been together in one form or another since 1998, touring relentlessly, collaborating widely and making numerous recordings of their prolific output. I caught up with them before their storming set at the Portland Arms to discuss their songwriting methods, their new album and life on the road.

You wrote the lyrics to your last album in America, then laid them down in the studio. Do you usually write songs in a burst of inspiration, or are there times when you labour over a song?

I can fill a notebook up with lyrics, but it can take a while to turn them into songs. In the case of City Forgiveness, the lyrics were written over the tour, and I turned them into songs when I got home. Sometimes I’ll often take the verses from three or four songs that didn’t work and put them together into a new song. So there’s a mix of being spontaneous and considered, but there’s no slaving over anything.

David Tattersall

Aca-tapult into a cappella

What can you tell us about the new album?

It’s a great departure from what we’ve done before. It was initially a project Billy was interested in doing. It’s his equipment, his sound, and his mixing, but it’s my voice and my lyrics.

We recorded, mixed and mastered everything in five days. To write it probably took a couple of days, and a few rehearsals, so it was very fast.

A lot of your lyrics focus on tangible things and fine details.

That’s right. So when Neil Young says he’s going to “find himself a place to get some good country ham” it suddenly seems real, and you’ll always remember it. I like to sing things which seem surreal to people or that seem very psychedelic, but actually involves everyday stuff. So if you sing “Frogs sing loudly in the ditches, dragonflies hover overhead” it sounds crazy, but that’s something I read on a tourist information board in Rye. I like that kind of thing, where the normal and mundane sound psychedelic.

On one of your recent collaborations, Stanley Brinks sings “the radio sucks balls, I don’t relate to any of the music they’re playing at all.” Is that an opinion you share?

Yes, to a huge degree. If I ever listen to the radio I am always shocked and disappointed by the standard. It’s difficult to tell if we’re just getting old and grumpy, or whether there is genuinely something terrible going on.

It’s that bad now that it could make you miss the 1990s or Oasis. You can’t even believe the hits are even hits.

The full interview is available online at Image: johnkell www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

‘Adorn’ – Miguel Another winner, this song really needs no introduction. Just put it in your playlist, OK? You can thank me later.

Nick Wong Music Contributor

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Their voices alone are capable of impregnating the first two rows of their audience

ince I was 14 I’ve been obsessed with a cappella; I was that nerdy kid trying to harmonise with my friends (with questionable success). And now, finally, thanks to the likes of Pentatonix and Pitch Perfect, it’s cool! So I was justifiably excited when I got into Cambridge: screw academia, graduate prospects and making new friends: I was finally going to be cool singing harmony. I was ready for the flashmobs, YouTube hits, fab choreography, and niche internet stardom. They never came.

You see, the Cambridge a cappella scene isn’t like what you see in the cinema. There’s no group of 15 hot guys in suits singing Shakira, like in the Other Place. Nor does it have a multi tracking genius or that group obsessed with regionals or nationals or whatnot.

In that respect, Cambridge is probably five years behind other UK universities, let alone those in the US. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Cambridge still has countless a cappella groups who perform to a ridiculously high standard.

For those wanting the classic a cappella with cheesy choreography, Cadenza are your best bet. This mixed 12-strong group can’t help but make you smile with their infectious energy, and are performing at loads of May Balls.

If you’re looking for some Pitch Perfect-esque all-girl power groups the stunning Fitz Sirens with their tight harmonies as classy as their long black gloves, the Ovarytones with their groove-inducing cover of ‘Girl Put Your Records On’, or newcomers the Gonville Girls with their effortless musicality all fit the bill. On the male

front, even new-comers The Bachelors are already creating ripples after their debut performance a couple of weeks ago, and if you like Taylor Swift covers and the former The Cambridge Student Features editor, then you’re going to love AcaPembroke.

Taking a step into the blurred boundaries of Close Harmony, few come close to the dulcet tones and warm sound of the Gents of St Johns; their voices alone capable of impregnating the first two rows of their audience (rumour has it they wear those ridiculous scarves as vocal protection to stop this from happening). In a similar vein, the King’s Men are one of the best vocal ensembles in the UK: their smooth tone and orgasmic harmonies are the sound that launched a thousand punts. Their new album After Hours is one of the best, effortlessly covering artists from S Club 7 to Carly Rae Jepsen. And I’m not just saying that because my best friend is a member. I’m saying that because I’m a little bit in love with them.

But if you want a non-stop roller coaster of fun, look no further than the boater-and-waistcoat-clad Fitz Barbershop, the most ethnically diverse a cappella group in Cambridge. Their tight harmonies, loveable personalities and questionable actions will make you laugh out loud and give you an unforgettable time at Trinity, John’s, and Selwyn May Balls. To me, they are the embodiment of Cambridge a cappella. Because Cambridge is old school. It’s not competing with other a cappella scenes - it’s not trying to. It’s just a bunch of friends messing around, singing together. Yes, it’s nerdy as hell; but who came to Cambridge to be cool?

So grab your boater and waistcoat, and release your inner a cappella nerd. Trust me, it’ll be aca-awesome.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Books 25 Does classic literature rely too heavily on love?

Sarah-Jane Tollan Books Contributor

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ride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby; literary classics that have become synonymous with the word ‘masterpiece’, they have been culturally idolised and incessantly referenced, as novels that skilfully weave together the social and the political, rendering them timeless.

