Issue 116

Vision

York Student

Ikon & Diva the home of Cheese and Crackers

VIOLENCE FLARES

Three Students Hospitalised in City Centre Fight THREE STUDENTS were rushed to hospital after suffering an unprovoked attack outside The Lowther public house.

The Lowther for several weeks. Another Langwith student commented: “The Lowther used to be a student pub. This is no longer the case.”

The Lowther doesn’t have any door staff working on Wednesday night, but the bar did lock its doors immediately after the incident. The student said: “Members of the bar staff came out and it was one of them that called the emergency services to the scene.”

Caroline Hickey, manager of The

The Langwith students began the night celebrating a sporting victory and ended the evening in York General Hospital.

The attack left one student with a badly bruised eye and another had to have surgery to release a nerve in his right hand.

One of the victims said: “As soon as we left the pub, two of the group were struck by a group of lads who had also been drinking in The Lowther earlier.”

Another of the students was attacked when he tried to break up the incident. He also spent the night in hospital. The group of fifteen had had a few drinks and were unable to defend themselves when the seven men attacked.

One told Vision, “The police turned up and took statements off two Langwith students and my telephone number.

“We weren’t looking for a fight. We were after a drink before going into a club.

I didn’t expect a fight of this nature to happen in York, especially on a student night.”

The group don’t intend to return to

One had to have surgery to release a nerve in his right hand Lowther, described the incident as, “six of one and half a dozen of the other. The townspeople involved were ‘regulars’ of the pub and were usually considered wellbehaved.

“I was very surprised at their actions and they have since been barred from the pub.”

The establishment doesn’t intend to change its doorsafe policy at the present time. However the policy will come under review when the current renovations are

finished.

Hickey said she did not want to lose its existing customer base. “We are a student pub and we want to continue serving our existing customers.”

The police officers directly involved with the handling of the case were unavailable for comment. However a police spokesman told Vision, “If students want to stay out of fights in town then common sense rules apply. If you’re out with a loud aggressive group like a sports team then sometimes trouble will find you. You’ve just got to stick together and ignore it if you can.”

Kate Carpenter, recently elected JCRC chair said: “My initial reaction was for the safety of my friends’ who were badly hurt.”

She added: “They shouldn’t have carried on their punch party in The Lowther.”

Carpenter said that Langwith JCR doesn’t intend to boycott The Lowther, a course of action that was pursued against Toffs after an incident involving another Langwith student last term. No arrests have been made.

One of James College’s victorious kangaroos in Round One of Toff’s University Challenge. James defeated Derwent to go through to the semi-finals.

The winner of the competion gets a free bar for their whole college for the night.

Ryan Sabey

LANGWITH STUDENT ON ASSAULT CHARGE JAMES NAREY, an 18-year old first year PPE student, was arrested on the Monday of week one, charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer.

The incident took place in the Piccadilly area of York during a night out in town with friends. There have been allegations that James Narey head-butted the policeman, an acting sergeant.

The Langwith student is the son of the director general of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, who recently introduced a

fast-track system by which those charged with offences should appear in court the next day.

James Narey, however, failed to attend the original hearing during week one but

will be, made for James, who denies the charges.

Neither James Narey nor his father were prepared to speak to Vision, but Kate Carpenter, Chair of Langwith JCRC

such an offence would be.”

This sentiment was echoed by the Student Union President, Helen Woolnough, who commented, “It just goes to show it doesn’t matter where you come

“It doesn’t matter where you come from, the same rules apply to everyone.”

Helen Woolnough - Student Union President

was granted unconditional bail. The hearing was adjourned and James is due to appear before magistrates next week.

Prison Service sources have stated that no special arrangement has been, or

Vision meets Buzz p. 9

informed Vision that although she does not know James personally, or much about the situation, she feels that: “James should be treated fairly [by the police] as any other member of the public committing

Rip off Britain p. 14

York Student Vision

from, the same rules apply to everyone. In fact I suppose it’s quite ironic.”

Ron Clayton, Provost of Langwith, refused either to confirm or deny to Vision that he would be punishing James Narey

Seamus Heaney interview p. 17

but stated that “this is a matter that I will decide in my own time.”

James may face a custodial sentence if found guilty, although he also faces the possibility of either a fine or a community penalty. This story received coverage in the national press, and The Independent placed the story on their front page.

However no University authorities would comment on the effect a guilty verdict would have on his future as a student at York.

Ben Hulme-Cross and Tom Smithard

Sub Aqua debut p. 27

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

2 NEWS York Student Vision

News in Brief CHALLENGING TASK

THE STUDENT Union Internal Vice Presidents are running trials to find this year’s York representatives for BBC2’s University Challenge. The trials take place in Vanbrugh dining room, Tuesday week 5 at 7pm.

Speaking at the UGM in week two, IVP Dan Simon said: “I wish I was intelligent enough to enter myself!”

CAMPUS FAYRE COMMENT

HAVE YOU ever eaten Campus Fayre food? Lived to tell the tale? Now you can berate them about it because Campus Fayre want your feedback.

Pick up a form from any food outlet - just make sure you don’t eat anything whilst you’re there.

YORK HACKERS ATTACK

THE COMPUTING Service has been sending messages instructing students not to open any e-mails they receive from the domain name: admin_york.ac.uk. These e-mails contain attachments that if opened will infiltrate your address book, sending the same message to everyone in it.

The aim of this ‘worm’ is to cause the University’s server to crash due to an overload of messages. Director of the Computing Service, Michael Jinks, told Vision: “Students need to be vigilant but the Computing Service has the problem under control.”

ANOTHER INQUORATE UGM

THE UGM of Week 2 saw a permanent move from Vanbrugh dining room to Derwent bar, due to the belief that more students are prepared to attend in the more sociable setting of Derwent. This however proved incorrect last week as only arround 90 students, a third of the required number, turned up.

Vision York Student

Editors Deputy Editors Managing Editor News Editor Deputy News Editor Politics Editor Acting Politics Editor Features Editor Deputy Features Editors

Telescope Editor Deputy Telescope Editor Arts Editor Deputy Arts Editor Films Editor Deputy Films Editor Music Editor Deputy Music Editor Sports Editor Deputy Sports Editor Photo Editor Deputy Photo Editor Chief Sub Artist Vision online Webmaster Deputy Webmaster Advertising Manager

Wesley Johnson, Claire New Ryan Sabey, Gareth Walker Linus Koenig Ben Hulme-Cross Tom Smithard Post Open Danny Godep Rebecca Sweeney Victoria Cole-Jones, Barbara Stainer Alex Watson Mary Hathway Vicky Kennedy Sarah Mort Ann Smith Philip Diamond Steve Haines Tom Nall Tim Burroughs Greg Paterson Hanna-Mari Ahonen Post Open Samuel Johnson Post Open Jonathan Carr David Purnell Andrew Gee

Opinions expressed in Vision are not necessarily those of the Editor, Senior Editorial Team, membership or advertisers.

Special Thanks Vision would like to say thank you to Gavin and Sam from Westcountry Publications Ltd, URY and John McClean from Die Hard promotions.

Also a special thanks to Greg Paterson, Fiona Kendall and Toby James for all their hard work and dedication on the editorial team.

Grimston House, Room V/X/009, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD. Tel/Fax: 01904 43 3720 Email: vision@york.ac.uk Website: http://www.yorkvision.co.uk Copyright Vision Newspapers, 2000.

York Student Vision

SPARKS FLY AT URY EVENT ONE STUDENT was attacked and another threatened legal action at the joint Derwent/URY event in week one.

Sam Wagner, a third year PPE student, was assaulted in Derwent bar, whilst attending Spark, an event co-hosted by Derwent and URY. One second year told Vision: “He was acting like a fool, throwing his pint everywhere and not caring who it landed on.”

But another said: “The punch just came out of nowhere, he hadn’t done anything at all. A few drops of beer had been spilt on this guy’s coat and he just went berserk.”

Sam said: “The next thing I felt was someone just smacking me in the eye.”

Initial concerns expressed by doctors were that Sam’s contact lens might have been pushed round behind his eye. “They were x-raying and examining me for ages but fortunately nothing was damaged permanently, he told Vision.

The doorstaff were unable to restrain the assailant even though they were aware that the attack had occurred. Their contract stipulates that they may not arrest anyone unless they have witnessed an

Akira playing at Spark - were they good? See page 24 for our review incident themselves.

The attacker fled the college, pursued by porters. He has not been apprehended and as no one could identify him the police were not contacted.

In a separate incident at the same event, porters and doorstaff were threatened with legal action by an irate American woman who was refused access.

One of the doorstaff for the evening

told Vision: “She seemed pretty stressed and wanted to use the phone but we were full to capacity and it would have meant breaching the health and safety regulations and the insurance contract.”

Otherwise the evening sold out and was a complete success.

Ben Hulme-Cross

CHALLENGING TIME FOR TOFFS NIGHTCLUB was at the centre of another safety scare in week one as a female student alleges she was hit in the club.

The Goodricke first year has spoken to Vision of her experience on the Tuesday of week one, the night of the first round University Challenge match between Langwith and Vanbrugh.

She said she had just emerged from the ground floor toilets when a student, six foot tall with dark hair, hit her.

She told Vision: “He was standing to my right and the punch caught my right cheek bone.

“He hit me very hard, knocking me

off my feet. It caught me by surprise and I just lay on the floor.”

She added: “I tried to find a bouncer, but the only one I could see was standing next to the DJ, singing.”

Many students have been worried at the perceived lack of security at Toffs.

This is not the first time Toffs has received a dent to its ‘100% Student Friendly’ image this academic year.

Last term a student was attacked outside the club while bouncers looked on.

After complaints from the Students Union the bouncers left the employment of Toffs but there have been further reports of violence in and around the club since then.

There have been calls from students for Toffs to employ more security staff and to implement a policy of keeping security staff near the toilets at all times.

To tighten security further, from this week, Toffs will only accept Mondex ID rather than just the NUS card in order to make certain only University students gain entry on Tuesdays.

Toffs is currently running University Challenge, which started in week one and will go through to week seven.

The knockout competition, featuring all seven colleges and the Students Union, is taking place each Tuesday, traditionally Toff’s Student Night.

Tom Smithard

MEGA MONEY AND MONSTER HANGOVERS IN SCOTLAND Vision sent out one of our most charitable reporters to Scotland to find out more about RAG YORK UNIVERSITY RAG (Raising and Giving) was one of the first things I signed up for in the first year, but never did anything for it or knew much about it.

The Mega Raid to Scotland, in week two, was the biggest turnout for a York RAG Raid ever, raised over £4,000, and was my first ever insight into RAG. This amount was collected solely from street collections in Edinburgh and Sterling.

I personally raised over £100 for our charity, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, despite initial fears that there was no way anyone would want to put money in my bucket.

The trip certainly dispelled any notion that RAG is something you should have been in for your entire time at York.

Another plus point is you get to travel all around the country, making loads of new friends.

Ange Davison, RAG President, told Vision that she was “Amazed that so many people came, everyone had a good time and I’m so proud of all of them – we raised so much money.”

Charity is the main motive for the raid but there’s more than that involved – socialising, drinking, clubbing and meet-

Collectors preparing for the Mega Raid to Edinburgh and Sterling ing people are all other enjoyable elements. In addition there is also the chance to improve your mind with the culture of a new town.

I had no expectations of raising that much money and having that much fun. I had the misconception that you had to be a member of RAG, but everyone’s welcome. Other RAG Raids this term include

Newcastle in the weekend of week 3 and Lincoln in week 4.

I’d definitely go on another RAG Raid, it’s such a cheap way to have fun with your friends, it’s not at all cliquey and it gives you a warm, rosy feeling inside.

Rajini Vaidyanathan

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision NEWS 3

BARBICAN: SINK OR SWIM? YORK UNIVERSITY students and members of the public alike have expressed concern over the possible closure of the Barbican and Yearsley swimming pools.

A fall of 130,000 users over the past four years together with rumoured losses of £4.7m have prompted the council to review its spending on leisure services and the closure of the Barbican swimming pool has become a distinct possibility.

Athletic Union President Ben Harding told Vision: “It would be disastrous for the AU and University as a whole since a lot of clubs rely on it as the only swimming facility. For example, it is the best suited location for our swimming galas due to its convenient location and layout, and we have no reasonable alternative to it.”

The potential closure also threatens the recently established relationship between the Barbican Sports Centre and the Athletic Union. As Ben points out: “AU members currently enjoy a 25% discount for the use of the Barbican gym and swimming pool facilities. This encourages students to make the most of facilities we don’t have and it is an enormous blow for the council to threaten this relationship.”

These words were echoed by Students Union President Helen Woolnough when she spoke to Vision about the petition the SU has launched against the closure.

“The close co-operation that has developed between the Barbican and the AU has been of great benefit and it is not something we want to lose. The petition is intended to show what the students think and hopefully this view will be taken into consideration.”

“The loss of an essential service like a swimming pool would have a major impact on the community of York” Liz Page Editor, Yorkshire Evening Press

The many students and clubs who rely upon the Barbican facility for sporting and leisure purposes may end up faced with the higher prices and increased transport costs to get to privately-run pools as the University has no plans to construct one in the near future.

“At the moment there’s just not the money available”, said Helen. “The

University has long term plans to develop the sport and leisure facilities but in the short term this is not possible.”

Alternative locations include the Arch Bishop Holgate swimming pool, already used by several clubs, but this location is plagued by violence and security problems.

A spokesperson for the University Canoe Club said of the facility: “Plenty of things have been pinched and we even caught someone in the act. We simply can’t leave anything unattended.”

The Sub Aqua Club, who train at the same pool, have also had problems. “At the start of the year we experienced a number of thefts,” said club captain Andy Priest. “But most of our members use the Barbican for swimming and aqua-fit. For us it is essential that this is available as for diving you need to keep a good fitness level and swimming is obviously the most appropriate sport.”

Aroused by public opposition to the potential closures, the Yorkshire Evening Press has launched a Save Our Swim campaign.

In the past two weeks the situation has been monitored daily and a demonstration was staged in Parliament Street at which the public were invited to sign petitions.

York University Swimming Club at a protest outside the Barbican “We are a community newspaper, and the loss of an essential service like a swimming pool would have a major impact on the community of York”, said Editor Liz Page. “That’s why we have launched the Save Our Swim campaign to safeguard the future of both the Barbican and Yearsley pools.”

But David Meigh, Head of Purchasing and Resources for the City of York Council Leisure Service Department, is adamant that the closures are not a foregone conclusion: “It is possible but far too premature to say. It will be several weeks if not months before a decision is taken by

the council’s public committees. We have experienced quite a decline in the use of swimming pools recently and this raises questions as to how many pools you need and what are the best locations for them.”

He admits that the Barbican swimming pool was in need of important renovations but is keen to point out that this does not mean the facility will definitely be closed as campaigns have suggested: “We always welcome the views of our customers but it’s unfortunate that it’s been made to seem as though a decision has been taken when it has not.”

Tim Burroughs

BIOLOGY AWARDED FRAUD CHARGE FUELS DEBATE £20,000,000 LEGAL ACTION is being pursued after several hundred pounds of the Debating Society’s money went missing over the summer.

TWENTY MILLION pounds has been awarded to the University’s Biology department. The award is to fund the redevelopment of the entire department, including new buildings, equipment and facilities.

Professor Fritter, Head of Department,

said: “The award provides an exceptional opportunity for the Department to keep its internationally renowned research at the forefront of scientific understanding.”

The new development will encircle a central technology sector built on its existing site. Such a development will undoubtedly lead to the creation of jobs in secretarial and technical posts.

The opportunity of redevelopment will benefit all sections of the Biology department including the Structural Biology laboratory, currently part of the Chemistry complex. Along with York’s research rating of ‘5’, depicting excellence, the new facilities will continue to attract an increasing number of research academics.

An additional £2.4 million is being contributed by the University itself along side a grant of £700,000 from York Cancer Research for a new headquarters.

Ron Cooke, Vice Chancellor, said: “It is the biggest single award the University has ever received and it was won against stiff competition. It provides a unique opportunity to sustain and develop the department’s world class status.”

Professor Diana Bowles helped to submit the successful bid. She commented: “In awarding our bid, the Government endorses our vision of developing our research base in Biology. We now have a really secure foundation for continued success.”

The award is just part of a fund set up by a UK collaboration for the improvement of scientific research throughout the country. Recent funding though has not only centred around York’s academic departments. York’s Millennium Volunteer

A Biology student using old research equipment projects have also been successful in bids and are to be awarded a share of £20 million. A collaboration of HE and FE colleges across the region, headed by the University of York, are one of 14 chosen projects throughout the community to receive the grant.

Aimed at 16-24 year olds the projects will offer volunteering opportunities across the city. The young people involved will receive a Millennium Volunteer Award of Excellence on the completion of two hundred hours of service to the community.

Dr Robert Partridge of the University’s York Award said: “It’s a way in which young people can access volunteer opportunities more readily and university students can draw out educational and learning opportunities.”

Employment and Equal Opportunities

York Student Vision

Minister, Margaret Hodge, announced the allocation of funds and said: “Now thousands more will have the opportunity to help their community, and their career prospects – and have a great time doing it.

“Millennium Volunteers are serious about addressing the issues of the day – from racism to drug abuse – but they also want to have fun.

“This new round of projects will see Millennium Volunteers learning to ski, designing websites, and even DJing at clubbing events.”

Planned projects include volunteer led sports training and community based science programmes as part of the Summer in the City programme, and information and literacy help for the elderly.

Claire New

is in a savings account but we’ve not got the money back yet. This has been going on for months.

“We deaffiliated from the SU last year and wanted to save some money so he allegedly put the money into a high inter Between the end of the last academic est account, on which Marcus is a signayear and the start of term in October, five tory. cheques went out of the account, signed “We are not sure exactly what hapby and payable to the society’s former co- pened, but it does look dubious. The trouchair, Marcus Steele. ble is, legal action may take months.”

The cheques, Johnny Williams, which were dated also co-chair, said: throughout August and “We will be continuing September, were also with legal action as we signed with the former can’t rely on Steele’s treasurer’s signature, claim that the money is Jonathan Isaby. on its way - it’s been Isaby, who used to on its way for months. live with Steele, told “It’s been at the top Vision: “I was told that of the agenda of every all the cheques had my committee meeting. signature on them, so I It’s important for the asked to be sent copies whole society that we of them all. get the money back.”

“All the signatures Jacqui Williams, are forgeries and I’d Marcus Steele who was co-chair of never seen the cheques ...unavailable for comment the society with before.”

Marcus over the sum “Marcus is claimmer, said: “Before the ing he’s set up a new “We will be continuing holidays we had over bank account for the with legal action as we £600 in the account. society, but he can’t we came back can’t rely on Steele’s When provide any documenthe account was overtary evidence of this. claim that the money is drawn.

“He has said he’d “We still don’t have on its way.” lend the money to the a satisfactory explanaJohnny Williams society until the docution regarding the Debating Society Co-Chair ments prove what he’s repayment of this saying, but so far money nor what hapthey’ve seen no money pened to it in the first place. and there’s still no evidence.”

“The money had been saved over a Phil Witcherley, the current co-chair period of years to fund an inter-university of the society, said: “The money left the debating competition to be held in York. account over the summer in a series of At the moment this is obviously out of the cheques which were made payable to question.”

Marcus Steele.

Marcus Steele was unavailable for “Some of these were arguably legiti- comment. mate for train tickets, etc, but some are Wesley Johnson dubious.”

He added: “Marcus claims the money

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

4 NEWS York Student Vision

CYBER SEXPOSURE FERDINAND FRAUD A STUDENT has been disciplined by the University after being caught playing with himself in a college computer room in the early morning of a Saturday late last term.

The incident happened at 2:30am in

the Goodricke computer room when the James College student, said to be visibly drunk, entered the room.

Vision has been told he repeatedly pestered a Goodricke student, asking how to access porn on the internet. The Goodricke student said that after he told him, the James student whipped out a prophylactic and began to enjoy himself.

The Goodricke student said: “I was totally shocked. There were ladies present and although they pretended they could see nothing I could tell they were feeling discomfort.

“I couldn’t believe my own eyes. I felt

quite sick. If there hadn’t been girls present I’d have smacked him.”

After witnessing the incident the Goodricke student informed the porter on duty but by the time they returned to the computer room the offender had gone.

A search of the nearby grounds by night security found a character who fitted

The James student whipped out a prophylactic and began to enjoy himself the culprit’s description and a report of the incident was logged.

The Goodricke student said he wrote a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, the provosts of James and Goodricke and the Director of the Computing Service.

The letter, seen by Vision, demanded the student be punishable by the strongest means available.

In his defense, however, the James

student told porters he had been playing “a practical joke” and that he did not “expose himself”.

