The Office for Fair Access has called upon universities to extend their outreach activities to target potential students as young as seven.

New guidelines laid out in the OFFA January 17^th press release state, “all English universities and colleges that want to charge tuition fees of more than the basic fee  [should] consider how they will work to raise aspirations and academic attainment among children from as young as seven.”

For the 2014-15 academic year, such universities will be expected to include in their access agreements plans to target children as early as Key Stage 2 as part of a long term access programme.

In the press release, Professor Les Ebdon, Director of Fair Access to Higher Education said: “Many universities already run excellent outreach programmes. However, these tend to focus on young people aged 14-19, and, while work with teenagers is very useful and should continue, we are keen to see more long-term schemes that start at a younger age and persist through the school career. It’s crucial that outreach encompasses those who are not yet on the pathway to higher education as well as those who are already considering it.”

In response to the OFFA guidelines, a spokesperson for the University of Oxford told Cherwell, “The emphasis on outreach programmes as outlined in the latest OFFA guidance underscores the importance of engaging with students early on as they make decisions about their educational future – an area where Oxford University has been active for a number of years.

“As part of its extensive outreach and access work Oxford University already works to raise aspirations with students aged 16 and younger in local schools through our widening participation programmes, and has for a number of years worked in collaboration with other local universities.

“The University also welcomes OFFA’s emphasis on the importance of summer schools – an area of longstanding involvement for Oxford that is having an impact: state school students who attend Oxford’s UNIQ Summer Schools and apply to the university enjoy a success rate of around 40% – more than double the average success rate for all applicants.”

Oxford University’s agreement with OFFA for the 2013-14 academic year expresses the University’s aims to be “to attract applications from all individuals with the potential to study at the University; to inform them fully; to admit the very best; to educate them in an intensive, world-class teaching system, and to support them while at Oxford”.

Other Oxford access schemes include ambassador programmes, student mentoring and alumni visits. The Oxford Young Ambassador Programme employs current Oxford students to mentor secondary school students in the Oxfordshire area from Years 9 to 11, whilst the Trading Places initiative sees Oxford alumni visiting state schools to address pre-GCSE students from underrepresented groups.

Access schemes targeted at individual regions are also run by individual colleges. In accordance with the latest OFFA guidelines, Oxford colleges such as Lady Margaret Hall and Wadham are believed to have allowed groups of primary school children to tour their premises.

Oxford students have responded varyingly to the new OFFA guidelines, particularly those concerning outreach to children as young as seven. Nick Fanthorpe, a second year student at Trinity College, expressed concern that potential outreach programmes to Key Stage 2 students “could foster quite a dangerous atmosphere if a child at the age of seven gets obsessed with going to Oxford”.

Olivia Ouwehand, a third year Trinity student, meanwhile approved of the guideline’s aims, though voicing doubt about the efficacy of potential access schemes. “It would, admittedly, be hard, as kids of that age, even from a motivated academic background, generally don’t give a lot of thought to their futures, but I’d totally endorse any well thought out access schemes aimed at younger ages.”

Last week saw a shock result in the Hertford JCR elections, as the sole candidates for Entz were met with a resounding RON (re-open nominations) vote from their fellow students.

With a margin of RON 107 – Entz Team 61, the vote was unprecedented in Hertford history. Hugh Baker, the JCR President, told Cherwell, “I was surprised, and I think the team that got RONed would have done a great job. I was aware of a RON campaign against them, but thought that com­mon sense would prevail and people would vote for the only candidate team offering themselves as Entz, who were easily capable. We are now having hustings for the new Entz committee elections in our 5th week JCR meeting, with several teams having already expressed their interest.”

The group’s manifesto, under the heading “Failure is not a BOPtion!” promised to “[Add] our own special touch to the Entz of 2013. We will strive to achieve first-class BOPS and some beaut new events. That’s BOP I’m talking about!” The manifesto ended with a pledge to “provide superb Bops and keep the puns roll­ing.”

Among the student population, reac­tions to the surprise result were mixed. One first year who resisted the campaign to RON the Entz candidates told Cherwell, “It just became a huge popularity contest where none of the voters considered the issue of whether they would actually have been good or not at organising bops, which after all would have been their fundamental role. I was really disappointed with the outcome.”