Yet speak to a stranger on the street, and they will fawn over the Adonis-inbreeches that is Mr. Darcy emerging from the lake, in a scene actually absent from the novel. They may whimper at how misunderstood Heathcliff and Cathy were, or how tragic it is that Gatsby will never have his Daisy. The novels and their characters have been immortalised, but not because of their commentary upon social class and gender inequality, but because they have become pin-ups for the most overused theme of all: love.

Is love too overdone in the literary world? Does it detract from the important politics of a work? Are our mantelpieces, our libraries, our

Any treatise on love has now become a brandmark for unorginality

bookstores so saturated with romantic fiction that any treatise on love has now become a brand mark for unoriginality?

To answer ‘yes’ to the aforementioned questions is to disregard the important function love plays in the literary sphere.

The most beautiful prose and verse is born of a poet’s aching heart, from Catullus’ “a thousand kisses” to Ted Hughes’ “her smiles were spider bites”, love is the medium for poetic craft.

If it were not for love, readers would not be granted the privilege of reading Heathcliff’s lamenting “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”, or Fitzgerald’s dream-like “tuning fork that had been struck upon a star”; love is like a siren call that continues to lure readers back to texts that are centuries old.

Not just aesthetically pleasing, it also lays a foundation for authors to explore their society. Is it not the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy that the class division of Austen’s era is made even more apparent?

The unifying experience of love soars above concepts like time; it provides the bridge that allows readers to accept

and feel the potency of the political and social issues of a bygone era, no matter how alien to their own life experiences.

Love ties us all together; it is the fundamental human experience.

Literature can never rely too much on love because it is the stage upon which the socio-political can act and retain relevance for all readers. It is the vortex between the 19th century and the 21st, the Ouija board between author and reader, the telephone wire between human and human. Love is where “soul meets soul on lover’s lips”.

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Misogyny is rife in erotica

efore 2012, nobody would have dared sit on a bus brandishing erotica, and yet Fifty Shades of Grey has freed the inhibitions and liberated erotica for millions. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Caitlin Moran said that “the whole market’s open to talking about female sexuality now”, expressing the hopes of sex-positive feminists that the female libido would no longer be a source of embarrassment and shame. Thanks to E. L. James, women in sex industries were going to be given a voice to speak out against inequality.

Four years on from the initial publication of Fifty Shades of Grey, and on the eve of the release of the film adaptation, has anything changed for women in sex industries and society at large? The #50dollarsnot50shades campaign is calling for a boycott of the new film adaptation on the grounds that it fetishises domestic violence, and are urging people to donate money to shelters instead of watching the film.

Sadly, it is not only in Fifty Shades of Grey that misogyny is rife. The true precursor to Fifty Shades, Anne Desclos’s Story of O by Anne Desclos, is perhaps an even more shocking romp. Whilst the publication date of Image: Gerry Lauzon 1954 might partially excuse Desclos’

Alistair Stewart Books Contributor

J. D. Salinger Image: Arturo Espinosa Not just pretty faces, but socio-politics Image: colorinchi

Fifty shades of gender inequality Alice Mottram Books Editor

Every day is a perfect day for bananafish

misogyny, there is no excuse for the plethora of chauvinistic erotica published today, many of whom are imitating E. L. James.

So, if you are seeking a little eroticism in your life this Valentine’s Day, where can you turn for feminist friendly kicks?

For the connoisseur, Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus is a pioneering work of sex-positivism. Formed of short stories written in the 1940s for a patron known only as ‘The Collector’, Nin challenged his commission for sexually explicit scenarios. Instead, Nin tackled socially difficult subjects including homosexuality and patriarchy, all with beautiful poeticism. Perhaps the feminist staple on every shelf of erotica should be Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.

Causing controversy upon publication in 1973, this has since been included in the cannon of second-wave feminist literature. Jong coined the term “zipless fuck”, defined as a sexual encounter of equals in which “the man is not ‘taking’ and the woman is not ‘giving’”.

The relationship between Christian and Anastasia in Fifty Shades of Grey is a misogynistic bastardisation of the BDSM culture, and the vast majority of pornography is still dominated by men using women for their own pleasure.

However, amidst the overwhelming misogyny of contemporary media, Nin and Jong are feminist beacons, blazing with the light of sexual liberation.

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alinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish is a jewel of a short story, one to be read in ten minutes, put down for a bit, then picked up and read again.

The first of Salinger’s major works, set at a 1940s Florida beach resort, is divided into three sketches: firstly a telephone conversation between a materialistic young woman, Muriel Glass, and her mother, who is concerned about the mental state of Muriel’s husband Seymour; a chance meeting on the beach between Seymour and a four-year-old; and finally Seymour as he returns to his hotel room alone.

All very mundane, you might think.

But Salinger has an unusual gift for identifying the lifeblood of human behaviour, and capturing it on paper. It is endlessly thought provoking, and the highly ambiguous episodes are divisive.

The bananafish of the title are part of a story Seymour tells Sybil, dividing readers over whether it is sweet or darkly sinister.

Salinger is a tactile writer, his characters constantly making fists of their hands, crossing and uncrossing their legs, and holding hands. The most touching, or disturbing, moment is when Sybil is floating on the sea, looking for bananafish, and Seymour suddenly picks up one of her feet and kisses the arch. Salinger communicates an intensely human intimacy in the familial language Muriel and her mother share.

The ending and the largely unexplained last sentence should send a chill through every reader on their first reading.

Bananafish might not make you think more critically about the world, but you might recognise yourself in its pages.

