Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to first week here at the Oxford Union.

Before I begin, I would like to apologise to our guests tonight, for I meant none of you any disrespect by not attending dinner. I do sincerely hope you leave tonight with fond memories of our society.

It’s customary for me at this stage to announce any upcoming events or perhaps even make a joke, however, tonight I will do no such thing. Tonight, I wish to say something a bit more than that.

I joined this society, because I believe in free speech and proper debate. With that in mind, many of you might be aware that earlier this week the Union’s committee voted to spending the society’s money to pay for the President’s personal legal fees. In response, over 30 members and I attempted to move that discussion and vote to you here tonight, so that you may properly queston the reasoning for such a decision.

Yesterday, I thought my attempts to have a free and open discussion about this were blocked and I was told that we ‘should not be airing our dirty laundry in public’. This kind of a response is not fitting for a society which supposedly upholds the principle of free speech. It makes us seem cowardly and it looks like we are avoiding answering the difficult questions in public. If we had nothing to worry about then why should it ever matter where such a discussion takes place.

In light of these actions and following a persistent campaign against me for ever questioning him, I have suffered repeated and personal attacks.

Therefore, tonight ladies and gentlemen I refuse to sit next to a President who believes such actions are acceptable. I refuse to sit next to a President who does not believe in freedom of speech. And I refuse to sit next to a President who has lied to members and tried to cover it all up with your money.

It fills me with great regret to have to make this choice and I sincerely apologise to you all and especially to our guests tonight who do not deserve any of this. I cannot, in all good conscience, continue to sit here tonight and remain silent in the face of a President who shows such distain for the society that he has pledged to serve.

Once again, I am truly sorry.

After a week of turmoil in the Oxford Union, Kostas Chryssanthopoulos, the Union Librarian, walked out of the Thursday debate following an impassioned speech in which he declared that he refused to “sit next to a President who does not believe in freedom of speech”.

The Librarian’s intervention comes after a week in which the Oxford Union has seen itself embroiled in controversy as the Union President sought to use the society’s money to cover his legal expenses after a defamatory article was published by student website The Tab. The decision, which was passed on Monday, was then challenged by a Special Adjournment Motion proposed by Chryssanthopoulos and signed by 39 other members.

Following the proposal of this motion, an extraordinary Standing Committee meeting was called to withdraw the decision to cover the President’s legal fees, which was passed by 11 votes to 3. However, a number of members remained dissatisfied that the issue was not to be debated at the open debate on Thursday.

The Librarian’s intervention followed the customary opening speeches by the President, Ben Sullivan, and the Secretary, Lisa Wehden, which are usually reserved for private business to do with the society. However, the Librarian then launched into a two-minute speech in protest against the Sullivan, in which he claimed that, “I refuse to sit next to a President who does not believe in freedom of speech. And I refuse to sit next to a President who has lied to members and tried to cover it all up with our money”.

“I cannot in all good conscience continue to sit here tonight and remain silent in the face of a President who shows such disdain for the society he has pledged to serve”.

Chryssanthopoulos claimed that his attempts to have a “free and open discussion” were “blocked”, adding that “If we had nothing to worry about then why should it ever matter where such a discussion takes place”.

Following his speech, Chryssanthopoulos walked out of the debating chamber to strong applause, leaving the Librarian’s seat vacant.

Charles Malton, the Union Treasurer, invited members who wished to direct questions to the President to do so after the main debate had finished in their own speeches. The debate, which proceeded as normal, asked the house to debate the motion “Promiscuity is a virtue, not a vice”.

In his following speech, Malton said, “I know that as a committee we voted at the start of term to organise expenditure to protect the reputation of the union, there were libellous claims made in a newspaper article which had nothing to do with ‘the banter squadron’ as you may have heard it reported in The Tab, it was far more serious, and damaging, and false.

“As a committee we made the decision that it was damaging to the union to allow that to happen, that those false claims about things that went on at meetings should be put right, because those kinds of falsity should not be allowed to be published [to a wide audience] and that’s why I, along with many others voted to pay the legal fees, to defend the union, not to defend Ben Sullivan, but to defend the union. They [the lawyers] were employed not in a personal capacity to defend Ben Sullivan, they were employed by this organisation, to protect its reputation against things which were incredibly damaging, incredibly serious, and incredibly untrue.”

The full text of Kostas Chryssanthopoulos’ speech is available here. 

A motion to declare war on Trinity was proposed to the Wadham SU at its inaugural meeting. It called for a siege engine to “forcibly break down” Trinity’s gates, annex its lawn and fine Wadhamites inviting Trinitarians to College, among other state of war initiatives.