Other students were pleased with the result, with one concluding that “If the group run­ning for Entz had won, the victory would only have served to feed their already sizeable egos. Their unconvincing and underprepared hust saw poor use of ‘bop’ puns and little knowl­edge of what is actually involved in hosting events.” Other students also seem to have been put off by the candidates’ comedic offerings, with one second year telling Cherwell, “This just shows Hertford’s reputation for inclusiv­ity doesn’t mean we’ll tolerate shoddy word­play. I just hope they don’t bop themselves.”

Some chose to take a different view altogeth­er on the whole affair – as one first year put it to Cherwell, “Perhaps the focus here shouldn’t be on the failure of the Entz campaign, but on RON’s success. I for one am delighted to see a candidate who is so often left disappointed at the ballot box finally achieve the victory that his perseverance deserves. It’s unfortunate for the defeated nominees that they were up against such a formidable opponent on the day. RON has managed to go his entire politi­cal career at Hertford without making a sin­gle enemy and as such, this victory was per­haps as inevitable as it was merited.”

The unsuccessful Entz candidates declined to comment.

Tesco and St Hilda’s Ball Committee appear to be under some confusion over the sponsorship of the college’s ‘A Day at the Races’ themed ball.

The ball will be held on Saturday 4th May to commemorate 120 years since the college was founded. It will be sponsored by Royal Ascot.

One of the ball’s main attractions will be a horse hired from the Oxford University Polo Club. It will be tethered at the gates of St Hilda’s to be photographed with all those who attend the ball.

Alex Fisken, Hilda’s Ball President, alleged that last year’s ball sponsor, Tesco, appeared reluctant to renew their sponsorship when told of the horse-related theme.

This follows the recent controversy surrounding the discovery by an Irish Food Standards Agency watchdog that some of Tesco’s own-brand beef burgers contained approximately 29% horsemeat.

When asked about Tesco’s reluctance to sponsor the event, Fisken said, “They were quite amused; I think that they thought that it was funny we were approaching them again in the light of what has happened. We had a bit of a mare to be honest.”

He added that sponsorship was still a bit of an issue for the organising committee, admitting, “We still have a race to run as far as sponsorship goes, a few hurdles to clear, but we have some great ideas as to how to improve this aspect of the ball as the date gets closer and we have already got Royal Ascot on board.”

Yet he was also keen to stress that he and the rest of the ball committee had no bad feelings towards Tesco regarding their reluctance: “Neigh, annoyed would be the wrong word; we’re pretty stable people so it’s really what we expected. Can’t expect them to saddle their name on to an event where an actual horse is going to be greeting people at the entrance can you?”

Yet when Cherwell approached Tesco for comment, a spokesperson said, “We’ve spoken to the store manager, who was completely unaware of this request. We understand that the local store made a donation to the ball last year, and it’s an offer which they’d be happy to repeat this year too.”

However, Fisken explained that they had not yet heard such response from Tesco. He maintained that they had emailed Tesco to confirm whether they would be sponsoring the event following Cherwell’s queries, but that they were still awaiting a reply.

St Hilda’s will be in competition with Lady Margaret Hall, Keble, Brasenose and the Somerville and Jesus joint ball, who have all chosen to hold their balls on 4th May.

Katherine Skingsley, Co-President of the Keble Ball organising committee, seemed confident that the competition would not cause any problems, stating, “Keble Ball has built up a fantastic reputation over the years, and we have in fact already sold out in the general sale for this year! Preparations for the ball are now well under way.”

The controversy surrounding horsemeat in Tesco burgers continued in Cowley last week.

Tesco has recently launched an inquiry after burgers that should have been withdrawn were found on sale at the Cowley Road branch of Tesco in Oxford.

After being tipped off by a customer that shelves were still stocked with the banned burgers, a BBC journalist managed to purchase a box.

A cashier overrode a till alert to sell the burgers, which Tesco had recently ordered to be removed from shelves owing to the recent horse meat contamination scandal.