After evidence provided by the Computing Sevice, the James student was sent a letter warning him that he was on probation and any further computing related offense could lead to his expulsion.

He was also made to apologise in person to the Goodricke student, who was placated after a meeting with the Goodricke Provost, Stepanie Marshall.

Commenting on the situation, Dr Michael Jinks, Director of the Computing Service, told Vision: “The University takes all issues of misuse of the computers seriously. Throughout the year we will strive to take disciplinary action, as we did in this case, if we find anyone misusing our system. This case proves it is not worth misusing our facilities.”

Tom Smithard

A MAN allegedly involved in fraud and deception of York students has been banned from campus by the University authorities.

He is believed to have obtained vari-

ous sums in ‘loans’ from several unsuspecting students in a cynical confidence trick.

According to a University notice distributed all over campus last week, Ferdinand Joahquim Friere has recently been convicted of theft, burglary and

“He’s a charming man. He makes you want to help him.”

Ferdinand Friere - Have you seen this man?

MEET THE MOB

The new JCR Committee Chairs tell Vision about themselves, what they want to achieve, and what makes them tick

Jamie Smith - James I THINK that I’m approachable and motivated, and that I am ready to put in 100% for the College. I feel that college identity should be a major part of life at York and with this in mind, I intend to establish an official James College Web site; creating an on-line JCR. This years’ events will be bigger than ever, accommodating what is now the biggest college on campus. In line with this will be the ever continuing push for facilities, and hopefully this will be a successful and enjoyable year for James. They can hate us as long as they fear us!!

Kate Carpenter - Langwith I STOOD for Chair of Langwith College as a personal challenge because I have the kind of enthusiasm that could help create a successful committee. We are holding a weekly bar quiz and video night. Aside from entertainment, the Welfare reps have thoroughly ‘done-up’ the office and on the Sports side of things, this term has already seen a rise in the number of college members taking part in teams. Given the general enthusiasm which has made itself evident within the committee already, then I think it could be a very good year for Langwith!

Nick Church - Alcuin HELLO! I’M Nick and I’m the new chair of Alcuin (you know the one on the hill, you may have glanced at it once). I stood for election as Chair because having spent last year as Vice Chair I was fairly familiar with the role and I hope I have a good chance of doing it successfully. Alcuin will be undergoing a large series of changes that will greatly alter the face and the operation of the college. I intend to try to make sure that all the changes are implemented with as little inconvenience as possible. We also intend to use the new facilities to raise Alcuin’s image.

Andy John - Wentworth AS LAST year’s Wenty Bar Rep I need no real introduction to many, in fact there are several people on campus who have actually threatened me with death (mainly Bar Staff). The stress of being Chair now allows me to have an excuse for the amount of time spent in The Charles. As Chair of the JCRC I have become a reformed character, reliable, organised and able* and with the backing of Wenty’s fantastic committee this year we look forward to doing great things in 2000.

Long live Wentworth !!! * this may be a porky !

deception. He was ordered to pay compensation to one York University student.

The University administration has reason to believe that other students have fallen victim to Ferdinand too, and several of Vision’s members have also been approached by Ferdinand.

One young lady reported: “He dresses smartly and he’s polite. In fact he’s quite charming really. He makes you want to help him.”

Another said: “He’s very intelligent.

He seems to know who will fall for his charms and then goes in for the kill.”

He operates under several aliases and claims to be a postgraduate DPhil student in the Politics Department.

The University’s Academic registrar, Sue Hardman, urges anyone who feels that he or she has been duped by the culprit to step forward. Any such reports will be treated in strict confidence.

Anybody who sees him on campus or other University property should immediately contact the Security Centre on extension 4444, since he has been given a formal warning by the Bob Sinclar police not to come on

If Ferdinand Friere approaches you please contact the

Security

Centre on extension 4444 immediately

STUDENT DRIVER’S MILLENNIUM MISERY AS THE human race celebrated the dawn of the new millennium around the world one hapless York student had a very different experience.

Paul Dunn - Vanbrugh I WENT for Vanbrugh Chair because I figured I was committed and organised enough to do the job. There are loads of things that I want to do during the year, but they all revolve around keeping Vanbrugh a vibrant, successful college.

We are also trying to ensure that all Faifax students feel a part of the college too - and to continue this integration is a big part of this year’s plans. I am extremely happy with the committee, I think we will be able to work well together and this, hopefully, will enable Vanbrugh to have a successful and fun year.

Rory Dennis - Goodricke MY HOPES and dreams for the college is that it stays a great place to live, work and play; as the Chair I belive that I can get results that will lead to the college having success in all aspects of Uni life. I am representing the Goodricke students on many contentious issues such as the smoking policy and redevelopment of the college in the future. What I bring to the post is enthusiasm, knowledge and direction, all of which every student should have and should do for their college, even if it is only helping RAG raise 25 quid or playing for a sports team.

York Student Vision

Bruno Araujo - Halifax Court

BY THE end of this academic year, Halifax Court will have (touch everything remotely wooden) a bar, a JCR office, a cafe and a “super laundrette”. Granted, the last item on this list sounds like a rocket boosted laundry room, but having one will be appreciated. Now that the continuous campaigning for facilities has borne fruit, this year’s JCRC can now concentrate on other issues of importance such as organizing sports teams, rewriting the constitution, campaigning for better lighting & security and preparing Halifax Court for full college membership.

Clive Burrell - Derwent AFTER A year’s experience as Derwent Bar Rep, organising quizzes, drinking and general dazed confusion, I saw the Chair beckoning. Having also worked on the D99 Committee, I’m experience both as a team player and an organiser of large scale social events. The excellent tradition of big events set by previous JCRs is already proving a hard act to follow. But I love the college and this year will be the best year we’ve ever had. Our emphasis will be on Ents, with a guaranted two events a week. I don’t believe any other college Chair could promise that.

Stephen Willoughby, a computer science student at the University, was stopped in his car by police and breathalised. He was then taken into custody and spent the midnight hour in a cell.

In court Stephen Ovenden, prosecuting Mr.Willoughby, told magistrates that the York student had been three times over the legal drinking limit at just before ten o’clock on millennium eve.

He was convicted and given 60 hours community service, banned from driving for two years and ordered to pay the court £55 legal costs.

Speaking in Mr.Willoughby’s defence, Craig Sutcliffe, mitigating, told the court that the student had learnt his lesson and realised his responsibilities as a driver.

Ben Hulme-Cross

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision NEWS 5 York Student

Vision

Editorial IS LOVE THE ANSWER ?

NEARLY A month until the mating season and love is in the air.

Former students are setting up internet dating agencies and undergraduates struggle to resist distasteful urges to relieve the tension in Goodricke computer room. Worst of all, the Adonis of Ramsey Street that is Billy Kennedy, has yet another pretty little neighbour’s pulse racing faster than a Langwith footballer legging it from the Lowther.

Sparks will doubtless fly, then, come February 14th. Yep. St Valentine descends on us all once more with the inevitability of Central Hall’s descent into the lake (with perhaps a little more immediacy).

This poses a complex range of problems for us all. If you’re with someone then you ought to be sorted for a date but mustn’t be tacky or commercial, mustn’t spend what’s left of your student loan and mustn’t do what everyone else is doing.You’ve also got to worry about your single mates sending your partner flowers and cards with gender-relevant messages like, “DEAR FLUFFY, FRANTICALLY YOURS TWENTYFOUR HOURS A DAY, SEE YOU TONIGHT, DONKEY!!” Your friends doing this is fine, how to be certain that it is your friends is the problem.

Advice for the blokes: Do not suggest a McDonalds - she’ll be out of there quicker than you could say ‘Let’s go halves on the bill’!

Some of you will obviously be proudly single come the big day and will relish the opportunity to sabotage any displays of sentimentality on anyone’s behalf. This is the only approach to take if you’re single and you should be able to navigate your way through the whole event with no serious risk of death. Congratulations.

As for the rest: May the force be with you!

ELECTRONIC LOVE THE QUEST for true love is what inspired former York graduate Paul Kemp to set up an internet dating agency.

Valentinet, an electronic way to find the ideal partner, is the brainchild of Paul, who studied computer science here, and his brother. They have been running the internet site successfully since last September, attracting users from all over the world.

The former James College student who played hockey for his college and was social secretary of the Badminton Club formed the site after failed attempts to find the perfect match using other agencies.

Daren Kemp, brother and partner told Vision: “We are running the site on a shoestring budget but we’ve got a good domain name and so far it has been successful.”

To place an advert on the site costs you nothing, and to view all adverts is possible for a subscription fee of £10 a month. Aware of financial burdens on students, Darren Kemp stressed the fact that the site is a lot cheaper than most dating agencies. He also assured those interested that the site is safeguarded from maniacs: “We have built in safety checks. We check all adverts - they go to a box first before they are forwarded to a person.”

Having browsed the site (purely for research purposes!) I noted that those

Ben Hulme-Cross

advertising their single status tended to be from Eastern Europe and at least over forty. Kemp stressed he was keen to broaden this to students, especially as internet access “costs you nothing at Uni.”

He also pointed out that the current users of the site “tended to be Russian.”

The site gives you the option to post your picture on the site as well as attaching

ikon & diva from our sponsors...

AS YOU may have noticed, the student night at Ikon & Diva has changed from last term and will now be on every Thursday night. We felt that we would be able to offer more on a Thursday night than we ever could on a Wednesday.

The night has been named Society and features the best drinks offers we’ve ever had on at Ikon & Diva. Including, for the first few weeks, free draught beer before 11pm. Normal drinks prices start from 70p, yes 70p.

Society will be held in Ikon allowing our DJs to play whatever they want to give the night a quality atmosphere. And if you want to get into Ikon free of charge on a Society night you can put your name on our guest list. Just phone the club on 01904 693999 and ask to be put on the Society guest list for any Thursday night before the Easter break.

As the name of the night suggests, we are very keen to welcome student societies and teams into the club. If you are part of a team or society and want to bring your party to the club, phone the hotline and book your party in – we’ll give you a bottle of bubbly for every ten people you bring to us!

The free bus service will continue as it did before Christmas, running from the bus stop by the Charles XII, the bridge by the library and the Victoria every 30 minutes from 9.50pm. The return service to campus starts from 1.15 am. There is also a service from Rougier Street in the city centre.

We are sure that if you try the Society you’ll like it and want to join, so we look forward to seeing you soon.

York Student Vision

Rajini Vaidyanathan

Letters To The Editor

the voice of

CLUB HOTLINE 01904 693999

symbols so the prospective suitors can automatically discern whether or not you smoke or have children. Oddly enough, most of those on the site were less than aesthetically pleasing, but don’t let that deter you!

The brothers, who set the web-site by writing it all themselves assured other budding ‘e-preneurs’ that to start such a venture is not impossible: “You can download instructions off the web on how to set web-sites up. It’s easy to write a page, and then it costs twenty pounds to register a company name.”

The success of most dating agencies is measured by the number of couples whose romantic liaisons started from that first introduction. How does Valentinet rate by this measure? “We don’t keep tabs on relationships - but maybe someone’s got married...who knows?”

And has the web-site helped Paul find himself a lady? “He hasn’t met anyone through Valentinet yet” remarked brother Darren, “but he has had a date set up by e-mail recently.”

So maybe romance is dead, and cyber loving is the way forward? To sample some of your own (in time to get a valentines date) go to www.valentinet.com, otherwise get drunk and try your best in The Gallery.

What’s bugging YOU? Dear Editor, As a long-standing employee of the University, I feel We must reply to Mr G Murray’s inadequate and incorrect letter in the last Vision. I along with many of the bar staff on campus have given much loyalty to the University. However the statements made by Mr Murray make sure we know just how little we are appreciated.

Is Mr Murray sure that the payment made to the bar staff between 8pm and 11pm is SHIFT pay? I was under the impression that it was UNSOCIABLE hours, surely something quite different.

Surely the point of paying extra for working 8pm to 11pm as opposed to 8am to 11am is obvious, it is very unsociable to work the later hours.

How dare Mr Murray publicise to all and sundry our pay, can we look forward to finding out what he is paid this month?

Also a comparison of value for money between bar staff and personnel would not go amiss, I wonder which is more valuable to the University?

Finally has Mr Murray been in a City centre pub? If not I will explain the staffing levels. They have glass collectors specifically employed to collect glasses; they have doormen to police the drinkers; they also have managers on duty throughout opening hours.

In case Mr Murray is not aware, we do not have any of these perks. We (the bar staff) do it all ourselves.

Also, to my knowledge most City centre bar staff walk in at their startingtime, and finish at closing time with no responsibility whatsoever, so why class us

in the same category as them. We have FULL RESPONSIBILITY of the bars at all times.

I was under the impression that personnel was there to help staff and not make things difficult.

neglects the very people who help establish this reputation.

Yours Sincerely, Bar Staff

I would like to express my anger at what I perceive to be the University’s insensitive plans for the beginning of the next term.

Sunday week 0 is Easter Sunday.

Although the term doesn’t start until the following Wednesday, I, and many others, rely on my parents to transport me and all my belongings back to campus, for which Sunday is the only possible day to travel.

Unfortunately, this involves driving half the length of the country to York (and back) on one of the most important days in the Christian calendar.

I for one don’t want to celebrate Easter in the back of a car - I’m sure my parents don’t want to either. In addition to this the roads are likely to be packed as friends and relatives visit each other all over the country.

The University should reconsider their position before they alienate the students, their parents.

Dear Editor, I didn’t e-mail this to you, because I first tried Vanbrugh, couldn’t find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that is Langwith. So equipped with my Goodies stilton baguette and baited breath I risked the wrath of Goodricke computer room.

Lo and behold I didn’t make it two steps inside before somebody shouts ‘sorry, this room is booked until five, you’ll have to come back’.

My natural comeback came a lot sooner than they expected, but to no avail.

Why, oh why do I pay (in my youthfulness) tuition fees if I cannot have access to an integral part of my tuition? Namely the internet and word-processing facilities.

The less monetarily blessed need the support of our University for these very computers and resources.

I understand (as an English student) that other courses are more computerbased, but are these rooms classrooms, or open to all to take advantage of as and when we choose?

These are changing times, and the internet is perhaps one of the driving, unifying forces of this development.

How can York University consider itself one of the premier Universities if it

Bigoted James Garrison Dear Editor,

Yours faithfully, Lisa Wendon

Please

send all

correspondence to

York Student Vision Grimston House

e-mail:

vision@york.ac.uk

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision POLITICS 7

BRING ON THE CLOWNS Roll up for the Circus! Danny Goldup explores the farce that the London mayoral race has become

The villain: Archer could be in the dock for perjury

The rebel: Livingstone is defiant in the face of the New Labour leadership

The Casanova: Norris has had five affairs since he married, despite preaching family values

The hippy: Kramer admitted to enjoying the odd joint when young

POLITICS HAS gone dirty in the battle to become mayor of London. So far- we have had allegations of corruption, confessions of drug taking, and a bitter fight in the ranks of New Labour.

perjury after persuading a friend to lie for him.

Ken Livingstone undoubtedly knew that Millbank would oppose his candidature. But the battle to stop him becoming Labour’s candidate now has all the ferocity of a Bolshevik power struggle, with the Left pitted against the Right in a fight to gain the upper hand.

Livingstone is known as ‘Red Ken’ in the Labour Party, serving as a reminder to voters of his previous post as head of the GLC. Labour seems to have forgotten that they extolled the virtues of socialism as freely as Livingstone did in the 1980s, the only difference seems to be that he stuck

to his beliefs.

What with the Archer scandal and Labour’s civil war, the Liberal Democrats have been left out of the picture. So much so, in fact, that the LibDem candidate, Susan Kramer, decided to throw herself into the media spotlight.

In a recent radio interview, Kramer revealed that as an undergraduate in the 1960s she had smoked cannabis. Surely not. For some reason, the press decided that this was not sufficiently scandalous to make the front page, and poor Kramer is still a relatively unknown figure.

Steven Norris, the new Tory candidate, has also been in trouble for drugs

recently. Last month, he angered leader William Hague by saying that cannabis should be legalised in certain circumstances. Well, at least now he’s secured part of London’s vote (if only the electoral franchise encompassed sixth formers, he must think).

Where this tragi-comic story will go next, no one knows. There is rarely a dull moment in this saga, and for the next few months the British public is guaranteed an interesting story.

It seems that every figure that puts their name forward as a candidate ends up in some sort of predicament. First we had super-rich novelist Jeffrey Archer deciding to stand as the Tory candidate.

He ended up in front of the Conservatives’ Standards and Ethics Committee, faced with expulsion from the party and even a possible jail sentence for

FIGHTING FOR PEACE Catherine Elliott interviews Kate Fearon, Political Advisor to the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition.

THE WOMEN’S Coalition are a non-sectarian women’s organisation committed to achieving peace in Northern Ireland through diplomacy and negotiation.

They were formed in 1996 and won two seats in the body which ultimately composed the Good Friday Agreement.

Subsequently the coalition was elected to two seats in the Northern Ireland assembly, held by Monica McWilliams and Jane Morrice.

voice to be heard.

The most frequently asked questions

Q: Is there any hint of an ‘opposition’

Q: What impact has Mo Mowlam's replacement by Peter Mandelson had?

KF: He has proved to be very sharp, and hasn't been intimidated by the scale of the problem. But the process wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for Mo. They are part of the same team - it was mainly a battle-change.

Q: Are Assembly debates now any more ‘women-friendly’ than before the Agreement?

Q: Monica McWilliams of the Women’s Coalition has been calling for ‘less negativity’ in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Has this change begun?

KF: It depends on the topic - on constitutional issues, some use the debate as a platform to spout vitriol, for example yesterday, when the Patten Commission and decommissioning were being discussed.

But when it comes to socioeconomic issues, there is a lot more constructive critique than negativity.

Q: Now that the Belfast Agreement has been implemented, is civil society getting the look-in it was promised in the decision-making process?

KF: Not yet - hopefully, the ‘Civic Forum’ [a caucus of representatives from trade unions, non-profit organisations and business, to advise the Assembly] will soon act as a vehicle for civil society’s

Party do meet for combined strength of effort - we succeeded in getting at least one ‘small party member’ on each Committee.

The Stormont assembly; inset top to bottom, Monica McWilliams and Jane Morrice

“Mandelson has proved to be very sharp, and hasn’t been intimitated by the scale of the problem” in the Assembly Parliamentary Forum relate to it, and the important role of ordinary people in the devolution debate, demonstrating for something instead of against, supports their claim to be involved. Fingers crossed, we’ve been told that it will happen in April.

York Student Vision

forming out of the smaller parties?

KF: One of the problems of the Agreement is that it didn’t provide for a formal opposition, one of the measures of a democracy.

Informally, the Women’s Coalition, Alliance Party and Progressive Unionist

KF: You must be joking! Some efforts have been made, such as childcare provision in the Assembly buildings.

If anything, though, it’s harder for the few Assembly women to be heard, because the time limit on speeches has been removed, so you have to be on your feet and ‘in the queue’ to be able to speak at all. Yesterday, Nigel Dodds of the DUP went on for an hour!

Find out more about the Women’s Coalition at www. pitt.edu/~norosel/ northern.html

The puppet: Dobson is Downing Street’s choice for mayor

Further Info Details, background and policies of all candidates can be found at either: www.bbc.co.uk; www.itn.co.uk; or www.the-times.co.uk

...IN A NUTSHELL SOUTH AMERICA:

Forest and brush fires by the thousand are burning in western Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay.

Both small farmers and large agro-industrial companies use fire as a tool for clearing fields for cotton, cane and other crops.

Carelessness however, often allows the "prescribed" burnings to escape and become forest fires in the adjacent forests.

Now firefighters are struggling to protect Manu National Park, an ecosystem of great wealth on the western slopes of the Andes Mountains.

ZIMBABWE:

Over six months after the Zimbabwe Supreme Court relegated women to the status of 'junior males' within the family, the reality of the ruling is becoming increasingly felt. In particular the impact on women's reproductive rights is feared.

There is widespread concern many men will use the decision to remove from women all right to decide how many children they want to have or which contraceptive to use," he says.

INTERNATIONAL:

NEW UN figures estimate that if funds were diverted back into health and education from debt repayment, the lives of 134,000 children a week could be saved in the Third World.

Now, following the UK's lead, Germany's development minister has confirmed that the Berlin government will write off 100 per cent of the bilateral debts owed by 30 of the world's poorest countries.

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision FEATURES 9 York Student

FEATURES

Vision RIP OFF BRITAIN

THE TOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

FOCUS ON BELFAST

CLASS OF HOPE

CELEB COUPLES

SEAMUS HEANEY

RAPE: THE MEN WHO THINK IT’S NATURAL

Wesley Johnson meets John Lasseter, the renowned creator of Woody and Buzz in anticipation of the soon to be released Toy Story 2.

