St. Edmund Hall students were delighted by this week’s safe return of their MCR teddy bear mascot, who went missing under mysterious circumstances over two months ago.

It has since come to light that members of the Christ Church GCR abducted ‘Julian’ the teddy bear and took him on a day outing to Paris. The kidnappers revealed their plot by publishing a photo story of the trip on BuzzFeed, which has since gone viral.

According to ‘The Visitor of Christ Church’, an anonymous collection of Christ Church students linked with the theft, four students kidnapped Julian on a “midnight sting operation” on 8 March.

The Visitor told Cherwell, “During the past six weeks, Teddy has spent time with different members of the GCR, and all of us here at Christ Church have come to love him.”

“He made his first official appearance as a Member of the House on May Morning. It was around this time that we began to hear rumours that Teddy Hall were looking for their mascot and GCR Secretary Josephine Rendall began circulating notice of Teddy Hall’s desire to have him back. Teddy was heartened that someone had finally taken notice of his absence, and decided to return home.”

Rendall arranged this week’s handover with Teddy Hall, but not before Christ Church students had the last laugh. Last Friday afternoon, Christ Church members “moved by their overflowing love for the bear” arranged for an anonymous student to fly to Paris with Julian at 6am the next day.

“Teddy spent a lovely day in Paris (shout-out to the Minnie Mouses from Brenda’s hen do) and was back at Christ Church before dawn. He spent his last day at Christ Church in the loving embrace of our members,” the Visitor reported.

The BuzzFeed story shows Julian visiting various attractions and taking photos with tourists and Parisian locals. Dressed in a Christ Church hoodie, the Teddy Hall mascot travelled to the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs de Mars, the Eiffel Tower, and the Shakespeare & Company bookshop.

The photo story also shows an airport security guard handcuffing the bear, with the caption, “Teddy was shitting himself. He was worried there might be some trace substances on him after that crazy Freshers Week party!

The Teddy Hall MCR received their mascot on Monday, to great acclaim on Facebook. The official St Edmund Hall Twitter account welcomed Julian back, reporting that he had been returned with a souvenir photo from his captors.

The bear’s return has been greeted with joy, with Teddy Hall DPhil student Gemma Prata among those relieved by the bear’s return to the college this Monday.

“It’s great to have him back in one piece, although we would have appreciated having him back before the rugby Cuppers final which he always used to go along to – the Hall lost by a very small margin to St John’s/St Anne’s!” Prata
commented.

“We were going for our third year in a row as champions and Teddy’s presence could have made all the difference!”

Julian the teddy was unavailable for comment.

Exeter College has announced that its Governing Body has elected to grant J.K. Rowling an Honorary Fellowship.

The announcement comes after Rowling made a visit to the college in February of this year. During her visit she was in conversation at the Sheldonian Theatre with Jeri Johnson, fellow in English and Sub-Rector at Exeter.

The pair discussed the themes of ‘Mortality and Morality’ in Rowling’s work, including both The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling, which was published in 2013 under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Exeter’s statutes state that honorary fellowships are awarded to, “any distinguished person,” and Rowling has been added to a list of honorary fellows which includes Queen Sofia of Spain.

In addition, there are a number of literary figures on the list who are alumni of the college, such as Martin Amis, Alan Bennett and Philip Pullman.

Queen Sofia of Spain visited Oxford earlier this term to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the college.

The College issued a statement on its website, saying, “Ms Rowling was elected in recognition of the extraordinary contribution she has made to the field of literature, and in particular to children’s reading and literacy.”
A medic at Exeter said, “I understand the significance which the Harry Potter series has for many people, but it seems to me that making J. K. Rowling an Honorary Fellow is a bit like name-dropping.”

Grace McGowan, a Fresher reading English at the College disagreed, explaining, “I think it’s a great way to recognize her achievement, especially as her books have got so many children to start reading.”