Tesco have now dropped the supplier of the contaminated burgers, Silvercrest, part of the ABP Food Group.

In response to the incident in Cowley, Tesco said, “Whilst this product was not implicated in the FSAI investigation, and was withdrawn as a precaution, we are urgently investigating how this product came to be on a shelf in store. The block on purchase at the checkout should not have been overridden. We sincerely apologise for this, and we have spoken to the store to ensure that this does not happen again.”

However, first-year language student Chris Allnutt did not seem to feel that an apology was necessary. Instead, he explained his gratitude towards the supermarket, commenting, “Before the Tesco scandal, I was worried there was no real meat in their burgers at all. To have my suspicions proven wrong is refreshing and heartening. It’s nice to know Tesco cares enough about protein levels that they would go out of their way to add some meat, albeit meat of a horsey variety, to my dinner.

Jesus College JCR has moved to revive its tanning team, gaining unanimous support from the JCR for over £50 worth of funding for fake tan and equipment.

Fraser Myers (a.k.a. Tan-Solo) proposed the motion, which read, “The JCR notes that the Jesus College Tanning Team (JCTT) had a terrible 2012 season due to a price spike in Primark’s Sunkissed range and a lack of support and recognition from the JCR.”

Former JCR President and OUSU President- Elect Tom Rutland successfully proposed a second amendment, which mandated the tanning team to research the possibility of a charity JCTT calendar.

JCTT membership is open to all, regardless of gender, skin colour, or quantities of tan applied, and recently the Team have been in desperate need of funds after being bankrupted by a fine from college for hiding a sunbed in Jesus library.

Men’s Captain of the JCTT, Alex Russman, commented, “Jesus has a disproportionate share of Oxford’s tanning talent and I could not be prouder in my role to ensure the JCTT head to Thursday morning tutes and lectures sporting a healthy orange glow.”

In the run up to Tanning Cuppers 2013, the JCTT have self-confessedly been “hitting the crew dating scene hard” in order to make their presence felt outside of college. They have attained crew-date acclaim, as Myers boasts: “we are currently the number one men’s crew dating team on the crewdater. com website.”

A review given by the Christ Church Spritzers’ social secretary Talulah Lemerle reads: “We wish we had brought sunglasses to shield our eyes from these dazzling gents. A very TANtalising night – chat was on fire, sconces were sizzling and rumour has it more than one of our ladies enjoyed the heat all night long. Tantastic time!”

According to University figures, 1,000 post­graduates reject Oxford places annually for financial reasons. Statistics published last year show that 7,500 graduate offers are made by the University. Around 15 per cent of those who are made offers decline, citing insufficient funding. 

This news follows a call from the Independ­ent Higher Education Commission to change postgraduate funding, arguing, “The vast ma­jority of postgraduate provision still benefits from a degree of public funding or subsidy. We need a mixed economy funding system, with di­verse funding streams and sources of income.”

An Oxford University spokesperson told Cher­well, “Ensuring access to postgraduate study re­gardless of means is a national challenge.

“Oxford offers more postgraduate financial support than almost any other UK university, but even here finance is still a challenge. Ox­ford has been proactive in highlighting this national issue and works very hard to provide more financial support – both by fundraising for scholarships and by lobbying for a national loans scheme.”

In November, the NUS announced proposals that loans of £6,000 should be made available for postgraduates. Luke James, an NUS officer for postgraduate students, said, “We need a reasonable cap on fees that allows leeway for universities to cover their costs and have finan­cial security, whilst not allowing students to be overcharged and laden with obscene debts.”

Chris Gray, OUSU Vice-President for Gradu­ates, told Cherwell, “OUSU is fully aware of the problems of postgraduate access and has been campaigning for more funding for years. Postgraduate access is not an Oxford-specific problem, and in fact Oxford has more funding available for postgraduate study than any other British university. It is because of this that we also need a national solution. That is why OUSU supports the calls for a national postgraduate loan scheme, a position with which the Univer­sity now agrees.”