Though Trinity is the historic rival of Balliol, Wadham SU’s Officer Report noted that the feud has “died down somewhat.”

Joe Miles, Wadham’s SU officer and initiator of the war motion, concurred that, “I didn’t think Balliol was doing enough.”

Moreover, Trinity’s recent expansion, which the Officer Report clarified as, “flaunting its obnoxiously large lawn in close proximity to the Wadham grounds,” has raised eyebrows among some of Wadham’s SU officers. As Miles noted, “I have long warned of the threat posed by Trinity to our way of life and our heritage, and I could not stand by and do nothing.”

The war motion, however, failed to pass through Wadham’s SU committee.

Anya Metzer, President of Wadham’s SU, stated that, “most of the SU felt that our time could be better spent on other projects and really by-and-large Trinity do not pose any immediate threat to the security of Wadham College.”

Reflecting on the motion’s defeat, Miles stated, “Wadham has opted not to take a military stance, and I have since accepted I was wrong to initiate hostilities since diplomacy would be a much more preferable option.”

He went on, “I would be interested in speaking to the chair of Trinity’s JCR and seeing if we can resolve our differences amicably.”

Meanwhile, news of Wadham’s war motion was met with extreme skepticism at Trinity. Kyran Schmidt, Trinity JCR’s Publicity and Campaign officer, remarked, “Wadham are a bunch of dorks.”

Similarly, an undergraduate from Trinity stated, “Wadhamites are an inspiration for birth control.”

The Westgate Alliance has released plans for the re-development of the Westgate Centre, which will gain 100 new shops, including a large John Lewis store. The project is expected to cost 400 million pounds and be completed by 2017.

Apart from shops the new Centre will also have a cinema, an underground car park and a roof top terrace. The expansion was first proposed in 1988 but it has suffered from delays for a variety of reasons.

Public opinion appears to be largely in favour of the project. A public consultation has shown that a majority of respondents support the proposal, as has an ongoing poll by the Oxford Mail.

There has however been some opposition by the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society concerning the impact of the development on city views.

The society commented that, “Buildings should preserve and enhance historic environment by opening up townscape, not concealing it.”

A second year Merton historian and member of the society has also added, “The more modern aspects of the building seem slightly out of touch with the rest of the city.”

The Westgate Alliance has emphasised that the development will fit into its surroundings. The development manager Sara Fuge stated that “all our architects have done a lot of research into the buildings around Oxford and they have taken a lot of cues from that.”

Meanwhile first year Georgiana Devlin said, “I don’t care about the design of the building as long as Primark and Poundland are still there.” Neither shop has yet announced whether it intends to operate in the new site.

The new Westgate will have over 72,000 square metres of new retail space and is projected to create 3,400 new jobs.

BBC Trust Chairman and Oxford University Chancellor Lord Chris Patten has been accused of being “distracted from serving licence-payers properly” in a letter from the BBC Radio Forum.

The letter, sent to culture secretary Sajid Javid, urges that the “grave failings” by the BBC under Patten are not repeated, asking that the appointment of his successor, due to begin work in May 2015, be “as transparent as possible so that the best candidate for the job is picked.”

The BBC Radio Forum, a national message board for licence fee payers, represents 4,000 supporters who include BBC radio producers, the TaxPayers’ Alliance and MediaWatch-UK. The letter was written on behalf of “thousands of listeners who have petitioned the BBC about various management failures in recent years.”

According to the letter, Patten has “proved himself to be a particularly poor BBC Trust chairman in terms of his main duty, which is representing the interests of licence fee-payers.

“He has been a dreadful advertisement for the BBC due to his astonishingly patronising approach to anyone who has ever questioned him on any matter relating to the BBC.”

Patten’s tenure as BBC Trust Chair has been frequently characterised, to borrow the words of Peter Oborne, by a “lack of grip” and an “evasion of responsibility”.

In particular, the letter referred to his role in the controversy surrounding the Pollard Report which looked into the Jimmy Savile affair in 2012. Patten refused to allow the report to be changed, even though Nick Pollard, who chaired the £3m inquiry, admitted its exclusion was “a mistake”.

However, in the letter, BBC Radio Forum spokesperson Tamsin Vincent suggested that the failures of his tenure were down to “outside interests” which have “distracted Lord Patten from serving licence payers properly.”
Alongside his unpaid position as Chancellor of Oxford University, a role he has held since 2003, Patten also has five other paid jobs.