STRIDING TO the front, joking with students, John Lasseter settles himself in and starts talking about his new creation - only to be interrupted and quickly supplanted by two huge megastars.

They get jealous when I do interviews

without them,” he explains, as toy versions of Woody and Buzz are brought out of the shadows and into the conversation.

Wearing a Hawaian-style shirt, Lasseter is director of the animated sequel to the landmark blockbuster which was Toy Story.

With three feature films to his name, Lasseter’s creation has already earned him a special achievement Academy Award.

He is also the man responsible for bringing us Bug’s Life as he furthers his reputation as one of the leading pioneers in computer animation as Pixar’s resident filmmaker.

But Toy Story 2 is no ordinary sequel: it’s a great sequel.

“The story of the characters is the most important,” he says (as Buzz

York Student Vision

announces “to inifinity and beyond” across the room), they live beyond the boundaries of the film.

“We said we’d only do a sequel if we could find a story which was different to the first, but which still had all the great elements.

“Godfather 2 and The Empire Strikes Back are two good examples of sequels which have taken the original and made it even better!”

The sequel sees Andy heading off to Cowboy Camp, leaving the toys to their own devices. But trouble really starts when obsessive collector Al McWhiggan kidnaps Woody, introducing him to the other prized toys - Jessie the cowgirl, Bullseye the horse and Stinky Pete the Prospector - whilst Buzz and his friends set off to the rescue. An idea inspired by Lasseter’s experiences with his five sons.

“I’ve got a big toy collection in my office at Pixar and whenever they come to the office to play with daddy’s toys, ‘daddy’ gets freaked out because his toys are collectibles,” he says.

“It’s very much like a glass. If a glass

is empty, it is a sad, depressed glass, but as long as it is clean it still has hope of one day being used. When I fill it up, it becomes excited and as I drink it becomes empty again and gets madder.

“The philosophy is the same as for the toys being alive. They want to be played with.”

It’s clear that Lasseter knows how to have fun with his work. He talks as though each toy has its own life and tribulations as he describes Rex, the “neurotic plastic dinosaur” who “has the kindest heart, and the weakest spine.”

“Everybody has dinosaur toys, and they’re the cheesiest, worst made toys on the planet. Are they really supposed to be scary?

“The toy must have such a hard time living up to what it’s supposed to be, so we’ve made Rex quite nervous and insecure. Just look at its forearms, it can’t even scratch its own nose!”

Stressing that it is the characters and their story which is important, he tells how Jessie is the strong female character they wanted.

“The first movie was made by a bunch of guys about the toys they used to have as kids. In the second, my wife was adamant that there should be something more for women.”

In fact, there’s something more for everyone. “There’s a story which will appeal to kids, parents, adults without kids, grandparents, everyone.

“It’s given the adult personalisation it needs to connect with the audience: it’s the feeling of being replaced by something new, of being outgrown - it happens to every single toy and many adults can sympathise with that.”

Now considered by many as “the Walt Disney of the computer age”, Lasseter has come a long way since his days as ride operator of the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. “It involved nothing but telling really bad jokes all the time, and I loved it!”.

His career started at Disney where he was an animator in the days of The Fox and the Hound and Mickey’s Christmas Carol. From here he moved to Lucas Film and then from this, in 1986, Pixar was

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

10 FEATURES York Student Vision

The Class of Hope Kieran McIntyre reflects on his spiritual education in South Africa, an experience in which he learnt as much as he taught.

Our journey had been a long and tiring one. I had tried in vein from London to wrestle my waferthin pillow into some sort of support position.

As we circled above Johannesburg, our port of arrival, I looked out onto my first landscape. Thousands of patchwork houses that must be held together at times by nothing more than the spirit of those who reside in them. The rich-poor divide is obvious, and shockingly defined.

Luxurious suburban houses, with swimming pool, maid, and the defences of a military establishment backing uncomfortably onto these humble shanty-like dwellings.

My mind ambles back in time. I cannot even begin to comprehend the atroci-

and townships across the country.

Apartheid, it seemed had dehumanized people in ways that we could only question in our prayers.

As I stepped down from the plane I knew all too well the history, the horror stories and the statistics. Every day, almost fifty people will be murdered in Johannesburg. For the statistics junkies, this year just over one person will be murdered for every 2,000 people across the entire population. But I was not here to verify statistics, or even to dwell on them.

I was here to teach English in an all black farm school in the New South Africa’s Northen Province. Apartheid had been abolished nearing a decade ago and no longer were the souls of South Africa’s black, coloured and Asian populations to be enervated.

No longer their dignities wiped in the soil and smothered with the boot of an Afrikaans police officer. Democracy had freed a people oppressed for decades. I was in the land of diversity. Socially, culturally and environmentally South Africa throws up contrasts rarely seen anywhere on Earth. I was taking my first

had written on it. (At least the cows were long gone.) The school, with it’s R10 (£1) a year fees possessed three more solemn looking classrooms, two of which had three different years learning in them together, (we really have no idea back in England what over-crowding really means).

Thousands of patchwork houses that must be held together at times by nothing more than the spirit of those who reside in them.

The days that unfolded from thereafter were difficult. At times I felt I was trying to run through a solid wall. It can be painfully slow teaching people who don’t speak your language. I could almost have wept to see my best standard three pupil stop attending school, only to return and be nothing short of bottom of the class.

With all of the schools problems, chiefly

Luxurious suburban houses, with swimming pool, maid, and the defences of a military establishment backing uncomfortably onto these humble shanty-like dwellings.

ties committed under the apartheid regime.

Dates flash through my mind. Sharpeville, 21 March 1960, thousands of blacks peacefully protesting about the passbook law when 69 men, women and children mown down. Most of them shot in the back as they ran from a panicking police presence. The Soweto uprising, 16 June 1976. Dozens of school children were shot dead as they peacefully protested

With many days of hard work we were able to turn into gold, all of the effort and disappointments that would litter our days. against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in their schools. All over, white on black discrimination, torture, black on black violence in the homelands

steps into the New South Africa along a pathway trodden by few. What transpired in the months that followed was a personal story. A part of my life that I will never forget. I was to experience the postapartheid ‘new’ South Africa first hand and love every minute of it.

My first day in school hit me very strongly. The order and the discipline, the wide gazing eyes of the school clung to me like adhesive. We were introduced to our head-teacher, Mr. Rapatsa, a small timid man, but true, fair and honest. In his morning assemblies, I understood nothing of his words only the smiles that traversed the air between us and the kids. This, my first barrier was one that I would have to wait patiently to climb. I spoke English, and the kids spoke Northern Sotho. This was to be the biggest challenge of my life.

Our classroom was a converted cowshed. The desks were shabby looking and their numbers limited. Some kids would have to sit and write on the floor. The book situation was equal to the classroom and our blackboard might as well have been white for its ability to show what we

lack of equipment, we could see we were making progress. With many days of hard work we were able to turn into gold, all of the effort and disappointments that would litter our days.

During my holidays I had managed to travel widely. I had journeyed along the

continued from p.9

Disney to do this. We’re constantly pushing the techniques of the filmmakers, but it is always within a context of a story.

“My kids still watch Snow White, which is 60 years old now - that’s how important a story can be - the technology becomes dated.

formed.

“Pixar’s success is a combination of technology where we create computer animation that is appealing but it also has a bit more of a sense of history, to help make it more believable.

“We’re not looking for realism in our animation, we’re looking for believability. More important, though, is the story.

“The life cycle sequence in the film Tron was the first computer animation I’d seen. It was really ahead of it’s time in technology, but its story and characters were awful. A film needs to have heart, it needs to have emotion, to appeal to adults, teenagers, college students and kids.

“We’re trying to build the brand of Pixar, and we’re working closely with

York Student Vision

beautiful coastlines, seen some of South Africa’s big game, big cities, Table Mountain and been fortunate enough to be taken into two contrasting South African townships where I met with many wonderful South Africans.

The biggest of the two being Cape Town’s Crossroads. With it’s reputation for political and social instability, I went with mixed emotions, but my concerns were to be soothed quickly as I was very warmly received. In the hours that transpired, I visited many people and realised that life inside a township was surprisingly normal, and full of well educated and good-spirited people. In our second township visit in Port St. Johns, it wasn’t long before our dancing ability was to be tested to the full as we engaged in dancing the African way.

Our feeble European attempt to traverse the international styles managed to bring with it many smiles and much laughter. We must have looked more like haemorrhoid suffering baboons trying to gain some sort of relief, but fortunately we carried no more expectation on our shoulders than our failed cricketers humiliating themselves before us. We drank beer and talked all night with the locals, a very true and proud people. They had very little in terms of possessions and of money but

Lasseter uses the latest technology, incorporating clips in the style of several films, to add an extra aspect to the sequel.

“I hope it comes through that we had a load of fun. Just look at the opening sequence. We’ve taken Star Wars, 2001, Star Trek, and Tron, put them all together

“We’ve taken Star Wars, 2001, Star Trek, and Tron, put them all together and allowed them to simmer for a long time to create a thick, luscious sauce which becomes the first four minutes.”

John Lasseter, Director

“The original Toy Story is already dated, which is why we don’t use topical humour. We want the story to survive and not to be left behind with the technology.”

and allowed them to simmer for a long time to create a thick, luscious sauce which becomes the first four minutes.

“We referred to all these films just for

they were rich in spirit, a wealth that is far more valuable than money.

Back in school, I had realised what pain was. My attempt at playing barefoot football with the kids left me for a week, hobbling around like a penguin, only with less grace. The soles of my feet were cutup and I learned the true value of a pair of trainers (and my fortune in having a pair to play in next time).

As I look back, I sometimes challenge whether I have taught them more than they have me. I went there as a teacher, and came away with a life education.

Little did I know that with all of the days that I had stood in front of the class and talked for hours, of all the times that I had been in school, I had really been the pupil.

I too was in need of an education. Along with the people of South Africa, these bright-eyed symbols of hope, of joy were the best teachers a teacher could have.

Leaving everything behind was hard, but we had always known it was inevitable. Walking up our mountain, homeward bound for the last time was an emotional moment. Some kids followed, some remained behind for their tractor ride home. It had seemed like we were on a role.

Things were shaping up well, and we were evolving as teachers too.

Nevertheless, we continued walking home and I could only look back upon my year.

It was an honour to have been amongst the people of South Africa.

the pure fun of it - even Heimlich (from Bug’s Life) is in there somewhere.”

He adds: “The technology still has a long way to go, but this isn’t the end of traditional animation.

“The power of drawing in Tarzan really helps to make that movie. Also, Mulan uses 2-D animation, rather than trying to be three-dimensional. I’ve got lots of admiration for that.”

And yes, in case you were wondering, the little green aliens ARE in the sequel!

Toy Story 2 opens in cinemas across the UK from February 11th, 2000.

Toy Story 2 review - see page 22

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

PUNCH UP Celebrity Couples: Tasteless hype or Fairytale Ideal?

ATTACK DEFENCE

EVERY NOW and then from out of the blue there emerges a truth about human nature so startling that both the Tabloids and the ‘serious’ media deem it front page news. The tasteless curse of the celebrity couple.

Take the story of young Vic and Dave. The story goes something like this.

Young, not very pretty, not very posh nouveau meets young, not very bright East-End boy made good.

She is his suburban princess, she moulds him (with the help of Brylcreem) into her prince and, by virtue of the fact

Celebrity couples are more in love with the image than each other. that he is a brilliantly famous Footballer and she is in an even more famous crap pop group, people in Public Houses everywhere adopt the love story as their own and begin to desperately care about its outcome.

WHAT’S BETTER than picking apart someone else’s love life?

Especially if your chums haven’t been dishing up the gossip.

Look no further than your nearest gossip column and your mind can be filled with the latest tittle tattle.

It’s important to have the opportunity to discuss the advantages of having a flag with “Vic and Dave” above your mansion and to contemplate whether thrones are the most practical seats at your dinner table, and what about revealing you share your underwear with your boyfriend? All essential topics for a real gossip session.

What about Chris Evans and Geri Halliwell? There’s also the exciting prospect with celebrity couples that they’re created just for our advantage. There’s the advantage of gossiping without the consequences of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person!

I mean Ginger Rogers and Fred

Celebrity couples allow the fairytale dream to be played out.

The real problem with celebrity couples is that they’ve started to believe their own hype, and exist largely to create publicity which furthers either one or both of their careers. Meg Matthews would still be a receptionist if she hadn’t nabbed a Gallagher , Geri would never have made number one if she hadn’t had a supposed liaison with Chris Evans, and Liz Hurley would be a second rate actress if Hugh hadn’t made her a star .

Need more evidence? Well she didn’t leave him when he publicly embarrassed her with a hooker did she? Obviously his celebrity was more important than his fidelity. Celebrity couples are to be truly pitied because despite a few sickening exceptions (Brad and Jen spring to mind ) they are more in love with the image than each other. And in my book a relationship as cold as that isn’t worth the finger it’s tattooed on.

Astaire, Sonny and Cher or even Bradey and Hindley, these all provide a source for speculation. Fake? Exaggerated? This only makes the couples more appealing.

Who knows what went on between Cindy and Richard? We can only speculate, not having the full story makes things all the more interesting.

Why do Sophie and Edward have separate rooms? What’s the latest on Demi and Bruce? Celebrity couples allow the fairytale dreqam to be played out.

Celebrity couples are there when all you have is lectures, seminars, rain and a quiet night in.

Who cares whether so an so pulled whoever at Ziggys? Who’s been caught shopping on Rodeo Drive is of much more substance in my opinion. Bianca and Ricky or Mel and Ian give me more material than any Wednesday night out.

Katie Hunt

Victoria Cole-Jones

York Student Vision FEATURES 11

FOCUS ON...

Belfast

Barbara Stainer travels behind the headlines in an attempt to disclose some of the redeeming features of a city struggling to shed its violent reputation.

FOR THOSE non-natives out there, the city of Belfast lends itself to little more than a five minute slot on the News at Ten, a drizzly backdrop against which a disgruntled Mr. Adams can stand, safe in the knowledge that for once, perhaps, what he says is marginally less dull than where he says it.

The uninformed perspective And whilst the Northern Irish tourist board may perhaps feel in some way indebted to the provincial IRA for the free publicity Belfast has received in the past, the troubles in Northern Ireland over the past quarter of a century have left behind an unfortunate and undeserved reputation. But push past the politics and there lies a city with promise.

Nestled between the hills and the sea, Belfast’s location is somewhat scenic. And when the sun is shining at a particular angle and you’re squinting in a particular manner through those rose coloured glasses, it can seem to have something of a European charm.

The impressive architecture, the pavement cafes, the accent which necessitates more than the largest dictionary and the longest patience to understand.

Admittedly, Belfast does not offer the lure of many a European city. It is not a Mecca of overpriced bistros and understocked boutiques, of fine culture and even finer cuisine, yet nor does it profess itself to be.

You’ll find the same collection of mochachino making bars and khakiswinging stores that you’d find tucked into every corner of new millennium Britain. And whilst the thankfully limit-

ed number of pubs groaning under gimmicky shamrocks, serving pints of the ‘Black stuff’ may pass for culture to the encouragable American tourist, it pales in comparison to the Louvre or Vatigin.

Given its due,however, it does boast the new Waterfront concert hall. A Celtic Sydney opera house if you will, which, over the past few months, has seen the likes of the Royal National Ballet, the home grown Divine Comedy and even Vonda Shepherd - Ally Macbeal’s thankfully less emaciated co-star.

Belfast, being a university town, does support a surprisingly successful student scene of bars and clubs, you just have to know which stones to turn over!

But follow the dregs stumbling out of any watering hole at 11:05 on a Thursday night, and you’ll soon be lead to the drunken, brawling student masses of the ‘M club’.

And whilst it is perhaps not up to par with some of its mainland counterparts,it surpasses the Wednesday night delights of our very own dance pits and will satisfy the majority of you party people out there.

But if still left unimpressed by a city in which often the most tempting prospect for me at least, is the chance of bumping into Northern Irelands most tresured export - the very fine Eddie Irvine, then let me dangle one more tasty carrot your way - the ice cream. A chain

of ‘Maud’s Ice Cream’ parlours are scattered across Ulster, and comes close to steeling Haagen-Daas’s thunder when it comes to their Baileys special - an alcoholically charged calorie fest.... could life offer us a better combination?

Realistically, Belfast is not the city to make a holiday of. Dublin is distinctly more cosmopolitan, and its literary pub crawl pulls it into a league of its own.

So, whilst I’m not one to play Judus

Stealing Haagen Daas’ thunder their Baileys special is an alcoholically charged calorie fest.... could life offer us a better combination?

to my home town, I recommend you save your Easy Jet airmiles for a trip to Dublin. But in an effort to retain my patriotism, when you make that inevitable venture across the Irish Sea, do Belfast the courtesy of looking it up.

It’s a city with prospects, and in a few years could offer something more charming than its people and more impressive than its pints. Give it time, afterall.... good things come to those who wait.

Horrified Anna Giokas takes a shot at the British stiff upper lip.

WE BRITS are world renowned for our decorum, our sense of what is‘cricket’, our stiff upper lip and if all else fails - tea.

It is little wonder, then, that our Euro chums are surprised when they first set foot in this ‘Green and Pleasant Land’.

Instead of fine bone china they find murky pint pots, instead of Glynborn; Glastenbury. In short, we do not live up to our reputation.

The first thing many continentals notice is that drink takes on a whole new meaning as you come this way across the channel. What in Greece is a small “ouzaki” with a glass of water is here a

York Student Vision

‘shot’ downing competition ending in the loss of your dinner to a gurgling sink. Or, worse still, waking up on the wrong side of the wrong bed.

As one international student put it, we are certainly more “liberal” than our reputation would suggest. In fact, it seems that we are even more “liberal” than our hot blooded European brothers and sisters.

We wear shorter skirts, higher heels and apparently commit the ultimate ‘faux par’ of combining cropped tops with bare legs!

Furthermore, this does not only apply to the student population - one Euro clubber was horrified at the sight of a particu-

larly energetic ‘old raver’ donning black mini skirt and bra-top on the dance floor at Toffs. Forty plus clubbing is a pass time reserved for desperate middle aged men on the continent; European mothers do not ‘shake their booty’.

Our attitude to politics is another source of some concern, as one student put it “how can you be so anti Europe?”.

Worse still, she pointed out our apparent refusal to unite as a country let alone a continent. We have divided into ‘North’ and ‘South’ (the Midlands are forgotten) and bicker incessantly in the hope that we can prove our superiority. Even the North and South of Yorkshire stand in opposi-

tion. So when Euro students first arrive they are greeted by a nation of squabbling, bear swilling, booty shaking Brits? Well, not quite.

But we do not deserve the reserved reputation created by the likes of ‘Jane Austin’. Just as we are not larger drinking football hooligans; we are not delicate horse mounted tea drinkers either. All stereo types are laughable, you will never really see a French man with a string of garlic, and Greeks tend to keep most of their crockery in one piece. But surely we can do better than that persistent stiff upper lip and that tired cup of tea?

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

12 FEATURES York Student Vision

BASIC INSTINCT Claire New previews the effects of an eagerly anticipated book, that controversiallydenys the male responsibility for rape.

Within three months a book of unrivalled anticipation within its field will be released in the United States.

Claiming to have scientific evidence that proves rape to be a product of evolution beyond the physical control of men, Craig Palmer and Randy Thornhill’s ‘A Natural History of Rape; Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion’ will have an unnerving effect for women across the globe.

The essence of the claim is that males resort to force in the event of their need to reproduce being obstructed. They also conclude that it is partly the responsibility of women to cater for this male instinct by preventing provocation.

Darwinian selection explains why a

“Its the worst efflorescence of evolutionary psychology that I’ve ever seen. It’s irresponsible, and it’s tendentious.”

Dr. Coyne University of Chicago

man “may be tempted to demand sex even if he knows that his date truly doesn’t want it...(he) may mistake a women’s friendly comment or tight blouse as an invitation to sex”.

Though as a chauvinist view these are not groundbreaking observations; what is most concerning is the recognition that the

book has been given by the revered scientific community. Arguing from a Darwinian perspective they have built their theory from supporting observations denying the conventional claim that rape is a crime of violence and power.

“We fervently believe that, just as the leopards spots and the giraffes elongated neck are the results of aeons of past Darwinian selection, so also is rape”.

As obscenely vulgar as this claim may seem, more concerning is the fact that it was uttered by those awarded with the status of scientists. This sort of claim shatters the faith that many feminists may have of a male dominated world of scientific rationalisation.

Almost as disturbing, is their desire to even begin to want to prove this sort of hypothesis. Whilst the question of what makes men rape undoubtedly should be explored and researched, such suggestions from educated arenas cannot control its damaging ripples throughout the common population.