12 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Fashion

26 When it all goes downhill

Put your feet up: Slipper selfies Baby, it’s cold outside (and Week Five)

Week Five is upon us: fluffy is the only way to go

Images: (clockwise from top right): Freya Sanders; Grace Murray; Maddy Airlie; Lily Mortimer; Isobel Laidler; Greg Forrest

Rock that Week Five ‘fro

Images: Meggie Fairclough

No more worry lines: Feel like new with best beauty treats under a tenner Gemma Rowe Fashion Contributor

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eek Five affects everyone differently, but there is no denying that when we’re halfway through the term, we are much more likely to be feeling tired, stressed, or just slightly out of sorts. Beauty treats might not make those essay deadlines go away, but they can help bring a smile to your face – or simply some time to breathe – during this woeful week.

First of all, let’s talk face masks.

Super-cheap and super-effective for making you take ten minutes out of your day to think about yourself and actually relax: close your eyes so you can’t even see your desk! It’s good for your skin, and maybe good for your soul too during Week Five. Most face masks are under £1 from Boots or Superdrug and are often tailored to your skin type.

We all know everything becomes cuter (and cheaper) in miniature, and this is a real life-saver when it comes to products from The Sanctuary, normally far out of the range of a student budget.

For those yet to become acquainted with Treat yo’ self - it’s time to take five

You can’t let Week Five win!

Image: Maddy Airlie

this brand, your skin probably feels like sandpaper, but don’t worry, this can be fixed: their Salt Exfoliator will leave you with soft skin from top to toe. Since each mini is under a fiver, you have no excuse not to pamper yourself.

Now some people may not consider this a treat exactly, but getting your eyebrows waxed can be a luxury that seems unaffordable at university. Kelsey Kerridge’s Beauty Salon offers the service for £8, which does cut it quite close to your budget. However, I suggest you play by a different set of rules for the already-stressful Week Five: do not look at your bank account.

Finally, having painted nails always makes me feel slightly more glamorous, and Barry M’s large range of shades (2 for £6) should have something for every taste. If that doesn’t do it for you, then maybe a more drastic solution is needed.

You know those days when you want to crawl under your duvet and forget about lectures – days just for hanging out in your jim-jams? Well it’s fine to have a day – or maybe two – doing that, but you can’t let Week Five win! Get dressed up nicely and do as Taylor Swift taught us to: get your best “red lip classic” game on, and just shake it off.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Food & Drink

27

An insight into the Norfolk Street Bakery Lucy Roxburgh Food and Drink Contributor

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hen I sit down with Adília Frazão, head baker of the Norfolk Street Bakery, she admits to feeling rather tired.

“I got up at one in the morning. Saturday is my busiest day”. She nonetheless obliges me with an interview.

Adília began baking as a child in her native Portugal, when every Saturday the households of her mountain village would stoke their wood ovens and bake bread for the rest of the week. Her elderly grandmother had a tough time kneading the dough, so at the tender age of 11 she was drafted in to help.

The opposite of Baking Bad

Now Adília runs a little gem of a bakery on Norfolk Street in a Victorian terrace house that has served as a bakery since 1868. Adília shows me some old photographs and a copy of the original lease made out to the first baker here, a certain George King who sported a fearsome bushy beard and beret. There is still a certain Victorian charm to the bakery today, with its ornate fireplace and an enormous old gas oven in the kitchen, although the latter is far too big and expensive to run these days.

The bakery is always busy, with its baskets of bread emptying quickly.

Adília tells me how her range has expanded to ten varieties. “I would introduce a special loaf of the week, and

Images: Stella Pereira

Review: Pint Shop Georgina Wong Food and Drink Contributor

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unch? Dinner? Drinks? Pint Shop, tucked away at the end of Cambridge’s Bene’t Street, ticks all of these boxes. There is something for everyone here, from the relaxed beer garden outside and the casual bar at the front priding itself on its signature craft beer, to the restaurant at the back serving rustic yet sophisticated takes on classic British staples. The establishment takes its inspiration from the beer houses of the 1830s, but rather than offering just a simple pint, you can get something tasty and filling here too.

The interior is simplistic: the leather benches, hanging lamps and minimalistic wooden furnishings create the atmosphere of a converted barn in the country. Inside the restaurant, the menu is extensive but not overwhelming, focusing mainly on meat dishes, either served as sandwiches or with sides.

The garlic chicken and plum ketchup

The first baker here was a certain George King, who sported a fearsome bushy beard and beret

The triple cooked spuds come smothered in truffle cheese sauce, battered to perfection

sandwich is divine: the chicken arrives dripping in a buttery garlic sauce, set between two pillowy-soft brioche slices. The triple cooked spuds are also delicious, and come smothered in truffle cheese sauce battered to perfection; one bite gives a satisfying crunch on the outside, followed by a mouthful of soft, buttery potato. The fish-finger bun wasn’t as impressive as the rest of the dishes, but the kitchen staff more than redeemed themselves, offering us free dessert as an apology: a delectably crispy tarte tartin, with beautifully caramelised apples. For Sunday lunch, Pint Shop also offers a range of roasts served with all the trimmings, followed by an indulgent toffee apple crumble.

Although it is a fairly large restaurant, comprising the bar at the front, the restaurant at the back, and yet more tables upstairs, we never felt neglected by the staff, who enjoy offering their own opinions on the menu. Pint Shop’s ability to preserve the sophistication of a proper restaurant, whilst also maintaining its homely appeal makes it both a casual location come lunchtime,

then people got upset when I stopped serving it.”