The Forum’s letter asked that the government do “all that [they] can to insist that Lord Patten’s successor is required to do the job on a full-time basis. Lord Patten claims to devote ‘3 to 4 days per week’ to the BBC, for which he is paid £110,000.”

However, Oxford students have been quick to defend the time commitments of their Chancellor. Recognising Patten as a “very eminent figure in British public life who masterminded John Major’s 1992 election campaign”, first year Jesus historian Joel Nelson told Cherwell: “I find it unsurprising that a man as distinguished as Chris Patten should be extremely busy.

“Harold Macmillan was Oxford chancellor, and he must have had the same, if not more on his plate than Patten.” Exeter’s Phil Bell also claims to having “spoken to him once at a barbecue” and says “he was very friendly”, evidence that the Chancellor still makes time for social occasions. Both Patten and the BBC Trust refused to comment on the letter.

It has emerged that Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, is the second highest paid university boss in the country.
In the year 2012-2013, the Vice-Chancellor received a pay-package of £434,000 – including pension – which is a 2.36 per cent increase on his 2011-12 salary.

This news has sparked concern amongst those who are currently campaigning for higher wages for all of Oxford University’s academic staff.

While Hamilton’s 2012-2013 pay increase of 2.36% was nearly in line with the inflation rate of the time (which was recorded at 2.9% in July 2013), academics were offered a far smaller wage increase.

The President of the University and College Union in Oxford, Terry Hoad, who campaigns for higher wages for academics and helped organise two academic strikes last year, pointed out this discrepancy. Talking to Cherwell, he said, “The University and College Union is about to consider whether to accept a pay offer which would see a 1% increase for 2012-13 and 2% for 2013-14. That offer represents a further significant cut in the real-terms value of our members’ pay, losses which have been suffered annually for a long time.”

He continued, “It is therefore galling that the already high salaries of vice-chancellors, including our own in Oxford – salaries that are many times higher than those of most other university staff – are increasing by very large amounts. It is not that redistributing the Vice-Chancellor’s pay increase among those other staff members would give them significant increases, but more that we are not seeing much sense of collegiality and even-handedness.”

“Vice-Chancellors have demanding jobs, but all university staff share responsibility for the very important work of sustaining the teaching, learning, and research for which Oxford has such a distinguished record. The Oxford Magazine has looked to the Vice-Chancellor to take a lead in work to ensure ‘our well-being into the future as a world-class university founded on academic and democratic values’. Those values should surely include the principle of fair rewards for all those on whom that well-being depends.”

However, the University of Oxford has said that the Vice-Chancellor’s salary is simply a reflection of the university’s wealth and global standing.
A spokesperson for the university stated, “According to last year’s Times Higher World University Rankings, Oxford is the number one university in the UK and number two in the world. It is consistently ranked as one of the two best universities in the UK and among the handful of best universities in the world. Its research output is vast, it has an almost billion-pound-a-year turnover, not including the colleges and the Oxford University Press, and it has great institutional complexity. The Vice-Chancellor’s salary reflects that.”

This view is not necessarily shared by Oxford students. A member of the Oxford Activist Network, Xavier Cohen, said he thought the example of the Vice-Chancellor’s pay was indicative of what he termed the ‘marketization of education’.

He told Cherwell, “A democratically unaccountable and unelected technocrat takes charge and power away from the members of our university, when we have not asked them to, and frames this power in terms of a burdensome bureaucratic responsibility that they deserve tremendous remuneration for.”

“The VC’s pay and power effectively takes pay and power away from the members of our institution, and to fight this means fighting the anti-democratic neoliberal rationality that it comes from.”

Other students appear firmly in agreement with Cohen’s point. Katharine Baxter, Keble student and student activist in last year’s academic strikes, said, “In a year when striking staff have, effectively, been fined for participation in unionised industrial action it is unacceptable that Oxford Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton is the second highest paid VC in the country.”

An Oxford NUS delegate Nathan Akehurst added, “Vice-Chancellors’ salaries have risen by 8% in the last years whilst lecturers have faced the longest sustained pay cut since the Second World War. Pay distribution in HE (and in society in general) is unfair, which is why NUS voted to campaign for managers to be paid a maximum of five times the lowest-paid worker’s salary.”

Despite receiving a pay-package which is just under three times larger than David Cameron’s salary of £142,500, Hamilton’s salary still falls short of that of the new director of the London School of Economics, Craig Calhoun.

According to The Times Higher Education, Calhoun received £466,000 in 2012-2013, making him the highest paid university boss in the UK.