Though much commentry will proceed the release of this book, damage will be done every time those pages are read, whilst those responsible will bear no guilt.

Susan Brownmiller, a renowned author on rape expresses her gravest reservation “I think it will be used as a defence by lawyers in rape cases. These guys will become expert witnesses for a fee, as part of the defence and that’s dangerous. The ones who will benefit will be high-profile rapists who can afford to hire them”.

The incredible ramifications will not only reach the female population, for it also implies that all men have the capacity to rape.

“We fervently believe that, just as the leopards spots and the giraffes elongated neck are the results of aeons of past Darwinian selection, so also is rape”.

Palmer and Thornhill.

Dr Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago refers to the work as “the worst efflorescence of evolutionary psychology that I’ve ever seen. It’s irresponsible, and it’s tendentious.”

The study though has serious flaws.

The impulse to reproduce does not explain homosexual rape or even rape of prepubescent girls which constitute near 20% of rapes.

Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organisation for women argues “Its not a study, it’s a theory, its a theory that has no basis in research.”

She continues “research with thousands of convicted rapists has demonstrated very clearly that rape is a crime of control, not a crime of passion.

“It’s insulting to both men and women to say that women ought to have chaperones and wear high necklines in order to prevent rape”.

In 1994, only 9% of recorded rapes resulted in a conviction.

The Scottish Office showed an acquittal rate for rape trials of 78%.

Between 25% and 50% of all women in the world have been physically abused by their partners.

110,000 age 12 or over were raped in 1998, 1/3 sexual assualt victims are under age 12.

York Rape Crisis (24hrs) : 01904 610917

A QUICK DRINK & A BITE TO EAT Victoria Cole-Jones dons a mac and finds a receipe ripe for the rain.

The Patio offers pricey wine, flavoured mash and kicks you out in time for the watershed.

Vision’s regular pub critics James Buchanan and Greg Paterson, sample a mixture of York’s old and new, giving you a comprehensive guide to some of York’s chic and more traditional beverage bars.

PITCHER AND PIANO

THE GIMCRACK

VARSITY

Pitcher and Piano, a grand old place although I somehow feel this tone of description is not exactly the image which the owners of the establishment are

A strole down Broadway from campus you’ll find Fulford’s finest retreat. A favourite with second years to disorganised to rent a house close by, its also frequented by a range of balding middleaged sports fanatics.

It boasts one of the biggest screen in York, thursday night kareoke, as well as their popular ‘two meals for a fiver’ offer.

Maybe not worth a trek out of town but if you have a spare saturday afternoon it’s large beer garden is worth a visit.

Another bar to complement this growing breed within prosperous York, this venue again boasts a waterside location with outside seating so you will be able to watch pained rowers and pipe smoking narrow boaters as you drink.

As with any bar in town its success will probably depend upon attracting a combined crowd of York twenty somethings and students.

Judging by the number of metal bottle opener tags that are tethered to campus room keys it would seem that they’ve been quite successful in the latter- if you don’t know these can be got by showing your NUS card and yield a range of discounts.

The interior is slightly confused but open and the sofas are useful but it may be a bit oppressive rather than stimulating at quiet times.

It is also clearly a bar built by numbers- the interior is put together like a jigsaw- but the more the merrier.

attempting to portray.

Positioned by the river, next to the new City Screen, this is a ‘wine bar’ with that extra bit of class over the likes of Yates’ or Edwards’, it professes to be a true big city bar.

However sleazy men in suits are by diluted by trendy twenty somethings for a more relaxed night out.

The grand decor, high ceilings and strangely pleasant ‘doormen’ don’t come cheap, with a pint costing at least £2.40 for bitter and £2.50 for lager.

Some will love it, some will hate it, but it must be said that it is certainly a pleasant change to whatever else is on offer in York.

Take note if you want a single ask, otherwise you’ll get a double and the old overdraft will be stretched to the limit due to a visit to a new bar by the river.

LITTLE JOHN Perhaps the usefully located pub in York being litterally a handful of drunken staggers from the Gallery queue.

Must admit that beyond that we were not really capable of making a full judgement due to a touch of over indulgence.

Pretty much standard range of beers and the staff were most helpful. Perhaps one for the Gallery bound lazy.

York Student Vision

NESTLING IN Swinegate Court, The Patio gave out a welcoming glow on a dreary trek round rainsodden York, as I looked for somewhere a bit different to dampen my tastebuds.

It was disappointing to find that we were the two first diners and I felt this did not bode well for our meal. However, this negative reaction was soon crushed.

Secluded and exclusive The Patio offered smart, comfortable surroundings, and seating ourselves in a cosy corner it did not seem to matter that we were dining alone.

We decided to skip starters and went straight to the main courses, which were particularly huge. I settled for a traditional bangers and mash, there being a selection of flavoured mashes. I settled on the mustard flavour.

Priced at £6.95 I found the portion more than ample and the sausages and mash had a fresh, home cooked taste to them. My vegetarian companion selected a Mozzarella Ciabatta priced at £4.95.

The vegetarian selection was wide and

was another reason that drew us to The Patio. Again, the portion was ample and the French Fries my friend ordered at a cost of £1.50 were un-necessary.

To accompany our meal we settled on large glasses of Louis Chatel. These felt a little pricey at £3.05 each, and whilst the glasses were large, I pined for my £2.49 bottles of cheap white wine from the supermarket!

Desserts were a must at The Patio, the menu being extensive and every dessert being available, there being so few diners.

Both of us decided on the Treacle Tart, with the option of custard, cream or icecream. The portions were unfinishable and the set price of £2.95 per portion seemed very reasonable.

As we left The Patio we realised we were the last to leave - the restaurant closed at 9pm. So it is advisable to check closing times before you decide to make an evening of it. Overall, The Patio offered a wide selection of freshly prepared food in very pleasant surroundings, it just needs a few more takers!

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

RIP-OFF BRITAIN.... RIP-OFF YORK

Vision investigates how Britain’s consumers are getting a raw deal on the high street, and asks if the University is guilty too...

THE PUBLIC have been receiving a headway in a world full of rogue traders and illicit cut-backs in other areas of their lives. raw deal for a generation; and they dealings. They will be no quick solutions to the Elsewhere many problems stem from the 1956 deeply entrenched injustices they face, however. and 1964 Resale Acts. These enable companies to don’t even know about it.

Big business and multinationals arrive on our shores daily to squeeze every last penny from us.

From furniture to food, cars to clothes, we are being taken for a ride.

Last September Chancellor Gordon Brown promised change, and his decleration at the last Labour Party conference that “Rip-Off Britain will be replaced with a fair deal Britain in the future” recieved a standing ovation The Government are at least starting to make

Compared to our counterparts Stateside, the British consumer is an accessory to daylight robbery. The Chancellor may want to end ‘Rip-Off’ Britain but he is the cause of one of the biggest scandals. British prices at the petrol pump are almost double that of America - 85% of which goes direct to the Treasury.

And who can really challenge the amount of tax placed upon crude oil imports? According to the Automobile Association, only 15% of motorists said that rising costs would force them to make

withhold goods if retailers reduced prices to attract customers.

If this represented the birth of Rip-Off Britain, its life seems no-where near over. And ultimately, though the government may hesitantly introduce new guidelines; it is only by standing up for a fair deal and criticising constructively, the consumer can at last gain the upper hand.

MONEY TALKS

CAMPUS - FAIR?

Whether you’re a world–weary out-of-pocket third year, or a fresh- faced first year, Vision discovers that many students at York feel that they don’t always get value for money.

“Rip Off Britain will be replaced with a fair deal Britain in the future”

Ryan Sabey

Chancellor Gordon Brown

Banking Shopping WHAT INCENSES the British public is the ‘unco-operative Bank’ umbrella.

For example, going over your overdraft limit by a minimal amount often results in a month’s worth of charges. The UK’s two leading banks, Lloyds TSB and Natwest charge a levy of £5 for every day overdrawn without permission.

According to a Sunday Times survey, leading German, Swiss and Italian banks would charge less that 50p for everyday overdrawn without permission.

Fees for a stopped cheque are free at Barclays. HSBC and Lloyds

WE ALL eat. It’s a necessity.

Supermarkets offer far-ranging services including the introduction of internet shopping, advertising and employee’s wages.

Convenience comes at a price but how much profit are they making?

The recent ‘store wars’ saw Tesco slashing prices on 300 goods in 600 stores in response to Wal-mart’s purchase of Asda and their reduction of prices in mainstream goods.

These reductions will cost Tesco up to £60 million over the next six months. But: if they can reduce prices now, why couldn’t they do so before?

Travel

Housing

MANY STUDENTS will save during the year to enjoy a summer travelling. Many go to the States others fancy the outback in Australia.

Eye-catching publicity stunts on the part of the likes of Virgin and

AN INCREASING number of Estate Agents have been taking advantage of the current booming housing market. As undergraduates graduate and move into this sphere they have to be aware of the pitfalls.

Pokemon Red Game

UK High Street : £24.99 (HMV) UK Internet : £19.99 (Toyzone.co.uk) US Internet : £16.49 (Beyond.com)

UK 34% MORE

Cars

CARS PERSONIFY the ‘Stack ‘Em Low, Sell ‘Em for as much as the market will bear’ mentality of the UK market.

A report commissioned by the EU found that 62 out of 75 of the best selling models sold in Britain were more expensive than on the continent.

By visiting the Vehicle Registration office and acquiring the right documents it enables you to buy a car abroad often at half price.

Then we come up on open-day and are shown around the en-suited and nicely carpeted James. On the way we pass by the condemned Goodricke C block, but are told to look the other way by a suddenly sweating and stammering guide.

Then we arrive. Of course there are a few problems, but, after all, we’re students now and can cope with a bit of squalor. The freezer’s only big enough for two ready-made meals, the oven and the hobs don’t work at the same time, and the radiator seems to have a mind of its own, alternating the room between freez-

UK High Street : £12.49 (HMV) UK Internet : £9.99 (Amazon.co.uk) US Internet : £6.27 (w3universe.com)

small-scale airlines, offering flights for as little as a few pounds, may give the impression that air travel is getting more economical.

They disguise, though, a broader picture.

Some British travellers are being charged over 190% extra in comparison to equivalent European countries.

In particular, for example, long haul flights to exotic destinations like Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles will cost you dear.

Travellers from Denmark, Germany and Switzerland not only find that the fare is almost half price but they get flown to Britain for their connection for free!

At one point last year, an economy seat to Sydney return cost £1,789.

If you started your journey in Amsterdam and got on the same BA flight at Heathrow the cost would have been £789. A shocking mark up of 127%.

Malpractice has led to a series of reported incidents. Clients have been told that they will be put on a ‘preferential list’ if they take financial services from the agent, for example, insurance or a mortgage.

Also, offers for a property haven’t even reached the selling party unless the bid goes through an agency’s financial adviser - for a fee. The most obnoxious tactic used by agents is ‘ring-fencing’. A potential purchaser will pay the agent to stop any increased offers for the property.

Unfortunately, at present, the Ombudsman scheme is voluntary.

But, John Bridgeman, an Office of Fair Trading director has received 106 complaints so far this year compared to 102 in the whole of last year.

He even forced four member agencies to cease trading and others have been subject to Home Office cautions.

Ryan Sabey

Diamond MP3 Player UK High Street : £129.99 (Dixons) UK Internet : £98.69 (Insight.com) US Internet : £81.88 (nationpc.com)

UK 37% MORE

Timberland Boots

UK High Street : £139.50 (Freemans) US High Street : £88.60 (Macy’s)

UK 36% MORE

ing and boiling every few hours. visibly vibrating, is not exactly a These problems are workable but soothing way to send me back to since then, in my neck of the woods, sleep. there has been a far more sinister The rat catcher’s been in, gleedevelopment. My ground floor fully laying down poison, but I think apartment, overlooking ‘Europe’s the chemicals in the lake must have largest plastic-lined man-made lake’, made these rats super strong – they now has rats; big evil-looking rats. seem to like the taste!

I’ve even chased one, and nearly Still, at least they’ve scared the caught up with My ground floor apartment, over- ducks away. the fat devil Now they looking, ‘Europe’s largest before it dived really are evil. into the lake. plastic-lined man-made lake’, now S t i l l , has rats: big evil looking rats.

The worst of it housing isn’t is, though, that the only thing they’ve now found a nice home for to worry about. The food’s pretty themselves in my wall. bad too. Sainsbury’s is miles out of Every night I hear their little town; Goodies-to-Go is pretty limitclaws scurrying around, millimetres ed, and everything else is vile. If away from where I rest my head. If you’ve never tasted a Campus Fayre I’m really lucky, I sometimes get sandwich then you’re a very fortuwoken up when two of them decide nate person, whilst the stuff they to have a fight, the sounds of them serve in the canteen has been reheatsqueaking and scratching, the wall ed enough times you can see the

mould growing on it.

The bars are pretty expensive too – none of my friends at other universities are paying £1.45 for a pint of Carling.

Bus fares are another way we poor students are ripped off. £1.50 for a hop, skip and a jump into town and back will never be able to be justified; they’re never on time; and they’re always the wrong size: double deckers in the unsociable hours of the early morning, and caravans when everyone’s trying to get to Toffs.

What happened to students living the good, cheap, lifestyle? Roll on private accommodation next year.

There won’t be any problems with that, will there?

Tom Smithard

Proving the Price

‘Surrender’ CD

UK 50% MORE

TSB are content to charge their customers £7.50 and £10 respectively.

This is hardly gentlemanly conduct considering UK banks reaped a profit of £8.5bn last year.

However, though they won’t tell you, banks face increasing competition from mortgage brokers, specialist credit-card issuers, supermarkets, telephone banks and Internet firms.

The world of high profit and corrupt practice in banking has surely finished. Banks might actually have to be pleasant to their clients, or else face losing them for good.

IT’S NOT how they described it in the prospectus. The pictures are all of sun kissed buildings, the people are all wearing t-shirts, the accommodation is described as ‘luxurious’ and ‘spacious’.

$1 = 61p

FINANCIALLY, BEING a student at York University can be tough. Right from the beginning of your degree, chances are you’ll face a monetary hiccup.

With the phasing-out of the student grant, and the introduction of the dreaded tuition fees nationwide; it seems that York students are no exception to a rule.

Vision discovered that at York, just 26% of students receive a grant.

This is counterbalanced by a massive 74% of students who have been forced to take out a loan; on top of this, 60% pay tuition fees.

Looking at the most-used campus facilities, college bars , at 40%, top the poll, followed by photocopying at 22%, Campus Fayre at 17%, the SU shop at 11% and the Sports centre at 10%.

Yet these facilities are particular sore points with many. The general

consensus is that York’s facilities simply do not deliver the goods.

Many feel that the library photocopying service, at 6p a sheet, is a blatent attempt to glean profit from the pockets of students.

Others feel the SU shop proved to be too expensive for necessities.

Also, York’s obvious lack of a central venue, or a sports centre to rival Warwick or Nottingham’s was

The general consensus is that York’s facilities simply do not deliver the goods. particularly jarring. Little wonder then, that many are forced in their droves to alternatives off campus.

Thus students troop to the Barbican Centre for sports facilities, cornershops for photocopying, and the town for shopping and bars.

As expected, campus accommo-

dation came heavily under fire.

Especially hard-hitting, is the diversity of room sizes on campus, the ‘potluck’ draw of a student bagging a place either in the en-suite luxury of James college or instead braving Wentworth and Goodricke ‘C’ Blocks; whilst, infuriatingly, often paying no more.

However, there are some consoling facts for York students.

York university accommodation fares well in comparison to other institutions of the same academic standard.

A single, self-catering single room at York is between £31.50 – 43.40.

Compared, fo example, to the £39.1045.75 it costs at Bristol.

And, when it comes to the Second Year, renting a house in York is, when compared to the majority of other major university-towns, considerably cheaper.

Rebecca Sweeney

‘Uni accommodation is shocking – last year I had no toilet and had to go up two flights of stairs for a shower!’

(Second Year, Langwith) ‘Photocopying in the library is too expensive, yet it is essential for my course’. ( Second Year, James) ‘Campus bars may be overpriced, but they do have a captive custom’ (Third Year, James) ‘The SU Shop should not make a profit and should reward the students who use it’.

(First Year, Vanburgh) ‘Marks and Spencer’s is cheaper than the SU Shop – for a pint of milk!’

(Second Year, Wentworth) ‘The quality of Campus Fayre Food does not match the prices’ ( Fourth Year, Alcuin) The Sports Centre is ridiculous and the AU membership fee put me off’ (Second Year, Alcuin)

16 York Student Vision

TELESCOPE . . . b o o k s . . . g a m e s . . . i n t e r n e t . . . t v. . . r a d i o . . .

PLAY NICELY CHILDREN Mark Kember reviews Tetris Plus, whilst Wesley Johnson gets his shooter out for Mighty Hits Special...

Alex Watson checks out free stuff on-line...

WHATEVER ELSE the millennium was, it was certainly expensive. And let’s face it, once a couple of weeks of the term have past, the ‘0s’ on the end of most student’s bank balances start dropping away rather too rapidly.



So how can you avoid drinking whatever toxic liquid the Gallery’s selling cheap (such as the positively radioactive Black-currant VK)?

Forget buying newspapers. Ok, 15p isn’t much, but it’s a lot more than free.

The BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk) and the Guardian’s ‘unlimited’ site (guardianunlimited.co.uk) both provide headlines, reviews and articles.

Secondly, although keeping HMV in business is very virtuous, you can get music free from the net. Legally, too.

Check out the NME’s download site (www.nmeaaa.com), and mp3.com.

The NME has featured Oasis, and The Smashing Pumpkins, whilst MP3. com had Alanis Morrissette, and a huge variety of unsigned acts.

Tetris Plus / Mighty Hits Special Playstation



and the big ‘Game Over’. Two players can play this mode independently.

There’s some extra modes: the first involves a cartoon professor and his assistant travelling the world searching for

puzzles. And that’s it. The only problems are if you don’t like puzzle games, or if you have a version of Tetris already then you don’t need another one, no matter how much of a Tetris-freak you are. If you

THERE’S AN urban myth that Tetris was invented by Russian scientists during the Cold War, while they were experimenting with mind control.

Blood, bodies, death and carnage come up time and time again. You pick up your gun, load up and shoot away.

But not with the latest offering from JVC, who have created this fun and friendly shoot ‘em up suitable for kids of all ages.

From the western-style cartoon-

It’s an urban myth that Tetris was invented by the Russians during the Cold War, while experimenting with mind control.

Simple, friendly and harmless, this game certainly won’t need an age limit, but never underestimate its power of addiction

Whether or not this is true, almost everyone has heard of Tetris.

For those of you who haven’t, (presumably victims of Russian scientists), it’s is all about coloured blocks, made up of four squares falling from the top of the screen.

You must arrange these blocks into rows, without allowing gaps between the blocks. When a row has been completed, it disappears, you are awarded some points and you get a warm feeling psychologists have associated with the childhood pleasure of ‘tidying away’.

Bonus points are awarded for clearing more than one row at a time.

As you get further into the game, the blocks come down quicker, eventually leading to the screen filling up with blocks

feel of the opening sequence, it’s clear that only the best cowboy will win the lady.

After starting off by choosing your courses and level of difficulty, the initial feel is of quite a primitive, basic game with simple characters guiding you through the rules each time - a great help during the first five minutes, but you soon get the gist and want to get on with the shooting!

Simple, friendly and harmless, this game certainly won’t need an age limit, but never underestimate its power of addiction - its simplicity makes it easy to pick up and to get involved, whatever your ability on the console. (7/10)

JVC, £19.99 each

Get out the big guns in Mighty Hits Special treasure. The professor becomes trapped in a room with a slowly descending ceiling covered in spikes, and you must save him by clearing the screen, allowing him to get to the entrance - very hard. There’s a two player head-to-head mode based on this, where clearances of two lines or more means that additional blocks are added to your opponents screen. There’s also an edit mode, where you can create your own

have yet to get an edition of this puzzle game, then this could be the one for you.

There are other, newer versions out there, but this one is perfect as far as it goes - the only thing lamentable is the absence of a two-player competitive mode that doesn’t involve the professor - and although it’s been around since 1997, it’s still quite good. (7/10)

MIGHTY HITS Special is a the

TV PROPHET

Obsolete?? You wish...

You can get radio over the net - Radio One (bbc.co.uk/radio1/) and Xfm (xfm. co.uk) broadcast live, but there’s also a huge amount of stations only on the net and of course, they play pretty much everything under the sun. Shoutcast.com, and real.com are good places to start.

So you’ve got the news, some tunes, what now? Free software for your computer - tucows.com and download.com, and, if your @york.ac.uk e-mail address isn’t good enough, free e-mail accounts are widely available, from even the most unlikely places.