62 per cent of research students and 17 per cent of Master’s students at Oxford receive full funding, with an additional nine per cent of both receiving partial scholarships. The larg­est scholarship programme is the Clarendon Partnership awards, which provide full schol­arships for around 100 graduates each year. In October, the university invested £40 million in the Graduate Scholarship Matched Fund, which tops up all donations for graduate funding us­ing University funds.

Individual colleges also provide postgradu­ate funding. A spokesperson for Wolfson Col­lege, the college with the largest number of graduate students, told Cherwell, “For the aca­demic year 2013/14 the College will award schol­arships to the value of £160,000, which will increase to around £340,000 for the academic year 2014/15.”

However, Abdossalam Madkhali, President of Linacre College Common Room, told Cherwell, “It is frustrating sometimes to see bright col­leagues get accepted into a DPhil program, but no funding is offered.

“This needs to be tackled further by the cen­tral university administration as well as col­leges. In such a very competitive institution, there will be always a need to do more, and to give more.”

St Anne’s raised almost £500 for charity at a “promises auction” on Saturday, 26th January. This sum was donated to Helen and Douglas House, and Childreach International. 

The idea for the event came from first-year Geography student, Lauren Brown. Brown wanted to raise money for Childreach Inter­national, on whose behalf she will be trekking across the Great Wall of China this summer. The other charity, Helen and Douglas House, was voted St Anne’s ‘Charity of the Year’. It is a local charity and represents the first children’s and young adults’ hospices in the world.

Together, Brown and JCR Charities Rep Ben Rosenbaum organised the auction where students sold “promises” to the highest bid­der. The event was described by one St Anne’s student as having a “raucous atmosphere and some ridiculously high levels of generosity.”

Promises included “granting the highest bid­der access to the donor’s Facebook account for 24 hours”; “drinking a dirty pint of the highest bidder’s choosing”; and “letting the highest bidder write on the donor’s face before a tuto­rial.”

The biggest bid of the night was for the op­portunity to wine and dine History and Politics student Joe Collin. The promise sold for £100 – more than a fifth of the total amount raised.

Collin told Cherwell, “I was persuaded into [offering myself as a date] by Ben Rosenbaum, the charities rep and thought I’d get £5 tops. At around £15 two guys started bidding, and nei­ther would give up.

“I am glad that Ryan Widdows won. He is the only other person in my year who does my sub­ject so we have spent a ridiculous amount of time together already. This time he just gets to pay for the privilege.”
The two will be going to McDonald’s next week for their date and plan to wear suits for the occasion.

Another notable bid, which raised the third highest amount of the night, was the oppor­tunity to cut the donor’s hair. Collin said, “The best way to describe it would be that it looked like several racoon tails. It was shaved in most places with the odd tufts of long hair which themselves were often trimmed in weird ways. Absolutely shocking.”

St Anne’s JCR Charities Rep, Ben Rosenbaum, told Cherwell, “The final total raised was £457, which was an absolutely brilliant result. I was a bit nervous before the event as I’d never organ­ised an auction before, but my fears were com­pletely allayed when 50 or so people turned up. It was an incredibly fun event and I think every­one who turned up had a great time.”

JCR President Oscar Boyd also enjoyed the event, stating, “Between the items and prom­ises offered, there was something for everyone and the adrenaline rush you got from bidding made it one of the most exciting events we’ve hosted. The highest bid of the night was ex­traordinary but actually quite understandable. I mean who wouldn’t want to go on a date with Joe Collin, especially if it also supports two fan­tastic charities?”

Misunderstandings regarding access to Magdalen College’s Student Support Fund have prompted the JCR to advertise the fund, in light of a possible increase in student rents.

Magdalen has a Student Support Fund (SSF) of over £7 million to assist students in financial difficulty. The fund was launched in 2003 to ensure that no students abandons their course because of financial hardship.

The college website states, “These awards are invaluable to ensure students selected to study at Magdalen can actually get the degrees they deserve.”

Some students suggested that not many students have applied for the SSF. JCR President Amelia Ross told Cherwell, “With the development of the Oxford Opportunity Bursary in the last few years the remit of the Student Support Fund at Magdalen has changed slightly, which has led to some confusion in the JCR. Since awards from the fund are made at the Dean’s discretion for those who need it the most, there is no hard and fast rule as to the circumstances under which it should be claimed.”