This is not the first time that Rowling has been granted a fellowship to an organization. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a post for which she was elected in 2002. In total, she holds 6 honorary degrees, including ones from Harvard, Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Exeter, where she did an undergraduate degree in French and Classics.

The release date for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a film based on a 2001 Harry Potter spin-off that Rowling wrote in aid of Comic Relief, was recently revealed as 18 November 2016.

The book was billed as a textbook for Hogwarts in Care of Magical Creatures. Rowling has agreed to co-write the scripts, as she did for the Harry Potter film franchise.

Exeter announced that it is “delighted Ms. Rowling has accepted and is pleased to welcome her to the Fellowship”.

According to the college’s statutes, any person elected to hold an Honorary Fellowship is elected for life.

Groundbreaking research led by scientists including Oxford palaeontologist Dr. Roger Benson appears to have to revealed why certain dinosaurs became extinct and some did not.

The palaeontologists’ work shows that dinosaurs below a certain body size successfully evolved to become birds, while those with larger bodies became extinct.

According to Dr. Benson, the research team, “travelled all over the world on our mission to weigh as many dinosaurs as possible”. When full skeletons were not available, the researchers calculated dinosaurs’ weight by extrapolating from the weight of leg-bones.”

The key to the most successful evolutionary line seems to have been small body size. Direct bird ancestors were the only dinosaurs to weigh in at under one kilogram.

The researchers believe that this direct link with dinosaurs might explain why birds, compared to most other surviving classes of animals, have such extraordinary diversity. Birds are even described by the authors as being ‘extant dinosaurs’.

Dr. Benson explained to Cherwell why this report is so significant for solving the mystery of how and why the animal kingdom has developed from dinosaurs.

He said, “In their quest to understand the origins of ecological diversity, biologists have focussed on understanding exceptionally diverse modern groups such as birds or mammals. They have found that they diversified relatively recently, over about 100 million years, by a process called adaptive radiation.

“But animals have been evolving for over 540 million years, so previous work had been quite focused on what palaeontologists would view as relatively recent evolutionary events.”

However, Dr. Benson and his colleagues decided to take a new approach to tackling the study of evolution.

“We looked further back, analysing rates of evolution in extinct lineages related to birds – the dinosaurs,” he explained, “We found evidence of continual ecological innovation for over 170 million years along the dinosaur lineage leading to birds. This is different to the widely accepted ‘burst-like’ concept of an adaptive radiation that you get from studying only non-extinct species.”

Josie Dyster, a first-year French and German student from Hertford, questioned the research’s findings. “Dinosaurs are just a hoax to hide the existence of Pokemon,” she commented.

The Save Port Meadow campaign has complained after Longcross, the contractor involved with the controversial Castle Mill development, were awarded runners-up in the 2014 Considerate Constructor Award.

The award is issued by the Considerate Constructors Scheme, a non-profit independent organisation which aims to improve the image of the building industry.

The campaigners have complained about the company’s apparent lack of transparency concerning the diesel spill of 2013 which was, according to the Save Port Meadow campaigners, never adequately explained.

The campaign asserted, “Although we did not make a complaint to the Considerate Constructor award, complaints were made about the major breach of the Ground Contamination condition direct to Longcross, to Oxford University, Oxford City Council, to our local County Councillor, to Nicola Blackwood MP, to The Environment Agency (whose complaint to the Council about the Ground Contamination condition first alerted us to the issue) and to the Police, either formally by Save Port Meadow campaign or by members of the public independently who made us aware ex post facto.”

The complaints from Save Port Meadow are not directed against the Considerate Constructors Scheme itself, as the organisers of the award have shown that their criteria have been met by Longcross.

However, the Save Port Meadow campaigners continue to assert that their concerns were never addressed, and that by awarding any prize to Longcross the Considerate Constructors Scheme is discredited. According to the Considerate Constructors Scheme, “The Considerate Constructors Scheme’s National Site Awards are given to sites who have achieved the highest scores following visits to the sites by one of our experienced Monitors.