The NME (nme.com), Barclays (barclays.com), and most search engines, along with the ubiquitous hotmail.com all provide free web based e-mail.

However, if want real free stuff, ranging from posters to sausages, check out ukfreestuff.net, an index of everyone who’ll send you something for nothing in exchange for... well, nothing usually, apart from your name and address.

Finally, if you’re really desperate, you can even make money from the web.

People will pay you to surf the web, if you agree to have a small advert window on your desktop.

Again, ukfreestuff.net is a good place to start, with both links and tips, and alladvantage.com are the company who actually pay up.

fun and friendly shoot ‘em up.

You play one shoot ‘em up, you’ve played them all.

Alex Watson finally finds something on TV worth watching. The listings...

ONE OF Sky Digital’s most impressive features - apart from providing four MTV channels that still never play anything worth listening to - is its interactive TV guide, which shows listings on screen - a good job, given that finding a program on the increasingly large number of channels is otherwise a ‘challenging experience’ to say the least.

and it presents both a ‘Planner View’, showing program titles for all channels, and what time they’re on, or the channel specific ‘Daily View’.

Simply hover the cursor over the program title, and you get an instant synopsis.

However, it’s Digibox’s advanced features that make it the much more use-

And now, from Gypsy Media, a new internet start-up, comes ‘Digibox’, an interactive program guide (or IPG as acronym keen techies refer to it), takes TV listings one step further.

Its advanced features also provide

Finding a program on Digital TV is a ‘challenging experience’ to say the least

an interesting glimpse into the convergence of television and the internet.

Digibox is a free program, and when you’ve downloaded it, you customise it so that it provides personalised listings. Tell it the channels you’ve got,

York Student Vision

f u l than the Sky Digital equivalent.

You can mark out certain programs as ‘favourites’, and when they’re about to come on, you get a handy reminder (so long as you’re at the computer).

In fact, if you install some extra software, the computer will even You can also search the listings, not just for specific program titles, but for keywords - much like an internet search.

So you can easily see if a certain actor or actress is appearing in a film this week, or whether the Simpsons episodes that Sky One shows constantly are new or just repeats, or even if there’s any program about a certain

Digibox is the best way to sort Sunset Beach from Sense and Sensiblity

thing - from F1 to Science Fiction.

The features that digibox lacks most noticeably, ‘VideoPlus’ codes are on the way, as are listings for the more obscure channels and radio, too.

If you find the plethora of channels on Digital, Cable or Satellite simply too much, Digibox is probably the best way to sort Sunset Beach from Sense and Sensiblity.

It also presents an interesting view of the future of television - it currently offers hotlinks to program websites, for instance - and the day when you really will be able to access television content in true interactive method, with total control over show times, and even more... www.digibox.co.uk

BIG UP TO THE

After much deliberation with the Berkshire massive, we’ve decided that the winner of our Ali G competition is: Andy Witton And the question Ali G should ask Big Ron Cooke?

Do you, Ron? Well it made us laugh, and it won him a copy of Ali G’s ‘Innit’ Video.

We’ll be e-mailing the winner shortly.

Thanks to everyone who entered.

And The Editor’s decision is final.

Wicked.

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision TELESCOPE 17

HEANEY’S ODYSSEY

Victoria Kennedy talks to Seamus Heaney about his recent Whitbread Award success with Beowulf, and why he nearly didn’t bother with it The judges for the Whitbread Book of the Year award were described to be ‘in a punch up’ deciding between Heaney’s translation of 1000-year-old AngloSaxon epic, Beowulf, and J.K. Rowling’s children’s novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban.

Yet Seamus Heaney seemed calm as he talked to an audience over 1,000 strong in Central Hall on Thursday 27th January.

As critics everywhere cited Heaney’s academic superiority over Rowling’s wizard as a winning virtue, Heaney humourously admitted to the audience that a contributing factor to his success at AngloSaxon translation lay in listening to weather reports; “they have a great AngloSaxon rhythm to them”.

Over the years, Heaney has won many literary awards, including the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1995 and the Whitbread once before in 1996, and has often been grouped with former Laureate Ted Hughes, to whom his translation is dedicated.

Like many poets, Heaney is drawn to York and confessed he once tried to write a poem about the city which would have been entitled, The Treasures of the Day, “it was about walking around and in the poem we became gradually transformed into some kind of courtly medieval minstrel… I didn’t think it worked”.

Yet this still leaves the big question

unanswered: why did Heaney painstakingly re-write Beowulf? Why did a poet, so masterful in the art of reciting personal experience, rely on an obscure and anony-



Plough, £5.50

IF YOU are expecting something new, mind-blowing and lifechanging from Drained, then you may well come away a little disappointed.

A Christian publication, Drained : People Who Wanted More, is a spiritual help-yourself guide aimed at inspiring and motivating the reader towards a more fulfilled and tranquil existence, but somewhere along the line, it fails to hit the spot.

Arnold’s advice is given in a step-bystep manner, with a wide selection of anecdotes providing a personal and more alluring touch to the otherwise fairly dry, heavy going preaching of which much of the book consists.

The somewhat self-righteous tone of writing makes the ideas he expresses harder to swallow than they should be, because although most of the issues raised are well worn and hardly make you sit up and think ‘yes’!, there are actually a couple of instances of real eye-opening clarity and insight.

These moments, though infrequent among the many tired sweeping generalisations, express astute ideas about the nature of humanity which I’d never previously considered. He highlights issues such as a lack of silence, and the damaging nature of gossip.

you don’t want to do it, but tell me the names of two people who you think could do it’.”

He realised he’d rather complete the

Why did Heaney, so masterful at reciting personal experience, rely on an anonymous piece of writing? He almost didn’t.

“I did 90 lines of it and then stopped, thinking ‘this is too slow, there’s too much to do, it won’t be a masterpiece, it will just be another translation of Beowulf, why waste five years of your life at it?’

It lay unfinished for ten years, until a Norton editor said ‘I know you don’t want to do it, tell me the names of two people who you think could’ mous piece of writing? The answer is that he almost gave up on Beowulf.

He initially ‘proceeded dutifully like a sixth-former at homework’, but he admits, “I did 90 lines of it and then stopped,

STILL WANTING MORE Drained Johann Christoph Arnold

thinking ‘this is too slow, there’s too much to do, it won’t be a masterpiece, it will just be another translation of Beowulf, why waste five years of your life?’”

Ranging from Hitler’s Reich to the Gulf War, and loss and materialism, Arnold covers issues of both personal and global trauma, thus ensuring that he refrains from making it a purely introspective analysis.

It then lay unfinished, submersed at the back of his mind for an incredible ten years, until the editor of The Norton Anthology of Literature asked him to reconsider: “He wrote and said, ‘ I know

translation than have anyone else do it, and when the editor concluded “this could be a very good pension”, Heaney wryly says “that changed my attitude.”

His captivating, thick Irish accent

NEW CITY, SAME OLD STORY The New City Stephen Amidon Doubleday, £15.99



THE NEW CITY is a very American novel. It’s big, and it’s busy – its four hundred and fifty pages pack in more ‘tragic, heartrending’ plot than possible, whilst its gaudy gold cover makes it look like the literary equivalent of a power-walking character from Dallas.

who takes centre stage. From the middle of the book, they are all revealed to be quite loathsome, and as such, this leaves The New City with a strange vacuum at its heart.

In some novels, the absence of likeable characters makes a brilliant point. But not in The New City. Imagine The Firm (or any John Grisham novel), in which the central character is as underhand and unpleasant as the shadowy conspirators.

Exactly. It’d be like… Dallas, or even (god forbid) Sunset Beach. Only without the hilariously bad acting or terrible dialogue. This weakness is most apparent in

Its gaudy gold cover makes it look like the literary equivalent of a character from Dallas

The problem is that the language he uses is so matter-of-fact, bland and simplistic that while it prevents the tone from becoming too sentimental, all impact is subsequently lost, transforming what should clearly be deeply moving and hard hitting into mere illustration of argument.

An easily absorbable and not unenjoyable read, but too many irritatingly trite generalisations to be truly inspiring. (6/10)

Mary Hathway

Set in a generic 1970s – which means one John Lennon obsessed teenager, and a TV that always has Nixon on it - it starts off with the interesting premise of two men, white lawyer Austin Swope, and black builder Earl Wooten, being employed by a corporation to build a new urban utopia – a perfect environment.

The two men each have teenager sons who become best friends, and eventually it is the hopes and fears of this new generation which cause the tragic meltdown of the New City and its socially inclusive dream. The plot also manages to involve a bitter Vietnam vet, his beautiful daughter, and her truly repulsive alcoholic mother.

Whilst the scope of Amidon’s novel is initially very impressive, it soon sours, as he repeatedly undermines any character

the surprisingly bleak ending; whilst Amidon tries to finish in a tragic crescendo, it comes across as cynical and heartless – quite simply, you don’t care what happens to the characters, and there is no sense of salvation. All the characters are simply mired in empty, hard-hearted damnation, with the reader left on the outside.

However, Amidon isn’t a bad writer, or that The New City is a bad book. In fact, when it’s not being tragic or dramatic, it’s actually quite engrossing and entertaining, and the premise is certainly engaging.

The problem is, the story, the characters, and ultimately the writing, are just not as tragic or literary as perhaps they want to be. The New City is a very American novel. Big, bold, and as much as it wants to be subtle, dark, and undeniAlex Watson ably brash. (6/10)

makes it impossible not to wonder to what extent his upbringing during the hostilities of Northern Ireland, which he movingly wrote about in ‘Casualty’ and other poems, may have affected his recent work.

At a period when politicians are fighting for stability in Ireland, Heaney urges that it is not a peace process poem.

He does however, relate similarities between the hero’s adventures and the present mood of Northern Ireland, “the sense that nothing can be quite trusted, that the world is a dangerous place which we have got to beware of… there’s a veteran’s awareness of danger of being in the world and there is an accumulated folk wisdom about who did what to whom when, and the realisation that this could happen again.”

Whilst Hughes, fraught with spiritual demons, sought refuge in Cornwall, Heaney similarly has a quiet dislike of attention.

Quoting Keats, he sympathised that “‘herd (sic) melodies are sweet,/those unheard are sweeter,’ the idea with ‘herd’ writing is that you stir up armies and march, which is one form of poetry but you do become suspicious of it, but the ‘heard’ is the arena of the inner-consciousness”.

In quieter conversation, Heaney confesses that the literary attention can be a challenge.

He described that literary awards induced “scepticism in one’s contemporaries” rather than a measure for success, “being ignored as a writer is a test, but it

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York Student Vision

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

18 York Student Vision

ARTS

Sponsored by YORK THEATRE ROYAL

WHATS ON! ART

York City Art Gallery (01904) 551 818 Fairytales & Fantasy David Cox Watercolours 12th Feb. - 26th March Impressions Gallery (01904) 654 729 Odede Shimshom Black & White Photography February 2000

COMEDY Comedy Network Goodricke (01904) 433 724 Rob Rouse Thursday 10th February

MUSIC Barbican Centre (01904) 670 977 The Voice of Dr. Hook 5th February Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall (01904) 432 439 Star Wars- Wind Wind Orchestra 18th February A History of Brass Band Music 4th - 6th February

THEATRE York Theatre Royal (01904) 623 568

STUDENT STANDBY ONLY £3 Please telephone for details of current events

Mack & Mabel 8th - 19th February

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds (0113) 213 7700 Visiting Mr. Green 17th Feb - 25th March Central Hall Assassins 10th - 12th February

ARMITAGE KILLS TIME from KILLING TIME

by Simon Armitage

SIMON ARMITAGE’S millennial offering has finally come to print. Victoria Kennedy assesses his response to man’s bloodiest century to date. ‘…the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams…I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.’

Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Heart of Darkness’, from which these words are lifted, has been pinned as the first novel of the twentieth-century. In hindsight, his 1902 criticism of the shallowness of European ideals was to break the ground for what would later become, in Simon Armitage’s description, “the bloodiest century known to mankind”.

The lives of the Congo natives, witnessed by Conrad in the novel, surprised him in their bestial capabilities: equally capable of knee-jerk destruction and unrelenting sexual adulation - somewhat of a difference to 1900 European pre-world war conduct.

Whilst the 20th century in Britain began on a plane of Victorian-fed morals and hidden passions; it eventually ended, in December 1999, on a tired and frustrated headline, of collected atrocities and fractured world peace, not all that dissimilar from Conradian primitive morals, ‘the horror! The horror!’ indeed.

“In the Victorian age,” says Armitage, “there was a prevalent idea that things should last forever. But I don’t think that ... works anymore. I was brought up in a pop culture of ‘enjoy things for what they are at the time’ ”.

In June 1999, Yorkshire born Armitage took on an assignment which Conrad, TS Eliot, Yeats et al would have relished one hundread years ago: He was appointed by the Poetry Society as poet in residence with the New Millennium Experience Company. The result is Killing Time, a 1000-line poem for the millennium.

Although the M-word became a national hangover long before The River of Fire ceased to exist or even The Dome blotted the Greenwich horizon, Armitage manages in this poem to recreate the mood of the final year of the century which will last as an emblem to an epoch which, even with the best intentions, our memories will eventually have trouble remembering, “I’m trying to see the millennium as a milestone from where a sizeable proportion of the planet’s population will turn and look backwards, asking themselves how far they’ve come, in every sense,”Armitage iterates.

Armitage was appointed to take on the task last summer, during the period when a Poet Laureate was yet to be located in Andrew Motion. Indeed, he proves that even under the eye of the public he does not fear telling the nation the state in

York Student Vision

which it is in (The Oxford Street Christmas

The M-word became a national hangover long before the Dome blotted the horizon, but Armitage manages in this poem to recreate the mood of the final year of the century which will last as an emblem to an epoch

Why don’t we start again from the top, from the head: Dream up a new cult, think of a new force.

Time collects. Time passes, but not with the tread Of footprints in sand or tyres along a road Or a train on the East Coast line, passing a junction box.

Time collects, accumulates, gathers together, Remains to be seen. Time thickens, coagulates, plots; What lies at your feet is its sediment, Piled from the core to the surface, forming the ground.

Time builds up in layers: up there Is the clean, unknowable future waiting to rain down Or fall out, waiting to drop. The present, The here and now, extends from our minds to our toes, From the crowned heads to the down-at-heel, From berrucas to brain tumours, haloes and frontal lobes, From our snoodes to our aircushioned soles.

lights which two years ago were used as a medium by Tango for advertising, are used as a reference to the decay of religion, whilst the flocks which journeyed to view the eclipse – or The Cloud as it was later better known - are ridiculed).

The poem was intended to be read out on New Year’s Day in the Millennium Dome, although it never was - and probably never will be. Armitage however evidently warms to the role of public orator, “I hope the poem won’t swerve from its responsibilities by aiming to address many of the global political issues as a piece of head-on public art.”

Whilst the poem focuses predominantly on the depressing news events of last year – war in the Balkans, the Soho bombing, the Paddington train crash, school shootings in Colorado – there is an amusing line of satire; one poem about war hostility is juxtaposed against another on the surprising increase in sales of combat clothing.

The poem draws to a close, after a turmoil of actions, in a personal place: ‘And finally, last week in a West Yorkshire Village/nothing happened at all./An incident room has been set up at the scene,/ and security cameras installed.’ During a century when so much happened, it is easy to be suspicious of a Victorian arcadia, which does still relate to us today: Peace.

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision ARTS 19

TIME TRAVEL WITH A MURDERER

CONFLICT IN THE EYES OF CHILDREN A UNIQUE combination of conflict through the eyes of the children and war through the eyes of international media has recently been exhibited at York Minster.

Assassins - the cast SONDHEIM AND WEIDMAN’S curious musical ‘Assassins’ might have lacked popularity with the Americans in 1990, but when it made its way over to Britain two years later it was adored.

This term the music and drama socie-

D UP

ties have combined to bring you this breath of fresh air. The musical takes, what some may feel, a much needed step forward from the mundane and predictable tail of ‘boy meets girl’, that musical’s stereotypically offer.

The balladeer takes the audience throughout the history of America, telling the stories of the successful and attempted assassinations of the presidents of the United States, from Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to John. F. Kennedy in 1963.

Don’t be mistaken, despite what you may be thinking, 100 years of history can be squeezed quite comfortably into just one evening, being told in a flowing and entertaining manner; with an abundance of historical facts, to keep the mind active.

This surreal story allows every assassin to meet up on a supernatural level.

Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s killer, travels through the thoughts of the future assassins, indirectly persuading them to push their already disturbed thoughts to the point of murder.

Dancing takes a minor role, but the musical maintains a lively atmosphere and still manages to be amazingly fun to

ROUN

A ROW of wrinkled umbilical cords; a collection of over a thousand labeled blood samples and a piece of the artist’s tattooed navel flesh put up for auction on the net for the highest bidder.

Is the face of modern art morbidly

degenerating or simply laughing at ye olde expectations of what art should represent?

Colombian artist Fernando Arias’ recent exhibition at the Impressions Gallery, York, is controversial yet startlingly intellectual, especially when set aside the Sensationalist movement which is endeavoring to redefine the British modern art scene, with lard or a dead cow at their sides. The opening on May 12th 2000 of the Tate Modern, in London, will be the nation’s first museum dedicated to modern art. Although well

watch (regardless of its content); with action packed and often violent scenes.

Throughout the production there is a strong element of contrast, in every sense.

This helps to convey the feelings of confusion and instability of the assassin’s characters.

The songs have the ability to get the audience tapping their toes to classic American marches, and the ironically named ‘Everybody’s got the right to be happy’ (sung by the Assassins before and after they murder!) only to be suddenly stopped by the far more dark and disturbing tunes.

Powerful lighting changes also add to the atmosphere, giving the scenes incredible colour and movement.

Every aspect of ‘Assassins’ comes together to give you no choice but to question the psychological state of the human mind.

‘Assassins’ is a production packed with dark humour, witty dialogue, lively singing and the power to provoke some often disturbing thoughts, giving you a taste of every emotion. Not only will it entertain but you never know, you just might learn something about American history too!

‘Inside’, organised by the Reuters Foundation had its origins inspired by photo workshops provided for children in Chechnya.

The objective of the project is not only educational but also therapeutic and entertaining. The pictures show an almost tangible sense of tragedy and inspiration, an amazing feat by the young photographers.

The founder of Visual impact Martin Klejnowski Kennedy, a photographer turned aid worker, said “Apart from obviously, losing friends and relatives, one of the things people lose during conflicts are pictures of their families”.

‘Outside’ the other sector of the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see an extended selection of Reuters photographs.

Still reflections of dangerous and volatile moments of twentieth century conflict accompany a chilling table of figures exposing the immense world death toll. A mounted map of the world is encircled with data totaling the millions who fell victim to war in each region.

‘Assassins’ can be seen in Central Hall, 10th-12th February.

Sarah Mort

behind other leading art nations, the new museum symbolises the increasing respect modern art is being given for its …um, innovativeness.

Modern art today encroaches less on capturing the visual of its subject than its mind. Yet whilst Tracy Emin ruffles up a banal window into her soiled and tissuestrewn sick-bed, which put her in a runner-up position to the Turner Award, Arias’ work lies on a more profound knife-edge of birth and death.

It ashamedly, took personal courage

He tattooed his navel with his signature in mocking reference to the extremes collectors will go to. to venture into each room, in which the next piece of Arias’ work predatorily anticipated my arrival. Veiled on the doorway by a heavy black curtain, to prevent light damage, the artist’s selfportrait, Seropositivo (HIV positive), incorporates more than just the room, it in many ways also hijacks the viewer.

The collection of hospital blood samples – each with a scribbled patient’s name – lines the floor of the room. A black silhouette of the artist overlays it, all bathed in UV-light, creating the semblance of a swimming pool. Arias intended for his spectators to bow in

York Student Vision

order to look down at the work, symbolising the need for the public to recognise their ethical responsibilities. Could Damien Hirst’s Symmetrical Dots have conjured such profundity?

A line of cabinets filled with umbilical cords sounds like the product of an afflicted mind, but in actuality makes a lot of sense. Arias’ preoccupation lies with the act of childbirth and its representation as the first and most brutal of our separations from our mothers: the umbilical is the Link, which is ruthlessly severed after nine months of food supply.

And the navel? As the public is increasingly more prepared to buy a piece of art for the signature than for the talent, Arias tattooed his navel with his signature and created application forms for the piece, in mocking reference to the extremes collectors will go to. Fernando Arias is a breakthrough to my perception of modernity. It is sad to think that he masochistically had to threaten to walk around without a chunk of flesh in order to achieve it though!  The Art 2000 exhibition at

the Design Centre, London, is hosting a range of contemporary pieces for sale this month, with prices ranging from £500 - £1million.

Vicky Kennedy

An Albanian villager looks through a bullet hole in a bus window.

