The President of Trinity College, Sir Ivor Roberts, has released a statement of apology following growing opposition to the fact that the college hosted the controversial Christian Concern for their annual ‘Wilberforce Academy’ conference.

In his statement, Sir Ivor said, “Trinity has been contacted by a number of current and old members about the holding in College of a conference organised by Christian Concern. When the booking was taken for this conference we were not aware of the organisation’s background. The name rang no bells.

“What was known was that the delegates were to be addressed by both a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and another Anglican bishop, and so the request to use Trinity facilities appeared to be perfectly reasonable and one that we would have no cause to question.”

He went on to specify exactly what action Trinity would take in response to vocal opposition to the group’s presence in the college by students, explaining, “We have set up a review of our procedures for college use by outside agencies. Trinity regrets that any current or old members were upset by the fact that we gave houseroom unwittingly to Christian Concern.
Any profits from the conference will be given to an appropriate charity.’

Christian Concern have been branded homophobic in the past, largely due to their staunch opposition to same sex marriage. In a blog posted in May last year, the group’s CEO Andrea Williams accused the incumbent government of extraordinary arrogance for attempting to pass a bill on same sex marriage, and asked “Why are they so committed to imposing same-
sex marriage on us all?”

Trinity’s own Christian group, the Christian Union, has distanced itself from Christian Concern, with a representative stating that, “The Christian Union in Trinity were not involved in the conference or the decision by college to host it. The CU is committed to sharing the love of God with all people in our college and in the wider university.”

In response to accusations of radical and divisive views held by the organisation, Christian Concern’s founder Williams hit back with the assertion that, “The views held by Christian Concern are not ‘radical’ in any way. They are the views held historically by the Christian Church for the past 2000 years and should therefore come as no shock to anyone.

“Freedom of speech and freedom within learning has been a principle which we should all strive to maintain. The day when academic institutions, or governments, start ‘banning’ free speech and free ‘discussion’ at universities is the day when we start to see our society censored, and the very start of ‘mind control’.’

An undergraduate student of Trinity College, Crawford Jamieson, held views more in keeping with the vast majority of Trinity students, however. He told Cherwell, “LGBTQ students within Trinity College certainly felt, and quite rightly, that the presence of Christian

Concern within the college was a slap in the face. However, the mistake does seem to have been genuine on the part of the college and the President’s response has been appropriate.”

Trinity is now expected to take similar action to that taken by Exeter College last year. In 2012, Exeter also faced controversy for allowing Christian Concern to use the college facilities for their conference. The college donated profits made to causes supported by LGBTQ, the sexual rights and awareness group.

Katie Colliver, OUSU’s Vice President for Welfare and Equal Opportunities was not completely satisfied with the outcome. While pleased to see that Trinity had taken on board the objections of its students and would be reviewing its booking procedures, she added, “It is frustrating that they were unable to learn from Exeter’s experience last year.’

The extension, developed by Owen Campbell-Moore of Keble College, allows users to encode secret messages on pictures uploaded to Facebook. ‘Secretbook’ then dechipers the hidden text for those with the correct password 

Campbell-Moore told Cherwell, “About a year ago I discovered a really creepy US Air Force grant (af121-050) which was looking for a system to collect and extract meaning from conversations extracted from social media. The thought stuck with me that it is unclear precisely how much access the US government has to private data on social networks and hence better tools really need to exist to facilitate private communication online.” 

The extension, available from Campbell-Moore’s personal blog, has already been downloaded 7,000 times. A Mashable article covering the story has been tweeted almost 1,500 times.

In order to work, both the sender and the recipient must download the extension. Once downloaded any user who has the correct password can access the secret message on the image by pressing ctl+alt+a whilst viewing the correct photo.

Campbell-Moore developed the extension last year, in a project supervised by Professor Andrew Ker. Ker told Cherwell, “The app works by modifying a photo, invisibly, to hide a small amount of text (about one tweet), which only a person with the right password can decode. The main challenge in the project was to make sure that the message survives the process of being uploaded, when it is recompressed by Facebook.” 

In a blog post, Campbell-Moore explained, “The extension utilises a technique known as JPEG Steganography to hide secret messages in photos by making many visually imperceptible changes to encode the secret data.” 

The post continued, “Steganography tools have traditionally been complicated (and often command line based) so a core goal to this project was to make Steganography easy and accessible so more people can take advantage of the privacy it provides.”

The Daily Mail reported that the technology could be used by terrorists. However, Campbell-Moore’s blog stated, “This application is only suitable for casual users and is totally useless for serious applications such as terrorism since detection would not be difficult for organisations such as the NSA.” 

Facebook were unavailable for comment.

Britain’s largest public sector union has alleged that over 300 NHS workers providing support for those with learning difficulties face being sacked by their employer TQtwentyone, unless they agree to changes in pay and working conditions.

Unison have stated that the workers they represent face pay cuts of up to £3500 from their annual salary, and their holidays being shortened by eight days a year. The union say that workers in Oxfordshire, as well as Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, will be affected.

TQtwentyone, which provides care services for people with learning difficulties, rejected Unison’s criticism. A spokesperson told Cherwell, “A number of claims made by the union are incorrect and misleading. TQtwentyone has an excellent record of providing social care for a number of years. Our priority is to continue to exist to provide that care and support to people.”

They continued, “To be able to operate our income needs to match our costs – at the moment it doesn’t. We are trying to protect the jobs of our valued staff. Our support services are not funded by health budgets through the NHS; they are mostly commissioned by local authority social services departments.”

TQtwentyone rejected the accusation they are “sacking people”. The spokesperson stated that staff affected will not see changes for over a year, and will keep the same NHS pensions, bank holiday enhancements, and travel benefits. 

TQtwentyone said, “Staff have been fully supported through this unsettling period of change and we have continued to try to work with the unions over these changes.” 

Dan Turner, Publicity Officer of Oxford University Labour Club, argued, “Cuts like these make an absolute mockery of the Government’s claim that their efforts to tackle public sector spending are fair or effective. It’s clear that the pressures exerted by three years of austerity have already had a demoralising effect on staff, and the inevitable result of further attacks on workers’ positions is that standards will continue to slip.”

He continued, “Perhaps the biggest insult is that this attack comes in the wake of a costly and unnecessary reorganisation of the NHS that has already cost millions, which could have preserved jobs and standards.”

However, one Oxford student opined, “I think it’s really difficult. Obviously it’s not fair for the staff to have their pay cut but if the cuts are really that necessary to make sure they can still supply their services then I can understand that. Hopefully they can come to some sort of compromise.”

Unison was unavailable for comment.