When I ask whether her cuisine is primarily Portuguese or British, she tells me: “It’s a mix of everything.” Her most popular item is a national food of Portugal: Pastel de Nata (custard tarts).

“It’s difficult to get right. The oven needs to be very hot to make the puff pastry crispy whilst keeping the inside creamy.” The home-made custard filling has an extraordinary melt-in-themouth texture. She lays the tarts out in serried ranks in the window but they go quickly, she can sell 100 of these tarts on a good Saturday.

There are also the savoury pastries, with sausage rolls, Rissóis de Camarão and miniature fish cakes. I try a Rissol (shrimp croquette), a Portuguese delicacy with the strange appearance of a miniature dumpling covered in bread crumbs. The casing has a leathery texture, wrapping a delicious smooth and spicy prawn filling.

Compared to the bleak national picture of declining artisanal bakeries squeezed by the competition from supermarkets and plant bakeries, The Norfolk Street Bakery is a comforting case. In France and much of Europe, artisanal bakers account for the majority of the bread market in terms of value, whereas in the UK it is only 5% of the market.

The grounds for optimism lie in the fact that Norfolk Street is the home to the craft-beer drinking, sour-dough eating types who like to queue up every Saturday here for their bread. This might mean hard work and an early start for Adília but the future of this bakery looks very rosy indeed.

and also appropriate for a more intimate evening setting. This duality is reflected in its pricing, which perhaps outmatches the usual student budget (sandwiches are around £7, and if you order large dishes with sides, the price can go up to £20). However, the bar is always open for a quick drink and snacks (scotch eggs or beef dripping toast, anyone?), and it is precisely Pint Shop’s fantastic chameleon-like quality to provide the perfect setting whatever the occasion that makes it one of Cambridge’s finest.

Fitzbillies: An insider’s guide Georgina Wong Food and Drink Contributor

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itzbillies is Cambridge’s most iconic café, and though it has had a somewhat turbulent history, its popularity endures.

Alison Wright, who owns Fitzbillies with her husband Tim, attributes their success to its constantly rolling demographic; thousands of students pass through Cambridge each year and fondly look back on Fitzbillies as part of their experience. The couple rescued the business in 2012 after it went bankrupt, inspired by the reaction of the community and media (including a tweet from Stephen Fry). Some of its recipes have been with them from the beginning, and have become classics.

Ermergerd scernes

Image: Kake

Chelsea Buns The recipe of the Fitzbillies icon is a closely guarded secret passed through the decades. These fantastically gooey swirls are a delicate balance of honey and cinnamon flavours, dotted with a generous portion of raisins. The fact they run a delivery service all over the world shows just how good they are!

Friand French for ‘dainty’, the Friand is a fluffy, zesty cake topped with a mixture of summer berries. It’s a great lighter alternative if you’re not in the mood for something too stodgy or filling.

Its perfect balance of sweet and sharp notes leaves your palate refreshed.

Scones A classic done to perfection: Fitzbillies’ scones are generously portioned, subtly flavoured with a nice crumbly texture. The fruit scone can be bought individually, or as part of afternoon tea but the more savoury cheese option is seasoned with a blend of herbs and are exquisite with a good dollop of butter.

These are just some of Fitzbillies’ sumptuous offerings; they also make a range of celebration and cream cakes and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, Image: Georgina Wong providing for all your culinary needs.

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Lifestyle 28 Share the love: Valentine’s Day on a budget Mary Nower Lifestyle Contributor

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ersonally, I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day. In principle, I think that an entire day devoted to the celebration of love is a wonderful idea. In practice, I think it’s an over-commercialised phenomenon that is way too constrictive in the kind of love it celebrates: What about familial love?

The love between friends? With this in mind, I have tried to come up with some ideas of things to give on Valentines that are neither of the above: they can be applied to all forms and varieties of love, including the one I think needs celebrating the most at Cambridge: the love and support you receive from an awesome group of friends. So, without further ado, I present the top five things (on a budget) you can give/do for Valentine’s Day. 1) Dinner: nothing says ‘I love you’ and appreciate the difference you make to my life like a lovingly prepared meal. You could make their favourite meal, invite them round and surprise them, or bond as you make it together, which can be really surprisingly fun. Or, if you can’t cook at all (and trust me, there are people out there without a speck of culinary

ability), get their favourite takeaway in.

Show them you care by remembering all their favourite dishes.

2) Romantic walk: alright, so this is a bit of a weird one to do with your friends (not to say it can’t be done!). Plan a walk through Cambridge going to all the places you have been together: cafés you’ve been to on dates, your favourite route for your Saturday stroll, where you met or had your first kiss (If applicable to Cambridge that is). A way to jazz it up is to book lunch at their favourite restaurant halfway round the walk: lunches are considerably cheaper than dinners and should be less crowded.

For a more ‘friend friendly’ option, if you know their lecture timetable, surprise them at appropriate times with a big cup of coffee before their 9am, or their favourite sandwich when they are running between supervisions and labs.

3) Make a card: I know there are loads of cards out there, but chances are you’ve read them all before, they are sickeningly sweet and nauseating or they contain some irritatingly poor animal pun. Why not make a card? Sketch something they love, like their favourite place in Cambridge, or if like me, you can’t draw to save your life, then make a collage of

photos of the two of you together 4) Make a poster: Similarly, for a lovely personalised present to brighten up their prison cell of a college room, you can make a poster of all the stuff you have done together. Buy a big piece of card or canvas (Paperchase/Tindalls are good here) and cover it will memorabilia of your time together. Good things to include: receipts from meals/coffees, cinema/theatre tickets, ticket stubs from concerts, wristbands from Mayballs or festivals. This idea may require a magpielike compulsion to hoard things. For those who do throw away items, photos are good: screenshots of snapchats they don’t have anymore are great.