By Yannis Behrakis, Reuters The most outstanding exhibits include Yannis Behrakis’ shot of an ethnic Albanian peering through shattered glass.

Behrakis said “Our photographs have shown the human suffering on both sides and with our cameras we are your eyes.”

Other photographs include an overhead view of Albanians cramming onto a train. The latter, taken by Goran Tomosevic sends shocking images of ethnic cleansing strongly reminiscent of World War Two. As a direct result of one of the journalists pictures a young girl shown in deep dispair was reunited with her family when the picture was shown around refugee camps The ancient Minster sets a forboding scene for the powerful exhibition which

provides an incredible perspective from the heart of conflict.

The terror portrayed demands self reflecting shock and desperate sorrow about the essence of our human community.

Inspiration and dignity somehow seep through, though perhaps only in the viewers mind in an attempt to rationalise the brutality of conflict.

 ‘Inside:Outside’ is touring the globe. Already shown in Dubai and Dublin it moves next to Athens to open on February 4th.

Claire New

A FAIRY GOOD SHOW A TRULY magical adventure is awaiting you this season. The “Fairy Tales and Fantasy” exhibition promises, to even the most sceptical soul, a glimpse into the mystical world of myth and folklore.

The original illustrations for children’s books and magazines which date between 1850 and 1930 were lovingly collected by the late James Tilloson Hyde, a founder of the University of York.

These haunting images from Victorian and Edwardian fantasy have been hidden away since 1962, but they can still weave their magic. Indeed, they shamelessly restore the imagination you thought you gave away along with your unwanted toys at a Salvation Army jumble sale.

Tilloson Hyde did not have the means to afford pieces by particularly well known illustrators, but this makes for interesting and diverse viewing of more obscure art which could otherwise go unappreciated.

Pen, ink and water-colour serve to

conjure up a mystical atmosphere, with pastel colours which tenderly recreate the magic of twilight. Fairies, pixies and mermaids appear as though bathed in an opaque, dream-like aura, whilst the 1920s pieces are reminiscent of the popular Art Deco style.

These illustrations have a remarkable narrative quality and radiate an atmosphere of true escapism. Look out for work by Harry Rountree, Marie Miles, Marjorie Miller and Margaret Alison Atkins.

The Fairy Tales and Fantasy exhibition is soon to disappear in a cloud of fairy dust, so hurry if you intend to see it. As with all fairies, it is unlikely you will ever get another chance.

 The York City Art Gallery has recently acquired works by Dame Barbara Hepworth and, Bradfordboy, David Hockney to their Modern collection – definitely worth seeing.

Helen Dempsey

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

20 York Student Vision

website winners Last issue Vision gave away two fantastic tickets to New York. We asked you to design your own web site using the Tripod ‘Build your own home page’ service.

The lucky winner was third year Lee Netherton, of James College. “I can’t believe it. Usually we’re useless; it’s the first time we’ve won anything,” said Lee when he was given the good news.

As well as the flight tickets, two runners up, Julie Cartright and Philip Worre will receive a Tripod selection of T-shirts, bags, and mouse mats.

Take a look at the winning sites on:

1

st

2

nd

http://members.tripod.co.uk/mattlee/ http://Julie.Cartwright.html http://members.tripod.co.uk/taramasalata/index-1.html But here’s a sneak preview!

Vision

York Student

Don’t

SHOUT about it...

WRITE about it...

If you want to get involved in student media then visit our website www.yorkvision.co.uk and sign up. We’ll e-mail all the news of our meetings and socials. If journalism is not your thing, we are also looking to elect an artist and to extend our business team. If you think you could fit the post then come to Derwent room 130 on Monday wk5. Meet the team and tell us why you want the job. For more information e-mail us at the address below.

Got something to say? Drop us a line: vision@york.co.uk

York Student Vision

Elections Thursday/Friday Wk 8 your vote counts 4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision 21

FILMS American Makeover Film: American Beauty Cert 18. Preview Out Now

script writing, strong performances by all and, most importantly, a central idea.

Mendes excels in humanizing all of the characters and although Spacey steals the show, at one point or another we identify with them all. The enigmatic newcomer Wes Bentley is one to look out for in the future and Thora Birch also promises to do well.

One could be forgiven for thinking that this film is a portrait of America: a study of suburban decline and growing consumerism. This is only part of the story.

It is difficult to categorize American Beauty because it is broadly about life and humanity. Therefore, like life, it is drama, satire, tragedy and black comedy simultaneously.

Do not be fooled by the enticing

RIDING HIGH after the critically acclaimed Broadway production “The Blue Room”, Sam Mendes makes his cinematic debut with American Beauty.

With the help of screenwriter Alan Ball, the cinematography of Conrad Hall and the superlative acting of Kevin Spacey et al, Mendes has created a masterpiece, sure to clean up at the Oscars.

American Beauty is as close to cinematic perfection as you can get.

Spacey (Lester Burnham) stars as a forty-something in the throws of a mid-life crisis and disillusioned with work: “My job requires mostly masking

The superlative acting has created a masterpiece that will clean up at the Oscars my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the mens room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble hell”.

Tired of his materialistic, self-abusive wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and incapable of understanding his angst-ridden teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch), Lester jacks in his job and turns his lustful attentions to Jane’s nubile best friend

Kevin Spacey dines out on his success Angela (Mena Suvari).

Lester tries to recapture the happiness and freedom of his youth by working at a fast-food joint and smoking pot bought from his dope supplier/Camcorder hotshot neighbour Ricky (new boy Wes Bentley). Ricky seduces Jane with his Camcorder expertise and Carolyn starts an illicit affair with rival estate agent Buddy Kane. Things come to a head as Ricky’s confused homophobic father gets the wrong idea about his son and Lester.

Throughout the film the interplay of the Camcorder shots works well. When Ricky shows Jane a video sequence

Nail It

which changed his life, we are shown the most visually haunting image in the film.

It is, quite simply, fifteen minutes of a plastic bag being blown around in the wind. This is certainly the most powerful, spiritual revelation I have ever seen on film and is crucial in the message that Mendes is trying to get across. As Ricky says: “That’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things - and that I never needed to be afraid.”

American Beauty does not rely upon special effects, computer imagery, techno-babble or a twist.

Its success stems from good quality

Film: Angela’s Ashes Cert 15. Review Out Now

IT MUST have sounded so good on paper. Update The Exorcist for the modern generation.

Replace the traumatized young girl with a traumatized women.

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was of course a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.”

Add a rocking soundtrack and top it off with camerawork that bears a remarkable familiarity with that of a MTV video.

How could it fail but please. Well, it has failed, because it’s a terrible film.

What we expect from this sort of Hollywood movie is a scary film that would trash religion and scare us witless.

What we get is a pointless whimsy that only moderately insults our faith and doesn’t scare anything out of us.

Now, with the news typically bringing us stories of school massacres in America and mass graves in Chechnya, Satan just doesn’t seem that scary.

For those who don’t know and care the title refers to the five points where the wounds of Christ occurred during the crucifixion. Frankie Paige’s (Patricia Arquette), life turns bad when she receives a religious present from her mother.

Having had blood starts flowing from her eyes (thus ruining her day), this attracts the Churches attention, who send Father Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne), to investigate. He a priest/investigator low on faith takes pity on her ordeal and try’s to help her.

The Church is less sympathetic when

Arquette being prickly

they discover she is a messenger of God, and decide she must be silenced.

The director (of Nike advertising fame and that’s about it) keeps the film going at the pace of a snail on gravel and is also guilty of horrendous over directing.

He meets nothing in the film that he doesn’t think can be rendered more significant by showing it in close up or slow motion .

I think (and don’t hold me to this), that he’s trying to make a point about the Church’s rigidity and rules. Yet he seems to love the Church’s eye candy and we are spared no clichés of fluttering doves, flames and holy liquids.

Under such heavy handed directing, the stars are condemned to poor performances. I’m not questioning their talent but the film just doesn’t give them a chance to use it. Patricia Arquette especially should have learned to avoid scripts which involve her being whipped by invisible demonic forces. A sin of a movie.

Philip Diamond

York Student Vision

This is the ominous introduction to Angela’s Ashes, an epic voyage through the hunger-stricken, harsh, miserable and ecstatic first sixteen years in the life of Frankie McCourt.

Seen through the hilarious and tragic eyes of Frankie, scenes of poverty-ridden slums plagued by the Consumption provide an intensely moving backdrop to a subtle, often excruciating account of the process of growing up.

The circumstances could hardly have been more painful. A sister and two brothers die in the first half-hour!

And yet almost every pain inflicted on the youngster is countered by an unshakeable wit and a smile.

Frankie is perpetually tormented at school by wealthier class-mates and terrifying, belt-wielding catholic monsters who preach the virtue of patriotism and the equally damnable sins of Protestantism and masturbation.

Frankie’s father, played by the extraordinary Robert Carlyle, is as unswervingly light-hearted as he is unreliable, bringing light relief and disgust to

Film: Double Jeopardy Cert 15. Preview Out Now LIBBY PARSONS(Ashley Judd) has everything - a cutesie kid, a somewhat good looking husband, a great house, and not a bad yacht.

However, true to form, her world is shattered when her husband disappears, and she is accused of committing his murder.

On entering prison, her son disappears. In tracing him, she discovers that her husband may not actually be experiencing the after-life after all.

This is the most powerful, spiritual revelation I have ever seen on film Mena Suvari - she is not the American Beauty in this film. Rather, Mendes tries to show us where real beauty can be found - usually where we would least expect it- for example a plastic bag blowing in the wind or a close-up shot of death. Luckily for us Mendes succeeds with both style and panache resulting in a highly spiritual and uplifting film. American Beauty is undoubtedly a modern Amy Brooker masterpiece and

Growing Pains

Film: Stigmata Cert 18. Preview Out Now

Real Trouble

Troubled waters? the whole family until he disappears to England in search of work and is never seen again.

As Frank begins to take control of his life he becomes determined to escape west to New York, the statue of liberty and the freedom from poverty that it represents.

He falls in love with a dying girl, loses his virginity to her, works as a postman and a clerk and gets his ticket out.

Emily Watson’s beautifully understated rendition of the mother, Angela, (another oscar nomination?) supports virtuoso performances from three childactors playing the three stages of Frankie’s youth.

A perfectly constructed adaptation of the epic book, Angela’s Ashes delivers charm, treachery, comedy and tragedy in equal measures.

It’ll make you want to cry but by the time you leave the cinema you won’t know why but you’ll be happy - which is the main thing isn’t it?

Ben Hulme-Cross

Ashley Judd being a bit tied up

Here begins the action of the film, courtesy of the fifth amendment, which allows you to be tried only once for murdering the same person.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the part of the parole officer, a part not far removed from that of his role in The Fugitive.

What starts as a chase action film, with Lehman(Lee Jones) pursuing Libby, soon is subverted as, nearing the denouement, we wonder who it actually is that is being chased.

Dour, sardonic, but ultimately with a heart, he provides the more comic elements of a film which, although fairly good entertainment, never really lives up to the myriad of possibilities that are presented within the plot-line.

The prison scenes feature Roma Maffia, the wisened and pragmatic cellmate who makes the murderous, yet lawful revelation of the ability to repeatedly hatchet one’s husband; much more could be made of such strong characters.

Having lost her doe-eyed innocence in prison, much is made of the idea of the parent-child instinct, which seems to undermine the supposed strength of Ashley Judd’s character.

By referencing herself as ultimately a ‘mother’ and a ‘loyal and loving wife’, she can hardly be said to be the emancipated 21st century woman that she would have herself believed to be.

That her actions are motivated by revenge would seem to imply that rather than seeking justice and the return of her son, she is in fact maniacally following her husband, bent on claiming anothers life. Not really such a great role model after all.

Despite some tense moments, overall may said to be a little bit flacid.

Ann Smith

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

22 FILMS York Student Vision

NO BATTERIES REQUIRED Film:Toy Story 2 Cert U. Preview Out Now

still very funny, but much more is made of the secondary characters, with Mr Potato head sprouting a spouse, and Woody a new comrade.

Ok, surely though the storyline should ,let it down I hear you ask. Quite simply, No. The story-line is excellent, with a cliched ‘laugh out loud’ quality to the jokes , which Tom Hanks and Tim Allen manipulate excellent well The other voices, supplied by numerous other notable stars simply enhance the hilarious whole.

However, the stars of the show, if there can be in this animated ensemble, are Slinky, the sardonic and sleepy extending dog, who pours the correct amount of scorn on the excitability of the timid dinosaur, Rex, who finally overcomes his fears.

I CONFESS to never having, nor ever wanting to, grow up, to mature, to cast aside my childlike enthusiasm for the mundane.

I enjoy revelling in the ever increasingly distant past of my childhood. It would appear I am not alone.

Toy Story, the 1995 collaboration between Pixar and Walt Disney was a huge success, for big as well as little humans, and was an outstanding example of what could be done with computer animation.

But five years on, Toy Story 2 has gone further, and, having learnt what keeps us kids happy in the cinematic nursery, has

Having learnt what keeps us kids happy in the cinematic nursery, Toy Story 2 is much better than it’s predecessor

capitalised to the extent that it is better than it’s predecessor; a considerable feat by all accounts.

Originally intended to go to the ‘straight to video’ graveyard, once created, it was deemed to be too good to be relegated and instead finds itself as one of the

Mr Potatohead enjoys the benefits of eyes in the back of his head best films to be released in 2000.

The plot focuses yet again on the adventures of Andy’s toys whilst he is not there to protect them against those of lost innocence.

On mozzying off to cowboy camp, minus Woody, Andy’s ‘mom’ holds a jumble sale, selling off a number of those toys that have been shelved and forgotten about.

Stepping into the breech is Woody, who is determined to save the has-beens, and there the adventure begins, as Woody

Hollow Laughter Film: Sleepy Hollow Cert 15. Preview Out Now The career of Johnny Depp is a frequently frustrating one. When he follows his heart, the results are often delightfully off beam movies like ‘Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas’.

When he follows the advice of his agent, we wind up with aberrations along the lines of ‘The Astronaut’s Wife’.

This is why ‘Sleepy Hollow’ is such a success, as it is a creative compromise between the kind of movies the actor wants to make, and the kind of movies he needs to make is to maintain leading man status.

On the eve of 1800, a series of viscous

Ricci and her hollow looks

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murders have shattered the stability of the quiet New England town of Sleepy Hollow.

The locals believe the killer to be the ghost of the Headless Horseman - a German mercenary who was renowned for his decapitation skills during the War of American Independence.

Investigating New York police constable Ichabod Crane (Depp) refuses to subscribe to such superstition, until he comes face to face with the Horseman and, with the assistance of the mysterious

Lavish homage to Hammer horror films courtesy of resident Hollywood weirdmeister Tim Burton.

Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci), wanders into the woods to end the evil forever Adapted from the classic Washington Irving short story, ‘Sleepy Hollow’ is a lavish homage to Hammer horror films courtesy of resident Hollywood weirdmeister Tim Burton.

Beautifully crafted, with an eye for period detail which does not infringe on the fear factor, his first feature since the much-maligned ‘Mars Attacks!’ showcases slice-and-dice shocks, a tree that drips blood, and a visceral climactic chase.

All of which is held together by Depp, whose Crane is often as astounded as the audience by the dark delights on display.

John Berra

York Student Vision

himself is plucked from toy box obscurity to international heirloom by a greedy toycollector.

The tension comes when Woody has to decide whether or not he wants to be a child’s toy, loved yet living with the fear of being cast aside, or remembered for generations of museum-goers but never bringing true happiness to youngsters. A tough question indeed.

The reasons for its expected and proven success are easy to see. The key characters of Woody and Buzz are there,

The creators of Toy Story 2 have proven there is still an awful lot of amusement to be had from discarded toys

A nice touch are the overt references to other films which add a whole new tongue-in-cheek dimension which the original Toy Story didn’t have.

Having plumbed their imaginations further, and now that little bit older, and a little bit wiser, the creators of Toy Story have proven that there is still an awful lot of childish amusement to be had from discarded toys.

Son of a

Ann Smith

Buena Vista Social Club –Impressive Wim Wenders biopic, documenting guitarist Ry Cooder’s sojourn to Cuba, as it seductively captures the lives and histories of Cuban musician-types.

So successful that it is now enjoying extended dates!

East is East - from 11th-13th February – Reviewed in the previous edition of Vision, this is an excellent movie, which captures the spirit of a mixed-race family living in Seventies Salford, with both humour and tragedy by turns. A fantastic film which exhibits yet more British talent.

The End of the Affair - from 11th February - Adapted from the Graham Greene novel, Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore pair up under the excellent direction of Neil Jordan who creates a sumptuous and exquisite example of film-making as the characters re-examine their passionate affair of the past.

Summer of Sam - from 28th January – Spike Lee directs this biting, aggressive film which describes the events of the summer of ’77, New York City, when a mysterious killer randomly murders his victim, infusing horror into it’s citizens.

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THE SUMMER always produces great memories. Sun, sea, sangria and sex usually form the basis.

The Summer of Love in ‘68 had its moments and for many, 1966. But, what captured the imagination of Spike Lee was the Summer of 77, better known as the Summer Of Sam. David Berkovitz, was the terroriser, referred to by the press as the ‘son of Sam’. The overheated arena of New York city and inflammatory incidents such as the Blackout led to looting, shooting and fear, mainly through the actions of Berkovitz.

Hysteria and paranoia surround the Italian-American neighbourhood, theBronx with the film being told through the eyes of Vinny played by John Leguizamo, better known for his plays on Broadway. He dictates the pace of the film which is, at times, laboured.

Through Vinny, Lee tries to offer solutions to serious issues such as a call fortolerance through a whole range of issues. The killer preys on those sitting in parked cars. The targets are too easy for a killer who can’t stop himself.

Unfortunately for Spike Lee, he covered the underground culture of New York so much better in Do The Right Thing in 1989. The Eighties effort got to the heart of white supremacy against the

American Beauty - from 4th February – an Oscar contender for both actors and director alike, this will be one of the best films to kick off the millennium. The consistently expert Kevin Spacey stars along side Annette Benning in this dark comedy as it probes the American psyche.

SITES AND SOUNDS www.americanbeauty-thefilm. com Interesting site which takes you through Lester’s mid-life crisis in a innovatory pictorial fashion...

Patriotic boys in the ‘hood largest ethnic minority. Characters were developed, the plot thickened and it wasn’t about a New Yorker’s cheap thrills.

The potential to cover the pre-AIDS era of disco, drugs and punk is merely glossed over here. The soundtrack could have livened up affairs but it’s what you expect. This isn’t another Boogie Nights.

It’s a pity when a talented actor in Adrien Brodie (Ritchie, pictured) has to resort to playing a punk with rebel ‘written on his forehead’ but the lyricism of the script doesn’t do his part justice.

Spike Lee will continue to tackle issues that affect black America. Next time, choose a topic that you justify on the big screen, Spike.

Ryan Sabey

www.mgm.com/stigmata/home. html An informative site. Lots on reallife cases of stigmata. Lots of gory pictures...Looks a bit like a stigmata sufferers support group. www.angelasashes.com Endorsed with a ringing affirmative from Frank McCourt who’s life it is that is chronicled.

Quicker to read than the book... http://disney.go.com/worldofdisney/toystory2/flash/index.html Learn all there is to know in Woody and Buzz’s revelatory interviews...and so much more

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision 23

MUSIC

Hands Off - They’re Mine Darren Jesse talks to Pete Wilson about writing songs, respecting fans and all the other things the music industry doesn’t care about

THERE ARE those certain kinds of bands that no one seems to like apart from you, and when you do find someone that knows who the band is, like you, they usually think they are the greatest thing since Stairway to Heaven.

Well, here’s another band like that.

Three talented musicians who just so happen to possess the subtlety required to pull off Ben Folds’ often delicate and poignant songs and yet at the same time have the sense of humour and energy to attack his songs with fervour, which in the wise words of Saint Beavis “kick butt”.

The problem is whether or not to sell this band to you, dear reader, or to assume that you already know they are the best thing since (see above). Having just finished a tour promoting their third album, The Unauthorised Biography of Reinhold Messner, they have successfully conquered the initial problematic cornerstone of any band’s early career. Consequently when I interviewed Darren Jesse, the band’s drummer, I was interested in how a three–piece outfit of piano / bass / drums planned to develop their sound to capitalise on the cult status they have already achieved from their consistently breathtaking shows.

Their sound has very few rules, they are willing to experiment with strings, woodwind and brass, but not guitar: “At the time we didn’t care, We didn’t realise we would be pitched as the band without guitar”.

Yet in an early song, Emaline, a guitar is used so why did the band abandon that sound? “Yeh, Ben played it, but the label said if you put that out it will break the whole guitar thing. We all play guitar- we could do a record with three guitars!”.