Nevertheless, Ross emphasised that Magdalen students have been accessing college funding: “Last year, Magdalen awarded more than £330,000 in grants to help students with living and research costs and in the time since the fund has been established, to my knowledge no student has had to leave Magdalen on financial grounds.

“The JCR is currently working with the Deans to change the layout of the form and the advice and information that is provided about the fund so that the money that is available always goes to the students who need it most.”

Last term, Magdalen students boycotted their hall in response to a raise in their Hall subsidy to a termly fixed charge of up to £50. Undergraduate rooms for 2012-2013 cost just under £3675 a year.

Some students have also suggested that the college has used the existence of the SSF to justify putting up rents, which are expected to rise by five per cent this year. One Magdalen student claimed, “It’s ridiculous for college to be trying to raise our rents again; just because we haven’t all been applying for extra financial support doesn’t mean we’re rich. I really hope the JCR is successful in renegotiating the situation with college. With higher hall prices and now this attempt to raise our rent, Magdalen clearly isn’t dispelling its image as an elitist college.”

The Bodleian Library’s search engine SOLO unexpectedly crashed on Friday 25th January, leaving students unable to search for books from 7am. Bodleian staff worked throughout the day to fix the error, and were finally able to restore SOLO to working order by 5.15pm. 

The problem has been described as a highly unusual error that staff had never seen before, and could not have predicted.

Wolfram Horstmann, Associate Director for Digital Library Programmes and Information Technologies, said, “A programme that cleans outdated information from the system was faulty. The programme affected parts of the system, and the data consistency of SOLO and Aleph was endangered. In order to prevent further damage, a security procedure was in­voked.

“Since the Bodleian operates one of the most comprehensive library systems worldwide, this procedure takes time, although the system was restored within less than twelve hours.”

It was the first major outage the Bodleian staff have experienced since changing to the new Integrated Library System in July 2011. Staff were able to restore the programmes success­fully by using secure copies.

Notifications were placed on the website to inform students of the ongoing problems, and librarians were kept up to date so readers could be made aware of the situation. The library also updated their Twitter page to alert followers to the news, providing information about alterna­tives to the SOLO site.

A spokesperson from the Bodleian said, “We continue to work to prevent such an outage happening again. We are currently working with the University with an aim to providing greater investment in the Libraries’ IT infra­structure. We apologise for the inconvenience this caused our readers.”

Phoebe Braithwaite, a second-year English student, said, “I couldn’t believe that at such a crucial moment in the process of writing my es­say, I was abandoned by the institution I looked to for my education. It’s all very well updating Twitter with alternatives, but how many stu­dents follow the Bod?”

Abdul-Rahman Jama, a third-year student studying Hebrew and Arabic at Balliol, agreed, stating, “It was distressing. Writing an essay became exponentially more difficult purely be­cause you couldn’t track anything down. A first world problem of the highest calibre, but still.”

Many others felt similarly, with one student saying, “I understand that technical problems happen, and appreciate the efforts of all staff involved but they just didn’t do anything to let us know what was going on. The notice on the website was fine, but what about sending emails or updates? Nobody knew how long it was going to be down, which was really incon­venient.”

A third-year Classics student from Merton had a more positive approach, telling Cherwell, “SOLO’s crash was one of the better things that has happened to me this term. I was just about to do some reading for a tutorial I had in an hour’s time, but when I logged on to the library computer, it turned out SOLO was down. I brief­ly contemplated looking the books up in the card catalogue, but reckoned I wouldn’t have the time – so I just had to sit in the JCR, drink tea and read the papers.”

On Tuesday 22nd January, OxCERT an­nounced, “The University was hit by an unu­sually large batch of phishing emails, which went to several thousand users. These were sent from a greenville.k12.sc.us address, had a subject of ‘Emergency Clean-up Needed’, and directed users to a phishing page on Google Docs.”