5) Add the personal touch: The most romantic present I have ever received is a framed copy of my first TCS article with a message at the top. It was just wonderful: Remembering something I had done that I was proud of and helping me remember that, even when I feel really useless. So find something they’ve done that they are proud of, like president of a society and get it framed or the picture of the committee with them right in the centre, to remind them every day how special they are and the amazing things they can do when they Key ingredient put their mind to it.

Image: Emiliano De Laurentiis

Romance at the botanic gardens

It’s a love story, baby just...

Meggie Fairclough Lifestyle Contributor

Julia Craggs Lifestyle Contributor

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Picnic perfection

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s a child I had a secret hide-away hole at the bottom of the garden.

It wasn’t exactly well disguised, but more of a gap in a holly bush, just big enough to crawl through if you were small, adventurous and prepared to get grubby and a little scratched. It was my own little world, that I felt belonged to me. Knowing that no one else knew about it, made something special and something to keep preserved.

I kept my secret place a secret, until one day, I led my 8-year-old self’s’ first crush through the looking glass and into the rabbit hole. As he had taken my childish and innocent heart, I took him by the mud-crusted hand to my secret garden. I felt that I was sharing part of me, simply by showing the most important thing that I possessed.

Image: Chloe Lim I found a similar place in Cambridge; somewhere only I know as far as I am concerned. It is a tree in the Botanic Gardens. It isn’t the biggest, rarest or most beautiful, but it transports me back in time where I can hide away from the world. There is no WiFi or signal, but it is in a place where you can just people watch under its canopy without being seen by wandering eyes.

On Valentine’s Day, I’d hoped to take someone to my tree with a bottle of Champagne, strawberries and picnic blanket.

Unfortunately, I will have to keep my secret place hidden for now, but, for those who have found that special person to crawl on your hands and knees with, do go to the Botanic Gardens this Saturday and find a tree!

I took him by the mudcrusted hand to my secret garden

o I never officially ‘met’ Tom. Our parents were mates at university, a pair of couples that’d get together and drink wine out of a bucket – I suppose the old adage, ‘friends who chunder together stay together’, is true after all then – so, really, I’ve known him all my life.

I was about 15 when I realised I’d developed a crush on Tom – he was five years older, and I might as well have not existed (and I spent the next three years of excruciating teenage blushes wishing I didn’t).

Fast forward three years to last July – a holiday in Cornwall; our families reunited for a wine-soaked week of barbecues and trivial pursuits. After everyone else had gone to bed, we stayed up all night. And we stayed up all night, every night, after that.

We tried to keep it a secret at first, but I was so chuffed I couldn’t help telling all my mates (whilst maintaining an überchilled vibe with him, of course). We told ourselves, and each other, that we weren’t looking for anything serious. A sensible move, I thought, considering every time I got a text from him (as in the poetic words of Mean Girls) my stomach felt like it

would fall out of my butt. I remember when I realised that I was, hopelessly, hooked. He’d got me backstage to watch him play a festival where we drank cider all day, and when it got dark, disappeared round the back of the dressing rooms, Alex Turner’s set strumming away in the background. I still can’t look at my wellies without getting flashbacks.

I finally said those three words in October, in a rainy beer garden on a day trip away from Cambridge – I was terrified, and relying heavily on my nononsense Yorkshire accent to strip away any soppiness.

Not that I’d needed to worry – months later we’re still, to the consternation of my corridor, openly flouting the ‘three nights every two weeks’ guest rules.

Image: Matt Wharton

12 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Lifestyle 29 Witness the fitness

Contraception disasters: staying safe and savvy Finnella Dameron Lifestyle Contributor

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he first time it happened, I had only been seeing the guy for a month or so. We had used a condom, but fallen foul of the 99% effectiveness ratio and it had split.

A quick google at 1.a.m. had reassured me about a few misconceptions: firstly it wasn’t necessary to find my local sexual health clinic; secondly I didn’t have to wait until a GP could see me, making it really worrying if we’d meet the 72 hour limit; thirdly, that it’s free.

I knew logically that there was no shame in sex, contraception, or any of it going wrong, but the fear was real.

Walking up to the pharmacy counter, I practiced the medical name for the pill in my head so I would get less embarrassed.

Unfortunately, my mumbled attempt led to a loud clarification: “emergency

contraception? Do you need the free kind?” and being led to a private room.

I was asked pretty standard things like whether I was on any medication, how many hours it had been since the unprotected sex (a term I actually objected to at the time – it was theoretically protected, I had just been cruelly betrayed by Durex), and boring normal things they ask you when giving you any medication.

I swallowed the pill then and there, and rejoined my boyfriend, awkwardly lingering between the family planning aisle and the baby clothes upstairs in the pharmacy. I laughed at his positioning, and by the time we had walked back to college, we were joking about it.

The thing I really took away from the whole experience is that even people who consider themselves pretty well sex educated don’t know a lot about emergency contraception. As I spoke

to some friends about it I realised that it hasn’t only been me – lots of people had no idea how easy and painless (metaphorically and literally) the whole process of getting that little pill was.

It happened once more, when I was changing contraception methods and we had to use condoms for a week. I declared us the unluckiest couple alive and, much less panicked, walked pretty jovially into town when I got up in the morning.