The song Emaline actually surfaced on the B-sides / live tracks compilation Naked Baby Photos, an album which Darren dismisses as “a bit premature at this stage of our career –we all feel that way. It was a kind of a contractual obligation.”.

I asked Darren’s opinion of their small but dedicated fan base. “We’re grateful for it, and we will continue to make records that mean something to us as long as it continues to connect with the fans and fits in with the band’s growing process.”

“We’ll do a lot of writing next year and will probably go back to basics, a bit more poppy.”

This comment accentuated one of the

The band were literally falling over themselves to be interviewed by Vision

things that was so striking about their gig to what happens -everyone has to agree, theramin solo was being suitably matched that evening: both the band and the audi- it’s a democracy- but at the same time, it’s by Ben’s press-ups on top of the piano and ence simply seemed so damned happy! based around Ben’s songs.” the throwing his stool at the keys of the Unlike so many similar-sounding and In reference to the track written by piano for the final chord of their eccentric unoriginal indie guitar bands, Ben Fold’s Darren called Magic, I compared the situ- cover of the Buggles’ Video Killed The Five don’t have that irritating tendency to ation to George Harrison trying to emerge Radio Star. whine.

Speaking of throw Instead, they are That evening, Robert Sledge’s hilarious theamin solo was ing things, I posedthe polite charming, just being suitably matched by Ben’s press-ups on top of the question of hotel sitting on the right rooms, and the smashside of geeky. “We piano and the throwing his stool at the keys of the piano ing thereof, in the view never were the inof their energetic party for the final chord sound,” says Darren pieces on stage. “Once “we play twentyyou realise you have to four songs a night and regularly change as a songwriter amidst the domination of pay for that stuff you stop doing it. I don’t them, so there’s a lot of music and fresh Lennon and McCartney, but Darren disa- earn as much as I’d like to –I’d like to feel energy”. greed “We weren’t based on that. We were as if I could retire at any given moment.

Very apparent was the sense of unity based on Ben’s songs, and the fact that I’m We don’t do it for the money though. We and respect the band have for each other, now getting a song in is a big step, but do it because it’s just part of who we are.” especially Ben. “Ben is really a natural Robert didn’t join the band to play my I mentioned the Royal Albert Hall gig and musician and it came to him very young songs”. Does this suggest there’s competi- its significance as a landmark for any and then me and Robert (the bassist) are tion in the band, I asked, “Oh yeah, really band’s career. “We’ll add strings and more like street players and we found we intense competition. It’s part of being a horns to that gig, we just sing the trumpet had good chemistry. Ben shows us the musician –always trying to be at the top. parts as backing otherwise. Our last gig in songs and then me and Robert add our bits We’re not mean, we just really go for it.” London was the Forum. After Shepherd’s to it. Ben is the leader, but there is a limit That evening, Robert Sledge’s hilarious Bush and the Astoria, I guess the Albert

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Hall seemed the next move.” They work, however, as a band that produces an intimate atmosphere, perfect for communicating with the crowd. “British audiences participate a lot. They sing along and tell you what they want to hear. Japanese audiences are very polite and quiet and then suddenly explode. I love Australian audiences – they’re easy to please!”

I suggested that the band had a lot of respect for their audience by being the kind of band who actually write decent B-sides and make singles worth listening to. “We enjoy the writing process and every song is written for the record. There are never any left over and if there are they’re B-sides. Ben’s not very prolific.

He never writes excessively and only writes each song as if its intended for a record. It’s a completely different market over here, Europe and Japan. Everyone seems to buy singles – in America they mean something quite different, not so important.”

A limited edition extra disc of live tracks accompanies their latest album “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner” to co-incide with the tour. “Yeh, we weren’t even aware of it; it looks like a cheap way to sell the record, a really crass move to make fans buy it again. We told the record company they won’t do it again.

I’m sure the tracks are O.K. but it seems unfair to me.” Haven’t you heard it? “No, we just turned up at a meeting. That’s music business for you. Maybe the record didn,t sell as much as they’d like.”

I quickly jump in and state that many fans of such a band enjoy the personal element of it. “I see, then its your own band, right? But you can’t control things once they catch on. Luckily that hasn’t been the case with us. Its very comfortable. I don’t get recognised in the streets which is great.”

So, dear reader, still not convinced?

This is probably the best time to mention the indcident during the interview when a couple wandered over to see what was going on, who Darren was and why he deserved interviewing. Completely unfazed by his anonymous status, almost expecting them not to have heard of the band, he said: “I play drums. My names’s Darren. We’re playing next door. We’re called Ben Folds Five – a piano, bass and drums outfit. I think we’re on at 9, [turning to me] do you know? I can take your name and get tickets if you want to come.”

So you’re not sold out then? said the couple“Uh…. No.”

don’t shout about it, write about it!

Carol Walmsley

CDs, gig tickets and interviews all up for grabs!

Tel: 01904 761826

e-mail vision@york.ac.uk

26 Abbots Gait, Huntington, York, YO32 9SX

York Student Vision

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

24 MUSIC York Student Vision

Jacques What I Call Music

Rich Brown joins the NME brats tour to speak to Jaques Lu Cont, the best thing to never come out of the eighties

WHY DO people go into the music business? Jacques Lu Cont, the man behind the Les Rythmes Digitales project certainly knows why he is there. Talking to him before the second packed night of the NME Premier tour, as it hit Leeds, his enthusiasm for the whole LRD package was infectious.

Signed to Wall of Sound records Les Rythmes Digitales became increasingly prominent during 1999 with a string of singles lifted from the album Darkdancer.

The album takes the synth-pop eighties sound and heightens the groove element with a strong funk flavour and relentless beats. The surprising result is that the eighties can be cool.

Jacques’ initial taste for all things eighties came from an unlikely source: “my eighties fascination came about because that was the first music I listened to outside of classical music. I used to go to libraries - you know what libraries are like, Duran Duran and all that, that was where my initial fascination with the eighties came from”. Unashamed of his influences Jacques’ view is simple, “all musical scenes are the same, there’s good artists and there’s bad artists and you have to view them all as one if you wanna get into it all, a good record is a good record, I overcame that hurdle and started getting into pop music again”.

Later in the interview he reveals that

Spark @ Derwent, 15th January, 2000 SPARK. A beginning. A chink of light in the dark. A massive risk.

The potential for disaster loomed large over this event. The business of mixing chart fodder and live acts skating the boundaries of new music could well have fallen flat on its face.

Veera Cruz started their set with a cursory nod to their Glasgow North America roots, with a mix of mid 90’s scot-pop in the style of Teenage Fan Club mixed with a heavy dose of late 80’s Sub Pop. Just as the combination starts careering towards the cliched their saving grace is introduced in the form of a lap steel, introducing, for a precious few songs a level of intimacy seen in the likes of Smog.

A more angular beast is to follow this in the form of Akira. All bouncing bass, machine gun drums, angular guitar and primal howls, Akira provides us with a genuine burst of pop fury.

Peeps Into Fairyland, find their influences across the Atlantic. They transport you to a world of desert plains and creaky verandas. Starting off where Veera Cruz left us Peeps are all Michael Stipe rasps and Will Oldham howls.

What followed was the most surreal moment of the evening... Robbie William’s dullard rock anthem Angels is playing as the most ‘difficult’ of tonight’s band’s take to the stage. El Hombre Trajeado finish the night with what gig nights in York have up ‘til now been lacking... invention. They are a bouncy blend of Mogwai dynamics and Krautrock beats, with live mixing thrown in as an added bonus. El Hombre make up for a lack of their influence’s intensity with a cheeky wink and a smile. This is celebratory music.

Spark. A beginning? Lets hope so.

James Melley

“If you wanna go on stage every night, over a six week tour, and gaze at your shoes, and play guitar, I mean that’s why people start doing heroin.”

Jacques Lu Cont

“the Backstreet Boys are actually good” while slating Steps and S Club7. His lack of musical snobbery is admirable and a worthy attitude in a music business quick to call what’s hot and what’s not. Jacques’ vision for Les Rythmes Digitales has been an all encompassing aim to tread between the divides of manufactured pop and the snobbery of underground dance music.

This leaves him as a highly respected producer, musician and re-mixer, whilst at the same time having his music used for a certain Orange delight drink- he really is the great thing kids go for. “I like to think

that I stand on a bridge between the two, whilst you can find elements of underground dance music on my records, my idea for LRD was for it to be almost like a manufactured pop thing, the difference was that it was all on my terms, there was no A&R man with some cunning little plan to have this little guy with red hair my ideas, my thoughts, my music, my band, and to use that manufacturing kind of ethos and therefore try and create something cool”. Something very cool has evidently emerged from this.

Later that evening LRD were to

utterly steal the show from headliners Shack (and fellow tour bands Campag Velocet, and Coldplay) with their unashamed 80’s groove. As a band playing their dance music live, they are deliberately and forcefully full of energy. “I don’t see the point of playing the record loud to an audience, I like to have a reinterpretation of the record, and that’s why I put together a live band to go with it, no knob twiddling, no smoking of cigarettes, I’ve tried to take the energy and aesthetic of a rock show where you’ve got performance on stage, trying to get people involved, I wanna see lighting shows, I wanna see action, I wanna see people putting on guitars and doing it , It entertains you, it puts a smile on your face and people feed off that energy”.

As for their pure pop dance routines, “I thought dance routines, well no ones done that. So we put together some moves, if you wanna go on stage every night, over a six week tour, and gaze at your shoes, and play guitar, I mean that`s why people start doing heroin.” As Jacques neatly summarises “the music feeds off the visual and likewise”.

With a remix of the new Beck single and a new single in March LRD are here to stay. Although Jacques sees the new single as “the full stop at the end of the eighties phase of Les Rythmes Digitales” . With Les Rythmes Digitales anything could be cool, although personally I`m still not too sure about the Backstreet Boys.

And She’s Drop Dead Gorgeous Rajini Vaidyanathan speaks to pop music’s ‘It’ girl MUCH LIKE the song that propelled her band into the limelight she really is ‘Drop Dead Gorgeus’.

With red hair that looks redder in person, and features that are almost doll like, the first thing that strikes me about Saffron, front woman with Republica is her perfect appearance.

I’m sitting opposite her watching her draw on her cigarette and smile sweetly, as she muses on the band’s performance tonight, at millennium ball, alongside, Right Said Fred, Defenbaker and The Seed.

I was worried that her beauty would intimidate me, after all Saffron is used to sitting in rooms with A-list celebrities, and that I ain’t.

She offers me a glass of water, giving me a chance to hear her cockney accent, very Brixton, which is where the lady in red hail from. She asks me where I am

“People in bands aren’t necessarily the best role models as it’s all about being anti-conformist.”

Saffron

from and whether I enjoyed the gig. I reply that I did. Conversation loosens up as I realise that Saffron is nothing short of a nice person, with all the time in the world to chat to me.

It might seem that Republica have been out of the limelight as of late and that

York Student Vision

their success has been eclipsed by the recent fad of teenybop tunes, served to delight the palate of young teenagers.

If anything, the band’s break from the limelight has resulted in the recording of a load of songs and a recent tour with

American rocker Bryan Adams, “It was challenging being special guests to Bryan Adams. Not many people knew who we were and we hadn’t played for over 6 weeks”.

Saffron, is one of the few successful indie frontwomen of her time. Alongside people like Justine Frischmann and Louise Wener from Sleeper she inspired millions of girls who wanted to enter the world of gigging.

How does she feel about being a role model?“It’s a tricky thing, people in bands aren’t necessarily the best role models as it’s all about being anti-conformist. For me I had to be in a band. I had a fear though of going to an office job.

If I can relate to people that sends a message. If people see Republica and say

‘I can do that’ then that’s great”.

Her ability to inspire others, led to her involvement in charity work, helping raise awareness for breast cancer and HIV causes.Was there anyone who sent out signals of inspiration to a young Saffron helping her to get to where she is? “Debbie Harry, Kate Bush and The Jam and the Clash are what inspired me”.

And today’s music? “one of my favourite groups is TLC. I also think that the way technology has been used in music is interesting, and trying to make that kind of music appeal on a central level”.

Saffron briefly reflected on the problems of obsessive fans, “There are some obsessive fans, some who dress just like me.

It’s falttering but I do want them to have their individuality”. Speaking of fame, Saffron told me about her experience of being on that good old British institutaion, Top of The Pops, ‘ it’s a childhood thing. I grew up with it, come home for tea and watch it. It encapsulates pop’.

Looking back on the past seven years, Saffron seems positive that all the hard work was worthwhile, keen to encourage new bands strarting up, ‘you have to do want you want to do, over anything. Be prepared for rejection”.

So, the past seven years were good, what does the next decade hold in store for the band? “At the moment I just feel great doing another record. I hope I can keep doing this - I am proud of what we’ve done so far”.

Gillray and The Following @ Fibbers, 19th January, 2000 PUNK IS about the most paradoxical musical genre there is.

The Sex Pistols were both a rebellion against any cultural establishment, yet they were essentially the art school creation of svengali Malcolm McLaren.

And Punk’s hypocrisy continues to this day - The Offspring at number one with a song written with such blatant radio friendly catchiness it’s a wonder 5ive didn’t sing it.

And so we come to Gillray, a new university punk band who are loud... and angry. That’s right, finally, a band who have something to say, and who perhaps aspire to being something other than a more mediocre version (if that’s possible) of Ocean Colour Scene (are you listening, Defenbaker?)

Gillray Gillray’s set is short, sharp, and direct.

Yes, they rock, in that simple, raw kind of way - don’t expect any complicated guitar work, or even technically proficient singing. But that’s not the point, and Gillray, especially their lead singer, know it. It’s about belief, and their raucous, fuzzed up take on Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, which strips away almost everything but the riff and the chorus, illustrates that they understand that music, stripped down to its essentials, doesn’t need pretence and posturing.

A difficult act to follow then - but campus band The Following seemed determined to supply a more glammed up version of punk rock, and although their set suffered from sound problems, they too looked the part on stage.

So, perhaps this year’s URY Battle of the Bands won’t be just another stars in their eyes, ‘who wants to be their favourite band the most’ competition. Someone out there is trying to do something new.

Alex Watson

COMING SOON...

Linton Kwesi Johnson 16th February @ York University PX/001 Brought to the university by the OSA,Linton Kwesi Johnson represents a unique voice for Afro-Saxons.

Poet and record p r o d u c e r, Johnson’s influence spreads over the whole of Black music and culture. With his albums amongst the best selling reggae albums, Johnson blending the words and rhythms of his two highly crafted skills of expression One critic aptly noted ‘If Malcolm X had led a band, he probably would have sounded

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision MUSIC 25

News, Views, Reviews ic

LOOKING OVER at the pathet-

Artist: Primal Scream Title: Exterminator Released: 31st January

If they move- kill ‘em meanderings of the love forlorn indie songwriter, Exterminator reaches over and sharply sticks its fingers up their noses. This is the kind of album that should be

made as a duty to society.

This is the music of someone think-

ing, reflecting on and getting angry at the world. Each track follows the next in a progression of this thought musical influences gliding over another and molding perfectly. Rooting itself around the repetative theme of the Swazstica eyes, the insult is harsh and clear to the eyes of authority looking at them. The unity of the album is more noticable to those less accustomed to Primal Scream’s back catalouge, but this is in my opinion their best incarnation yet.

This is the kind of thing Apollo Four Fourty keep trying to achieve before they seem to give in to the conservative panderings of the music industry. Primal Scream sound like they’re murdering their instruments in the studio whilst the producer goes off setting off fire alarms.

This gives off tones of punk, big-beat etc., etc. all mixed up in a melting pot of approaches to music.

Throughout the album stylistically noticeable contributions come from David Holmes, Brendan Lynch and the Chemical Brothers (amongst others) and

this is shown in the thrust of the album is in its programming, hard and fast dance rhythms, heavy sampling and a frightening modulations of Gillespie’s voice. Much room is given to the sounds of the DJ’s, but it doesn’t fall into the trap of the oversylised remix.

There seems to be no precision in the music, and yet it is held together by just how tightly all its parts arranged.

Dissonant jazz horns phase over distorted driving bass-lines whilst strange bubbling analogue synths whizz overhead.

You start to wonder who did what in the band to create this organised noise- and it is in this the album gains its strength as the songs become statements of intent rather than fiddly solos or stolen styles.

The album presents itself as a homogenous musical landscape, from the drones of repeated vocals in Accelerator turning your stomach to the tinkle of the toy piano in Keep Your Dreams that soothes your mind and rounded by the beautifully reflective Shoot Speed Kill Light. This is the best album I’ve heard in a long time and hope people disagree with me.

Steve Haines

BoB 2000 Heats Up SET YOUR faces to stun and get ready for your ears to ring, BoB2000 is here! In this its sixth year the University’s annual Battle of the Bands hopes to reach new heights of energy and entertainment. Expect once more sold-out gigs, bizarre band names and - above all - lots and lots of noise.

HEAT THREE Wentworth residents are unlikely to get an early night on Thursday. Both Duck Born, Daisy Tree and The General Lee like those amps firmly turned up to eleven. Giving us a break from all those oldfashioned guitar-things meanwhile Math+BVF will pump out the drum-andbass. Expect moshing, stage-diving and permanent structural damage.

With the entries all in, Vision can confidently bring you the essential quick-guide to who’s on, when and where.

HEAT ONE By the time you read this, you’ll know who was hot and who not on Tuesday.

Who has survived? Are old-timers Sevenball back for their third competition? Or have Amalganation; Waiting For Chan or the intriguingly titled Joe Stalin &The Communists won through? The latter certainly win the prize for best pressrelease, promising that should they win, they will “tear down the underpants of capitalism using the bawdy Sid James hand of punk”!

HEAT TWO Wednesday week 3 promises a diverse range of musical styles (or absence of).

Flynn promise harmonious Indie-pop; Beyond Redemption their unique brand of just plain scary Heavy Metal; and Artichoke Attack will be pomping it up with their own unique reinvention of Prog. Rock. Meanwhile E.F.X and last year’s semi-finalists The Following will

Musical variety is the key come the final heat on Friday. All-female Heroic Trio promise much, but so too do alleged ‘boy band’ 1000 Yard Stare. Meanwhile The Dawn and Anyhow will pound or plod depending on your taste - more indie-type shenanigans. Punks Gillray meanwhile may be out before they were even in, having sacked their own lead-singer and songwriter!

Judging is by a diverse panel of musiclovers and factors influencing their judgement will include quality, style, attitude and audience reaction. Two bands from each heat will survive the carnage to progress to the finals on Wednesday and Thursday of week 5 and from there the four groups left will do final battle on Saturday of that week.

All heats and the semi-final take place in Wentworth, and Derwent will host the final. Tickets for the heats are only available on the door and cost £2, while those for the semi-finals and final can beGW pur-

York Student Vision

SO HERE we are again, at the veritable market that is the Singles Bar. Some flashy titles and colourful sleeves try to tempt us into a light session of group music without the commitment.

As I scan the talent on offer Gabrielle is the first to catch my eye.

I’ve heard it all before though, with three versions of the same Dylan track; there’s not even much action between the covers. Oh, she’s quite an accomplished wailer, but it was more satisfying having a Yank get his hands on it.

I share a Reef with The Motorhomes’ reassuringly entitled ‘It’s Alright’, which is exactly what it says on the cover. Given the choice I’d prefer the company of Reef any day - beware of cheap imitations.

A Mancunian rant in the corner grabs my attention and I find myself face to face with Iain Brown. I can’t help thinking he scrubs up very well since his unpolished Unfinished Monkey Business.

With help from UNKLE on the B-side, ‘Dolphins were Monkeys’ is a very good advert for the very good album ‘Golden Greats’.

both happily fling together just about any genre they can get their greasy mitts on to produce something for which adjectives have yet to be invented.

HEAT FOUR

Singles Bar

Raissa sharp vocalist

Artist: Raissa Title: Believer Released: Out Now DRIPPING HONEY-SWEET vocals over the etherial strings of How Long Do I Get or effortlessly hitting the beat of Walk Right Through, Raissa enchants the listener in to a world of calm.

Raissa appears on the back of the laid back movement from Bristol (though a Londoner herself) exhibiting very much that tone of relaxed textural tunes. A bit more down beat than Macy Gray, but with that kind of effortless voice, this is an album that deserves close listening and will grow on you each time you give it that benefit. The little hooks of her voice in songs such as Strange World wind into

Artist: Underwolves Title: Under Your Sky Released: REVIEWERS CONSTANTLY search for originality but ironically when you find something different, that can not be wittily defined by comparisons, that has no real label, – what do you do?

Underwolves debut album is collected, eclectic and diverse. Fundamentally it is jazzy and in parts certainly beautiful, however it collates sounds from opposing genres. It can sound simultaneously modern and out of date!