On Wednesday 23rd, the team said they “were dealing with no fewer than four compromises of Nexus accounts, from which spam emails were sent” but hoped the “combination of the sender rate-limiting and prompt action from multiple teams within IT Services” would allow legitimate emails to be sent to external sources. More accounts have been hacked since.

The University Computing Services alerted colleges to the issue and told students to be vigilant, fearing that more accounts will be af­fected.

An email to staff and students from the LMH ICT Technical Services Officer reported, “[The emails] have a sender address of Maggie.Mon­[email protected] and a greeting along the lines of ‘DEAR University of Oxford EMAIL OWNER’, and directs users to a docs.google.com URL.”

Merton IT manager Steve Bowdery con­firmed, “We have had a handful of users who have responded – their email accounts were abused to send a significant volume of spam.”

Thomas Yeomans, the Assistant IT Manager at Hertford College, warned students, “You may from time to time be contacted by the University, but they will NEVER request your username and password information. If you are unsure about a message the best course of action is no action. You can always contact the IT department for further help.”

The IT Manager for Oriel and Corpus Christi colleges forwarded a copy of the phishing email to students and gave tips for spotting spam emails. He noted that “many fake emails begin with a general greeting”, are sent from “an address that is obviously from someone not associated with the organisation/system” and may include “a threat that something bad will happen if you don’t act immediately.”

Keble IT manager Steve Kersley advised stu­dents to be vigilant as even if a Nexus account does not contain personal details, “contact details and personal information about you and your friends could be gathered and used for more personalised scams.” He emphasised that if the hacked email address is linked to other internet accounts with a ‘forgotten password’ feature, such as Facebook, eBay and Paypal, then scammers may also be able to gain access to those.

Kersely further advised students to ensure that junk mail features are config­ured correctly, computer software is regularly updated and an up-to-date antivirus software installed.

Last weekend, many students and members of staff received emails from Lashzone, a Canadian company offering to write essays for a fee. IT services confirmed that over 58,000 university email addresses were tar­geted.

A spokesperson commented, “Many University addresses are public and/or have been harvested by spammers from a wide range of sources, but by no means all. IT Ser­vices is investigating how the spam­mers in this case may have obtained the addresses but may never know for sure.”

Successful spam attacks on this scale are rare on Oxford email ac­counts. A spokesperson for IT ser­vices explained, “This was just one of hundreds of spam runs that hit the University each day. While exten­sive anti-spam defences are in place, spammers are constantly adapting their tactics to evade our counter­measures. IT Services have to balance the risks of spam attacks against the risks of disruption to legitimate email traffic. Unfortunately this means that it is inevitable that some spam will get through the defences.” Regarding the most recent round of spam emails from Lashzone, the spokesperson said that he was “satis­fied that reasonable technical coun­termeasures are in place, but these are continually reviewed in view of evolving threats.”

Lashzone describes itself as “a team of Graduate and PhD students that major in different programs” and claims to be “trying to make this painful path of brain torture a bit easier, a path that will get these poor students nowhere but to make them the future slaves of society.”

The company offers an individu­alised service where assignments are written by their employees in exchange for cash. In response to an inquiry on behalf of Cherwell, Lash­zone offered a quote of 130 Canadian dollars (£82) for a 2000-word Politics essay.

The company attempted to recruit students to work for them, stating, “We want to localise Lashzone in eve­ry campus possible. Let’s call it fran­chising, but not in the usual way. We want every campus to have its own little (secret) Lashzone group that has its own writers, advertisers and customer service team.”

Cherwell contacted Lashzone for more information on this franchise scheme, but the company was un­willing to provide details, explain­ing, “Participants help spread the word throughout different campuses around the world, creating a web of connections between students. Their reward is protected by employee pri­vacy policy.”

The company claimed that it has “helped more than 600 students in UK and over 7000 students world­wide” but when questioned about the legitimacy of their service, Lash­zone responded, “If your question is whether we provide worthless work and expect money then no we do not do that and we would not be growing this strong across three con­tinents if we did. And helping/tutor­ing students with assignments has been around since the beginning of civilisation, we do not see anything ‘illegal’ about it. Therefore the onus is on you to prove to us whether we are committing a crime or not.”