The real bummer then was that they were all out of the free kind due to high demands at the weekends. Not willing to lessen the effectiveness, I shelled out 27 quid.

That would be my one and only ‘tip’ for this article – atthe weekend, go early to beat the queue, because even though it feels like this has never happened to anyone else, you’re definitely not the only one.

Soundous Boualam Lifestyle Contributor

Even people who consider themselves pretty well sex educated don’t know a lot about emergency contraception

Does the Sports Centre seem too far for you? Is it too expensive for you to get a membership? This workout will see you looking fly in under thiry minutes. A target of three-to-four short workouts a week is enough to keep you fit, mentally and physically.

Five minutes: Warm up The first minutes should be used to warm up your body. Start running in place, jump, move your arms, legs and whole body and get that heart rate up.

Safety first

Image: Surija

Top pointers for procrastination paradise Connie Bennett Lifestyle Contributor

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e all know that when you have a million and one things to do, you instead find yourself doing the less than crucial.

1. Social media Pretty self- evident I think. But when you find yourself stalking your best friend from primary school’s boyfriend’s brother on Facebook you know you’ve reached new heights.

2. Fantasy online shopping This is online shopping like no other.

Hop onto your favourite designer websites – I’d recommend Net-a-Porter - and create a basket of your dream wardrobe. For extra fun invent fantasy occasions for the outfit, date night with Prince Harry anyone?

3. Dancing to cheesy pop Personally I love a good boogie to a girl band: The Spice Girls, The Saturdays, Destiny’s Child, Little Mix. S Club 7 are also a regular feature, and I sometimes go rogue and crack out S Club Juniors.

I should currently be discussing the value of human rights.

4. TV series binge The danger of watching things online is that the next episode is already there.

Just teasing, taunting and tantalising you to watch it. After much practise, you’ll be seamlessly gliding through a series per week.

6. Watching workout videos Actually doing a workout would be too productive, obviously. Instead I find myself sat watching workout videos on YouTube. You need to prepare yourself for the actual workout, right…?

Kicking back with Little Mix

15 minutes: 7. House hunting The beauty of the internet means you can look for your Beverley Hills mansion, New York apartment or Australian beachhut all in one session. Obviously it is entirely essential to spend an hour searching for £10 million palatial homes in south Buckinghamshire. Duh. 8. Writing for TCS… Yup, I should currently be discussing the value of human rights. But no – encouraging the procrastination of others is far more important…

Image: Vagueonthehow

15-20 Sit ups (30 secs) 20 Crunches (30 secs) 20 lower abs (30 secs) 20 russian twists (30 secs) 20 squats x two 10 burpees x two Follow up with a one minute plank to really work the core.

Final five minutes: AKA what the Yoga mat was truly meant for.

The last minutes should be spent on relaxation and stretching your muscles.

These last minutes are the occasion for you to do something relaxing, clear your thoughts, and rest before Cambridge kicks in again.

Images: Soundous Boualam

12 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport

30

Simply super Super Bowl

Dortmund’s downward spiral

Callum Church Sport Contributor

Paul Hyland Sport Contributor

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he biggest sporting party of the year took place in Arizona on Saturday 1 February at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

114.4 million people tuned in to watch the New England Patriots face the Seattle Seahawks.

The game started cautiously. Both teams had possession, but punted it away in favour of strong field position.

The first scoring opportunity for the Patriots was snuffed out when Brady’s accuracy was off, allowing for Jeremy Lane to intercept the pass, even if he broke his arm in the process. The game remained scoreless until the second quarter, when the Patriots’ first offensive possession resulted in the first touchdown of the game.

Wilson, after a slow start, found his touch with a 44-yard downfield pass to Chris Matthews, which set up the most fearsome running back in the game for a 3-yard touchdown run.

Marshawn Lynch, is well known for being formidable, and would rush for 102 yards in the game. The Patriots hit back almost instantly, leading with 31 seconds left in the half.

The second-half started, and the Seahawks were pumped, increasing their lead to ten points. No team had

ever come back from ten points down in a Super Bowl with under a quarter to play. Brady set about doing just that.

Then the Patriots did it again, with star receiver Julian Edelman being the fortunate recipient of a short pass for the score.

Seattle had 2:02 minutes to go 80 yards and score a touchdown to win. Could Wilson, with his monster running back in full flow, win this game? It started with a 31-yard pass to Lynch. Then a pass over the middle to Lockette. Then a deep throw to Kearse who pulled off a ridiculous catch. Reserve corner back Malcolm Butler failed to cover Kearse properly but made up for it less than a minute later, intercepting Wilson’s attempted pass into the end zone from the one-yard line to give the Patriots a famous win.

Controversy will abound about this game but this year’s Super Bowl really was Super.

B No wonder Dortmund is playing without direction: they’re not being given any

Photo: Superbowl via YouTube

Jaded by injuries, they cannot maintain their intensity over the course of 90 minutes. Instead, they’re sitting deep, and playing the ball long in the vague hope of scoring. In short, they’re playing like the relegation candidates they’ve become.

Dortmund appear to have adapted to their position: even Klopp seems bereft of his usual charisma. After the Augsburg defeat, the Westfalenstadion fell into jeers, and Klopp stood, unable to digest what he had just witnessed.

The players bore the brunt of their fans’ reaction, their manager hiding in the shadows. No wonder Dortmund is playing without direction: they’re not being given any.