“They visit each registered site twice during a 12-18 month registration period and look to assess the site’s performance against our Code of Considerate Practice based on what they see and hear at the time of the visit, and on their discussions with the site manager.

“We are unable to assess sites on a continuous basis due to cost and logistical constraints and these visits therefore inevitably provide a snapshot of how that site is performing. Our Monitors attempt to take into account the context of each site and any constraints or issues they have to deal with based on that particular project.”

The Scheme’s Public Liason Offi cer David Crook commented, “The Monitor who visited this site was aware of the strength of public feeling against this project and the many challenges this created for the contractor. A number of exceptional initiatives were introduced and a very high standard of performance was witnessed by the Scheme’s Monitors at both visits carried out.

“We therefore feel that the award presented to this site is also appropriate and refl ects the hard work and eff orts made by the site team in what was clearly a diffi cult situation.”

However, Save Port Meadow have continued to oppose the decision, telling Cherwell, “We are stunned that this award has been given to Longcross for the Castle Mill development because serious contamination risks to students and their families are ongoing following the diesel spillage for which we understand Longcross was responsible. Longcross did not report the spillage for 3 months potentially putting public health and the environment at risk.”

The Considerate Constructors Scheme and Longcross were unavailable for comment when approached. Oxford University have declined to comment.

Christ Church has appointed the Reverend Canon Professor Martyn William Percy as the new Dean to replace the outgoing Reverend Christopher Lewis, who has been in the position since 2002.

Professor Percy has been the Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon since 2004, and is married to Dr Emma Percy, Chaplain of Trinity College.

He also holds the distinction of being the only real-world theologian to be quoted in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Commenting on the “exciting and challenging” nature of the job, Professor Percy stated, “I am very much looking forward to serving the unique foundation that is Christ Church – a college of the University and the Cathedral of the Diocese. I am particularly looking forward to working together with colleagues throughout the College and the Cathedral, as well as with the senior staff of the Diocese.”

Christ Church has a unique status, being the only academic institution in the world that is also a cathedral. As the Visitor of Christ Church is the reigning monarch, the Dean of Christ Church is one of the few academic positions that must be personally approved by the Queen.

David Nowell, Senior Censor at Christ Church, commented to Cherwell, “Martyn is an excellent fit for the Deanship of Christ Church in a number of important respects: he is an active academic, committed to the importance of teaching and research; and he has experience of college life at Cambridge and at Cuddesdon. Martyn also has wide experience as a priest.”

He further noted, “We look forward to welcoming Martyn and his family to Christ Church in the autumn.”

A second year philosopher at Christ Church commented, “We look forward to welcoming the new Dean to Christ Church and I am sure the dean will enjoy his time here. Christ Church often attracts media attention for all the wrong reasons, and I hope he will be a good fi gure to attempt to challenge this.”

Percy is due to take up the post at Christ Church in October 2014.

Cambridge has beaten Oxford to the top of a recent University League table.

The Complete University Guide creates the league table each year ranking universities in a number of areas, including graduate prospects, student satisfaction and entry requirements.

Cambridge has topped the table for the fourth year running, with an overall score of 1000 compared to Oxford’s 993. They outperformed Oxford in the categories of entry standards, graduate prospects, student satisfaction, research assessment, student-staff ratio and facilities spending.

However, Oxford beats its rival in the categories of good honours and academic services spending.

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford told Cherwell, “University league table results all vary, depending on the factors they use to calculate their rankings. For example, the Times Higher Education world rankings has rated Oxford as the strongest university in the UK for the past three years and the second strongest in the world for the past two.

“Despite the differences between them, all league tables consistently show Oxford in the very forefront of the world’s universities, both for the quality of its teaching and the excellence of its research.”

The London School of Economics has retained its place in third and St Andrews have moved from sixth to fourth in the space of a year.

London Metropolitan was ranked last in the table of the 123 UK universities.

Oxford fresher, James Edmonds, commented, “Cambridge doesn’t have the allure of Wednesday Night Park End to contend with.”