It has an underlying Drum and Bass feel, often Goldiesque – yet certain vocal

your head, punching horns or the odd guitar lick keep it all moving. Some later tracks get a bit on the irritating side and it seems a shame the songs couldn’y be quite up to the standards set earlier in the album.

Believer is Raissa’s second album venture, and to the right audience could become one of those that seems to always be on in the background filling the air with its atmosphere. I hope this venture doesn’t stumble only because it lacks that singalong element, but it seems she may have to sell out to this to get the recognition she deserves. Anyway, let this be a testement to thinking about the music before you write it.

Steve Haines

lines from ‘ Under the Sky’ would fit on a music hall stage, while parts have an 80’s or Brand News Heavies type sound.

‘Shaken’ with its sublime harmonies is uplifting whereas the next single ‘So Blue Is Black’ has a darker element and ‘Birdsong’s’ vocals are distinctly reminiscent of The Lighthouse Family! What conclusions can you make? The general vibe of the tracks is funky but relaxed.

The vocals remain catchy but haunting. The range of their sounds makes them unable to be compartmentalized and perhaps this will place them outside the safe arena of mainstream modern taste.

Let’s hope not – go on, give it a try!!

Kate Wallis

The spell is broken by ‘The Dolphin’s Cry’, Live’s latest offering. Seemingly just one, track-long rabble-raising chorus, it doesn’t go anywhere and your initial interest is not well rewarded. This kind of music is great for the radio - because it forces you out of the house to get away from it.

Definitely not driving music.

I’d rather take Clearlake’s advice and be driven carefully through ‘Winterlight’ and ‘Jumble Sailing’. It’s inoffensive Indie done well, with some nice lyrical plays on words and tight musical style.

Finally my gaze rests on the two darlings of the Singles Bar this outing. Papa Mantra’s ‘Out of Your Tree’ has four tracks of such joyful randomness (yes, that is actually a word) I hardly knew where to put myself, let alone place them in the music scene. This single really captures the sort of energy and enthusiasm the band bring to the stage; and the sleeve’s great too, which is nice.

This leaves me staring into the eyes of Eighties garage diva Kym Mazelle. To my delight she’s on the arm of Peshay, and she’s roaring. ‘Truly’ is drum n’ bass at it’s Tom Nall funkiest.

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

26 SPORT York Student Vision

Up for the Cup

The BUSA Cup kicks off this term with five York teams all in contention. Vision’s Sam Macrory and Ed Senneck find out who, what and why

Badminton

YORK’S MEN’S fencing team have the chance to establish themselves as one of the country’s top teams after qualifying for this year’s BUSA cup.

THE MEMBERS of the University of York men’s badminton club are currently practising diligently; sharpening their reactions and fine tuning their skills in preparation for their ‘A’ team representing the university in the first round of the BUSA Cup.

The ‘B’ team also had a successful autumn term, qualifying for the BUSA Shield competition, the secondary knockout phase. The club is hoping to usher in the new millennium with continued successes in both competitions, providing rare sporting acumen for our, hitherto, generally unsuccessful university.

The ‘A’ team qualified from a regional preliminary round-robin group stage con-

The team managed important victories against Durham and Newcastle in the league format

sisting of five other northern universities.

The team managed important victories against Durham and Newcastle in the league format, but were unsuccessful against Leeds, Teeside and Sheffield, losing all three.

However, the team still progressed to the next round, but only after a tense playoff match against Sheffield Hallam, which York won by six games to three.

The advancement in the competition has been accredited by ‘A’ team captain

Badminton: making a racket

the tense 14-13 victory over Hull as the turning point: “The win turned out to be all important in our qualification for the cup” and he admits the game could easily have gone either way.

Whiting believes that a combination of a “wonderful team spirit”, hard work and effort have been the key so far, but reserves special praise for Martin Cocks who has perhaps been the teams key performer.

Frequently forced to fence all three weapons in matches, a difficult task in the sport of fencing, Whiting believes that Martin has “acquitted himself superbly”.

With several of the more experienced fencers unavailable for the cup, it looks as though Martin Cocks will have to remain

Fencing Club: getting to the point

Volleyball: its all in the wrist

It is a fine achievement first to have qualified for this competition, but to do it in the style that the women’s team showed would seem to suggest considerable talent

With the women’s team also qualifying, this represents a formidable achievement for the Fencing Club who, one hopes, would now begin to be given the respect which they have worked hard to earn.

The team qualified narrowly above Leeds in fourth place in their group, notching up victories over Hull, Leeds, Bradford, Northumbria and Sheffield Hallam along the way.

Captain Simeon Whiting singled out

Fencing

Mike Jones to both good teamwork and commitment from all team members, and the good form shown by the star players Duncan Bosworth and Bernd Schwarz, neither of whom missed a match last term. However, all the players distinguished themselves throughout the course of the term and progression to the further reaches of the national competition was genuine team effort and fully deserved.

Qualification from such a tough pool of universities, all with much larger student populations than York, is a satisfying achievement itself.

However, further advancement in the competition really would be an immense accomplishment, as their first round opponents are the mighty Loughborough University.

Volleyball

AFTER THE early exit of their male counterparts it is left to the women’s team to fly the flag for York in the first BUSA cup of the new millennium.

Men’s & Women’s

and ability. Having had to establish a completely new team a mere two weeks before the BUSA competition commenced makes this achievement even more noteworthy.

The team started the competition with a fine win away at Durham. A subsequent narrow defeat by a strong Leeds side suggested that they might be forced to pay for their inexperience and lack of familiarity

York Student Vision

with each other.

Captain Judith Reischl, clearly proud of her players states, “the team did very well indeed”. After the Leeds defeat the team hit a streak of fine form and were unstoppable in victories over Sheffield Hallam, Northumbria and Teeside respectively.

Reischl singles out the Teeside game as the highlight of the season so far, but states that the reason for the team’s success has been due to the fact that “throughout the first half of the season we sustained good team performances both on and off the court”.

However, it is feared that they may suffer through the loss of American Brenna Trindall who Reischl picks out as “outstanding”.

She has now left York and Reischl believes that “we now need a great effort from the whole team for the next matches to be successful”.

Although Trindall has left, results indicate that this is no one-woman team, and Reischl comments that “the team has been doing very well in the practice sessions”.

The captain is keeping her cards close to her chest as regards the team’s prospects in the cup. Being a knockout competition every game from now is crucial, but all Reischl is prepared to say is that, “I hope we will win at least the first match”.

After last year’s results this would seem highly likely and with a little luck this talented team might well go all the way and win the competition.

An of’fence’ive person?

on the top of his game for the forthcoming matches.

Looking ahead, Whiting is realistic about the teams chances from here on.

Though confessing to be ‘delighted’ at qualification, he accepts that hauling qualified as the fourth out of four teams in our region, the cup will be “an uphill struggle”.

He adds that: “there are some very accomplished teams in the competition, and any victory from now on is going to be no mean feat”. He accepts that all games from now on are critical but believes the game against Birmingham, something of an unknown quantity, on the 2nd of February, is critical: “If we win it, it will reassure us that we can compete with the best”.

A win will place the team in the top 16 in the country, an outstanding accomplishment which would highlight the current strength of the University’s Fencing Club.

Basketball YORK UNIVERSITY’S sportswomen distinguished themselves last term with a string of notable achievements. One of the most successful of all the women’s sports clubs was the basketball team.

group phase to progress through to the knockout phase. They qualified from a pool of five other northern universities, namely Leeds Metropolitan, Sheffield, Durham, Northumbria and Leeds. This represents a considerable achievement when the relative size of York’s student population is compared to much larger They successfully negotiated the pre- universities such as Sheffield, Leeds and liminary regional group stage of the Leeds Metropolitan.

Yo r k ’s national BUSA comopponents in the petition and qualified The basketball team is next round are for the BUSA Cup. perceived as having something of an The Cup is the straight knockout phase of the one of the best chances for unknown quantity. Salford, like tournament so the national success, as they York, doesn’t Spring term is a very have a nucleus of have a particular important one for the reputation for respective clubs. very talented players sporting excel The basketball lence, so the team team is perceived as having one of the best chances for nation- are unsure of what to expect from them. al success, as they have a nucleus of very However, it is apparent that they must talented players and a good team frame- have some very accomplished players and work. If they manage to overcome their work well together as a team, because first round opponents Salford and steer they managed to top their regional group clear of the large sporting institutions such phase to qualify. as Loughborough and Liverpool, then The first round fixture against Salford they have a very good chance of progress- will be played in the Sports Centre on the ing, possibly making it all the way to the afternoon of Wednesday February 2nd.

The team would welcome additional supfinal.

The women’s Basketball Club fin- port from anyone interested to follow the ished in the top two of the Autumn term progress of one of the University’s most

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

York Student Vision SPORT 27

Taking the Plunge Sub Aqua is the minority sport under the spotlight this time around. AU President Ben Harding gets dressed in rubber for his diving debut IT IS Thursday of week 0 and, as any new AU president should, I’m running around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly.

The AU mart seems to be running OK, but then there are so many things that do not present themselves as problems until the last minute. All seems to be fairly normal. What I did not expect was to be asked

by Andy Priest if I would like to spend a Thursday evening sitting on the bottom of a pool with a large tank attached to my back.

Four weeks later, sitting in the warmth of my office, I noticed that there was a note in my diary about “try-a-dive” for that night. A few minutes later Lee Rabey, the Sub Aqua Clubtraining officer came through the door to check that I was still interested, and also to check my shoe size.

If only people would forget things that you promise to do when your mind is elsewhere.

So come 4:45 I was at the Biology car park, nervous for the first time in a while, and a beginner for the first time in years. I can only thank the Sub Aqua Club. They are a very friendly group and from the start I felt at home. My only worry was that I only really play ball sports, and am a bit like a fish out of water if there is not a ball involved. This promised to be a bit strange.

It was very strange at first because you have to convince your body that you don’t need your nose, and that it is not strange to be under water breathing normally We all pilled into a car and headed to Arch Bishop Holgate’s school where they dive. Once we were all changed and inside the pool, myself and two other “try-adivers” were put into the capable hands of Lee Raby.

by Geordie-boy Paterson MANY HAVE questioned the athleticism involved in the great sport of darts, but the skill involved is without doubt second to none.

claimed the title was a truly stylish finish.

Previously defending champion Barneveld had been defeated in the early rounds by rising star Chris Mason, with many backing him to continue to the championship title.

The past month This year though has seen many talwas not to be the one ented individuals on for the England show, as the first International, who darts world champisees himself as the ons of the new milpretender to Taylor’s lennium were throne. crowned in the rival

A test of P.D.C. and Embassy Mason’s character versions of the sport. will come later in the The P.D.C. is year when we see undoubtably the prewhether he makes an mier championship, attempt at Taylor’s this having been A test of Mason’s character P.D.C. title or returns proved in 1999 when will come later in the year to the less prestigfive times P.D.C. and ious Embassy tourwhen we see whether he nament. twice Embassy champion Phil Taylor With names such as makes an attempt at beat Raymond van Taylor, Lowe and Taylor’s P.D.C. title or Barneveld, the Bristow, the P.D.C. is Embassy champion returns to the less prestig- dominated by the of 1998 and 1999, ious Embassy tournament household names, comfortably in a with it being only a champion of champimatter of time until ons showdown. it’s rival drifts into the backwaters. This Taylor’s domination of world darts is though may not be possible until Phil unequalled, with the publican from Taylor loosens his grip on world darts.

Newcastle-under-Lyme having won a ver- Until that time the Embassy will consion of the world title eight times in his tinue to witness the likes of Hankey, thirteen-year top class career. Indeed his Barneveld, Beaton and possibly Mason god-like status (P.D.C. champion since becoming world champions the only way 1995) has in many ways kept the Embassy they see possible, through the Embassy. alive.

At the end of the day darts is pure The Embassy championship remains entertainment, thrilling the crowds and a realistic target for Taylor’s rivals, as the bringing pleasure to millions across the relatively unknown Ted ‘The Count’ globe (although mainly in Britain it must Hankey proved in his impressive 6-0 vic- be confessed), and for this reason we must tory over Ronnie Baxter in this year’s preach that darts is truly a great sport final. The 170 outshot with which hankey rather than a game!!!

York Student Vision

We were given “fins” (flippers to you and I), masks, and a tank mounted on a stab jacket (a rather ingenious piece of kit that can be inflated and deflated depending on whether you want to rise or sink in the water). Once kitted out the serious

business of diving began. pool session at which our progress was We were taught the simple techniques reviewed. This was followed by a chip run of diving, the hand signals, the use of the for all the club to make sure that they had tank and breathing apparatus, and of taken in enough nutrients during the day. I course the vital skill of blowing air rings. was assured by everyone that this was a It was very strange at vital part of the roufirst because you have Certain members of the tine. to convince your

All that is club could be found body that you don’t left is for me to need your nose, and thank everyone who in the warmer seas that it is not strange to made me feel so at of the Carnary Islands be under water home, and stress over the summer breathing normally. what good fun it However, once I was. Andy tells me got used to this the experience it was great. that they even dive in the sea, swimming We swam around the pool, practised rising with the fish, and rumours abound that and descending in the water, and Lee was certain members of the club could be there to offer advice with anything that felt found in the warmer seas of the Carnary slightly awkward or out of place.

Islands over the summer.

Once this had been done we were put through the basic snorkling techniques.

This started with an 8 length swim, something which in theory should have been a breeze, but in practice proved to be more of a gale on a cold day.

Anyway, having puffed, strained, and doggy paddled my way through that we were taught the basic technique of snorkeling. This included how to fin properly, dives, how to clear the snorkel (much swallowing due to bad technique!). And that was it. A quick and easy, and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to diving.

Fish - in the sea There was a meeting at the end of the

Reaching for the Sky

Jumping out of planes is getting worryingly popular. Paul Wrigglesworth finds out why EVERY JOE Bloggs you meet claims that they would love to do a parachute jump and that they wouldn’t be scared at all, and yet simultaneously, they cower behind the excuse that they’re “just a poor student” who can’t afford it at the moment.

One member of York University Parachute Club told me that really the only thing that you have to worry about is not the fact that you’ve just jumped out of a plane and are hurtling towards earth, but rather the realization that you might be “a bit weird”.

And there is no doubt that jumping from a plane at 10, 000 feet is not what your average student gets up to at the weekend. But lets face it, its slightly more exciting than going down the ‘Charles’ and then playing that hung-over college hockey game on a Sunday morning.

Ant Waldock, one of the more experienced members of the club described the combination of the adrenalin rush and an amazing sense of calm and quiet as you drift towards the ground.

Beth King, a newcomer to the club added that parachuting was the “ultimate experience”. Further reason to join the club is that it is like an ongoing holiday,

Thank God it opened - and now how do you make it close?

with weekends away, drinking games and numerous socials all thrown into the bargain. The have also organized trips to Spain, France and the Czech Republic and will be going to California in April with the British Collegiate Parachuting Organization.

The club itself has been running in its present form since 1995 when Paul Hollow took over and has grown dramatically in size to currently having over 50 members. This makes it one of the biggest and strongest university clubs in the country, shown when the club came second in the National League last year.

However, new members are always welcome, and most are trained through the RAP course. Paul Hollow is a qualified instructor with around 900 jumps under his belt, so you’re in safe hands.

You begin with a Static Line jump (trainspotters take note) whereby the instructor pulls the chord for you ( not that you’re likely to forget!), and progress eventually to a Cat 8, where you can freefall. The point of the system is to ensure that you are not overloaded before you are ready.

Now that dubious claim that you can’t afford it - well the initial cost is £130, a price they are working to reduce. For that you get one day training and a jump.

However, once you’ve done that, the price is just £17 a time and then you can always make back the money by packing parachutes.

If you’re interested in taking the leap of faith and then being able to brag to all your mates about how brave you are, then you can get in touch with the club by e-mailing Socs 213. Alternatively they can usually be found lingering in Goodricke bar every Monday at 1.15pm. But be sure to wrap up warm, it’s a bit chilly at 14, 000 feet!

4th February, 2000 Issue 116

Vision

Ikon & Diva

Sport

the home of Cheese and Crackers Bus Times and Enquiries (01904) 693999

Football Club Stripped for Cash Stuart Emmerson pulls no punches in his Full Monty account of the season’s most revealing charity fund-raiser DISILLUSIONED WITH modelling on the international stage, several enterprising York University footballers decided to raise some money for testicular cancer ...by posing naked!

their freedom of expression on the field revelled in their new “free role”. Cheeks could be nestled close together without fear of batty boy intrusions.

In all seriousness a lot of effort did go into the production of this calendar and there have been teething problems in Forget Beckham and Ginola - soc- raising money to finance it. It was very cer’s new supermodels are Phil Darby, cold (sometimes snowing) and the artisJim Horsfield, John Lockley, James tic expertise was of the highest quality Thomas, Chris White and their hard- with a choreographer called in for the tackling team-mates. group shots.

With a few strate The calendar has gically positioned already attracted pubThese players, footballs to preserve licity outside of the renowned for their modesty, Steve Haines university.

York was called upon to freedom of expression Evening Press covsnap the players in a on the field, revelled in ered a story on it variety of poses which which featured on the their new “free role” front page. There has will together form a cheeky calendar. also been interest Team captain Jim from The Sun and Horsfield thought that a calendar “would Channel 4. be a good way of raising a bit of money Apparently the press were also keen and a good laugh”. Apparently the idea to offer a description of the players footof an ‘artistic’ calendar originated from balling talents but gave up when the the ladies’ hockey club, although sadly ambiguity of the descriptions provided, this dream has yet to be realised. (“Whizbee goes down too easy”) became

However, at the time of going to blatant. press, several mem Whilst only tastebers of the football photos will be The team are keen to ful team had already released in this much offered themselves as stress that the day of awaited calendar, a willing photographers the photo shoot itself black market is should the lovely already up and runwas bitterly cold, ladies change their ning for the unseen minds. accounting for rumours photos with prices The team are keen starting at £10. that to stress that the day James Thomas has of the photo shoot “written off his politthere were no itself was bitterly ical career” and is “pythons” in sight cold, thus accounting contemplating for rumours that there becoming a recluse were no “pythons” in sight. in his native Wales.

One member, blatantly embarrassed The calendar is scheduled for release by the mediocrity of his crown jewels, in 2001 with the price as yet undecided. even came up with that old favourite: Clearly it is entirely tongue-in-cheek and “I’ve just been swimming!” is not to be taken seriously.

Shooting the calendar was in fact However, the money raised for char“hard work”. Fortunately the players ity is serious and that’s why when the knew each other well, so any misplaced calendar goes on sale everyone should hands were simply laughed off. buy a copy - even if it’s just to “use as a In fact, these players renowned for table mat when you’re eating your meat

York Student Vision

Harding Proposes Two-year Presidency

ATHLETIC UNION President Ben Harding is to submit a motion at the week four UGM to give incumbent AU Presidents the opportunity to run for another term in office.

The proposed change, which would take effect after a three year lag period, is intended to create greater continuity within the AU as it is felt that certain areas are currently underdeveloped.

In outlining the limitations of a one year post, Ben said: “Developing sponsorship generally takes a long time as relationships with companies must initially be based on small events before stepping up to larger ones. A one-year term is difficult because everything you put on is for the first time and so you don’t get to learn from experience.”

Advances are dependent upon a new President sharing the ideas of his or her predecessor and any breakdown in this continuity can lead to projects that have taken months of development being sidelined.

by Tim Burroughs

Ben cites the AU Mart as an event where much development is needed: “It should be a place where companies come in and interact. Further improvements could also be made in areas such as transport, merchandising, Race Day, old boy links and facilities.”

The Roses event in particular would

“A one-year term is difficult because everything you put on is for the first time and so you don’t get to learn from experience” be greatly affected by a two-year presidency: “Things such as liaising with departments, talking to exam boards and arranging sponsorship are issues wherever Roses is held. But the ideal way would be to have the away year as your first year so you could watch to see how it is done and then plan ahead to ensure

efficiency the following year.”

The essential advantage of a twoyear post, though, is that it gives a President time to understand the Athletic Union itself. As Ben maintains: “A lot of decisions you make are judgements based upon how the AU will respond and that is dependant upon experience.

“From my point of view the only problem would be convincing people to run for a second term. You would have to consider your position in terms of a job, finance and staying in York for two years after graduation.

“But it is a lot of fun and you get the chance to take on a lot of responsibility that can provide a useful stepping stone between university and employment.”

He sees the election process itself as benefiting from the change: “To stand against an AU President you would have to be organised and highly motivated. As you would not start the campaign on an equal footing with your opponent, you would need to find out about the job and how to do it effectively. This can only be of benefit in the long term.”

4th February, 2000 Issue 116