A lack of leadership, injuries, uninspiring signings, and sheer bad luck has left Dortmund staring down the barrel of a gun. Unless they can find their feet quickly, they face a reality they could never have imagined: life outside of the Bundesliga.

orussia Dortmund’s Yellow Wall released the full force of their wrath towards their goalkeeper, with one fan shouting “What the hell’s wrong with you lot?”.

Dortmund had just fallen to a 0–1 home loss against 10–man FC Augsburg, and star players, Weidenfeller and Hummels, were forced to climb the fence to explain themselves to their fans. This was Dortmund’s 11th defeat in 20 matches, and come the final whistle, they found themselves at the bottom of the league they won back-toback three years ago.

Dortmund’s collapse isn’t difficult to explain. Losing Robert Lewandowski to Bayern Munich has hit like a hammer blow to a team that’s failed to integrate replacements like Ciro Immobile and Adrián Ramos, also losing Marco Reus to a long-term injury.

Their start to the season was characterised by a failure to close out games. They suffered home defeats to teams like Leverkusen and Hannover, despite dominating possession and chances. Losing games they should be winning has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the pressure is showing in their play.

Their pressing has stopped working. Angry ladies

Photo: wuestenigel

Captain’s column: Cambridge University women’s lacrosse Flora McFarlane Sport Editor

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ophie Morrill talks to The Cambridge Student about the preparations leading up to the Varsity match for the women’s lacrosse team.

What’s the rivalry between the two teams like?

It’s a pretty big one. The other thing with lacrosse is that it is quite a small world so you do know a lot of people. We’ll all probably know most of the players on their team and so we can quite often be good friends but because we’re all competitive people that’ll make it more competitive than it otherwise would be.

And obviously lacrosse is a competitive sport so it can get quite heated!

So many teams commented on how good our fitness was

When is Varsity and where is it?

Saturday 7 March – 2.30 p.m. at St John’s Pitches How has the season gone so far?

Our season has gone great so far, touch wood, currently unbeaten. We’ve had eight normal league matches and we’re sitting at the top of the table with quite a margin. We’ve played and beaten Oxford once already.

How has training been going?

We train four times a week. We have two hours on a Sunday evening ...Then we have an hour and a half of normal training on a Monday and then an hour of stick work. On Friday mornings we have boot camp. It’s run by a couple of ex-army guys who literally just yell at you – it’s horrible but you really do feel good afterwards. So many teams commented on how good our fitness was so it’s definitely paying off.

3, 2, 1... Which camera are we looking at?

What was the result last year?

Last year we lost 11–9. It was really gutting especially as we had beaten them once in the league and drew to them once. When we played them at home, we beat them and then when we played them away we drew. It was just frustrating, because it definitely wasn’t the best performance, we didn’t play as a team at all so that’s what we’ll really try to do this year and focus on in the build up to Varsity.

Any star players to look out for?

So there’s Katie Lehovsky and me and her are both in the England senior elite squad. She plays centre – she’s really strong. Then we’ve got Chesca Hirst, last year’s captain. She can be quite aggressive: she has been known to be carded the last few Varsity matches…

Any fresh new talent?

There’s no one who’s done really highlevel stuff, it is more that there’s a good depth in the squad.

What are your preparations going to be like over the term?

We really want to make sure that we maintain our positivity. Especially with the first half of the season having gone so well, there’s no reason why we need to change anything.

Do you have any PR campaigns up your sleeve?

Nothing too exciting, but there is a video in the works and there will be a Facebook event and stuff like that. We have a Minister of Press this year who will be getting on top of that.

If you were to pick an anthem for the team to run out to, what would it be?

That’s a tough one, I would have to go Photo: Sophie Morrill for ‘Jungle’ by X Ambassadors.

12 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport

31

Giles excited by new Red Rose chapter after England setback Charles Martland Sport Editor

O

n the eve of the Cricket World Cup and just two months from the start of the domestic season, Ashley Giles spoke to The Cambridge Student Sport about England’s chances, his reflections on a difficult spell as coach of the national side and his excitement about his new challenge coaching one of the country’s biggest county sides.

The 41 year old, whose left-arm spin took 143 Test wickets for England, looks back on his brief spell as England coach in reflective fashion, although the tinge of disappointment is evident. Peter Moores, formerly of Lancashire, the county whose reigns have now been taken up

by Giles, was preferred as permanent replacement to Andy Flower last year, after Giles oversaw a disappointing T20 World Cup campaign. “Some of it was really enjoyable,” says the man who also took over 500 First Class scalps during his prolific career, “but, at the sharp end, it’s tough. I still wake up wondering how we didn’t win the [2013] Champions Trophy.” England lost by just five runs in that final and never really repeated such form again under his stewardship.

So what about the World Cup, beginning on Saturday? Giles suggests

England have “an outside chance” of winning the competition, speaking not with bitterness but offering a realistic analysis of the amount of work still required to be done by the national side to become the best on the planet. “You never know,” he continues, “England have to get to the Quarter Finals and in those conditions, with the squad they’ve got, I wouldn’t write them off.”

Whilst 2015 sees the best cricketers collide at the World Cup, it also marks a fresh chapter in Giles’ career. Having guided Warwickshire to County Championship success in 2012, the Chertsey-born coach makes a return to the domestic scene with Lancashire, and his focus is very much on the task that lies ahead, namely achieving promotion back to the First Division.

It’s a challenge which excites Giles: “It’s about being back in the game…I’ve got a really exciting group to work with and I am looking forward to getting started.”

Within that group at Emirates Old Trafford are two of the country’s most promising left-arm spinners, Simon Kerrigan and Stephen Parry, both of whom have had a taste of international cricket and will undoubtedly hold aspirations of furthering their careers at the highest level. Giles hopes his experience as a left-armer himself can act as a catalyst in their development and

predicts great things for both men: “they could both have very long, successful careers ahead of them.”

Giles, once dubbed the ‘King of Spain’ after a rogue ‘a’ found its way onto the merchandise of the Warwickshire club shop, is assertive in saying his target is to achieve success with the Red Rose county, rather than use the experience as a springboard to another international position. “I honestly haven’t thought about it,” he says, “What I will do is take the time here to do the job so it’s done properly.” In spite of the unquestionable knock to his confidence Giles suffered after being overlooked as England’s head coach, there is without doubt a steely determination, competitive edge and professionalism to him which makes one believe he will achieve many more great things before his coaching career comes to an end.

The conversation moves to the state of English cricket more generally, a topic which has recently been the subject of great debate, especially with the success of ‘franchised’ Twenty20 cricket, such as the Big Bash League in Australia. The concern amongst some cricket followers is that, with the English competition spread over a much longer period (three months), the domestic game cannot attract the world’s best players. Many more traditionalist lovers of the game

Crossword 1.

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4.

9.

11.

10.

13.

14.

12.

15.

1. What 63 students at Girton have done over the past three years (8) 5. A double reeded orchestral instrument used to tune (4) 7. The Great Barrier, for example (4)

15. What the order of Knights desirous of shrubbery in Monty Python and the Holy Grail say (2) 16. College in a spot of bother over its May Ball ticketing policy (8)

Thomas Prideaux-Ghee

1. The lowlight of any undergraduate’s week (8) 2. A man at his own wedding (5) 3. Controversial medical procedure, banned in Ireland (8) 4. National flower of the country whose rugby team England thrashed last Friday (8) 9. That which is oft unidentified in bagging areas (4) 12. Only ____, Kanye West’s latest release (3) The solution to this week’s puzzles will be printed in our next issue.

16.

Across

have argued that there exists a danger of overdosing on Twenty20 cricket and the current format should remain. Giles believes that the balance lies somewhere between the two, recognising that, with the format as it stands, “you are simply unlikely to get ‘stars’ to come for such an extended period.”

A change of scheduling, for instance putting more T20 games on Friday evenings does is open domestic cricket to a much wider, younger audience, something Giles sees as crucial for the game: “T20 is very important because it’s a vehicle for fun and enjoyment,” he says, before adding that four-day cricket could also benefit in the long run: “I hope youngsters can then go on and appreciate the longer form of the game as well.”

“What I will do is take the time here to do the job so it’s done properly”

Down

6.

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Image: LCCC

Sudoku

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Ashley Giles

Last week’s solutions 8. To contain or restrict (5) 10. Five Children And ___ (2) 11. Iconic music player (4) 13. Basketball ___, hair___ or fish ___, perhaps (3) 14. Acronym claiming copyright (2)

We’re also looking for more crosswords and sudokus to appear in future issues. If you think you’ve got what it takes to devise a bamboozling masterpiece for us, send it over to editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk.

12 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport 32

The men’s Blues slipped to another defeat on Wednesday

Image: Will Lyon-Tupman

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Charles Martland Sport Editor

T

he Blues were narrowly beaten

by Hartpury on Wednesday, with the loss taking the number of consecutive defeats suffered to ten this season.

Cambridge found themselves behind after ten minutes and, although they played with energy and determination, spent the majority of the game without the ball. An excellent save from the Blues’ goalkeeper kept them in the game. The visitors believed they had scored a second, moments before the interval, only for it to be disallowed by the referee.

The Blues did begin to gain a foothold after the break but, in spite of their increased possession, they were unable to find the equaliser which would have brought them their opening point of the campaign. They travel to Northumbria for a cup fixture next week.

Cambridge UEA

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Alistair Gempf Sport Contributor

T

he Cambridge Pythons took on the UEA Pirates, who had previously been unbeaten, this week. The win saw Cambridge leapfrog the visitors into first place in the division.

The game started out as a defensive battle, and carried on that way. There was no score until the second quarter, with a Python drive from the UEA 36 converted by Yarwood on a quarterback sneak. The next UEA drive started well, but ended with a fumble, recovered by Cozens, and returned for a touchdown.

The final touchdown came in the third.

A Brewster interception led to a pass to Geerts for another touchdown.

The win means that if Cambridge win their three remaining games, they will qualify for the end-of-season playoffs.

For their next game, the Pythons face an away trip at Essex.

Women's Lacrosse

Men's Football

Cambridge Hartpury

Men's American Football

Women’s lacrosse crowned as Champions but footballers beaten again Cambridge Oxford

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Sophie Morrill Sport Contributor

T

oday the women’s Blues lacrosse team had their last league fixture of the season at home against Oxford University.

The Light Blues started strongly, securing the ball from the draw and threatening in the attack from the whistle.

Two well-worked goals set the tone for how they wanted to dictate the match.

Oxford came back with a quick goal but the Light Blues answered with two more from Birch and Moss, leaving the score 4-1 at half time. Oxford weren’t going down without a fight, managing to score three in the second half, but Cambridge applied pressure with two more goals from Moss.

This left the score 9-4 at the final whistle and crowns the Light Blues as undefeated Champions of the South Premiership, a title which they have retained for the ninth consecutive year!