Last Friday the online Bodleian search engine SOLO crashed leaving hundreds ofstudents without the ability to find their books.

The Bodleian search engine, “Search Oxford Libraries Online” (SOLO), temporarily stopped working last Friday. The search engine allows users to find which Bodleianor college libraries hold certain books.

Oana Romocea, Communications Manager for Bodleian Libraries, commented, “We are very sorry for the outage of the libraries online catalogue. The downtime was the result of an external failure with the host who provide additional search functionality for SOLO.”

She continued, “We are currently working with our external supplier to provide amore reliable product. We apologize for any inconvenience the SOLO downtime caused to our users and we will try to do everything within our control to prevent thishappening again in future.”

Maddy Ward, a theologian finalist, told Cherwell, “the prospect of not being able to find my books for a few hours initially filled me with dread. Until I realised that the Bod has all books anyway, so I just went there and the crisis was averted.”

Ben Harris, a PPEist at St Johns, was equally affected saying, “I was riding SOLO, but then it crashed. I can’t believe our system has sunk SOLO.”

Although the crash did affect many students many more were less distraught. An anonymous third year Biochemist said, “I hadn’t realised SOLO crashed until you asked me about it.”

The search engine has been known to crash before, including the infamous “Black Friday”, 25th February 2011, in which it crashed for literally minutes. It is yet to be known whether last Friday’s crash will also go down in history.

Luckily the crash was fixed within hours,.

The Oxford Union has refused to sign a contract allowing Oxford Conservative Association (OCA) to hold their weekly ‘Port and Policy’ event in the Union for free. 

The current arrangement has been in place since the start of ‘Port and Policy’ in 1994, where the Macmillan Room has been available to the Association for free every Sunday evening of term, instead of the usual fee of £550 per use.

John Lee, President of the Oxford Union, said, “Over the years, people have misleadingly come to associate the Oxford Union with the Oxford Conservative Association. This is in no small part because their most regular meeting, ‘Port and Policy’, has been held weekly at the Union for a very long time. 

“The only ideology of the Union is free and open debate. It holds no political allegiance and is a forum for discussion of all beliefs and opinions. In line with this thinking, no contract was signed that would give OCA preferential treatment. However, they are still very welcome to hire out Union rooms at the same rate as any other organisation, political or not.”

‘Port and Policy’ is described by OCA as “an informal debate where everyone is welcome to contribute if they wish.” Port is served to help “lubricate mental cogs.’

Port and Policy led to controversy last year, as a video of a member singing an anti-Semitic song at the event and leaked to national press. The association was subsequently banned indefinitely from using Corpus Christi college premises by the college’s Dean.

Jack Andrews, a theology student, criticised the previous arrangements, “I’m appalled that this went on for as long as it did. Whatever your political affiliations, you pay to join the Oxford Union expecting impartiality and for the society to do its best to drive costs down for its members by looking for additional revenue. ”

Nathan Akehurst, a second year at Lincoln, said, “The weekly ‘Port and Prejudice’ shindigs are something no-one outside of OCA will miss. Quite apart from the Union’s rightful decision as a house of free speech to separate itself from party politics, it got very frustrating hearing raucous renditions of old Etonian chants whilst trying to enjoy a quiet pint in the members’ bar.

OCA was disaffiliated from the University earlier this year due to its failure to meet “the financial and administrative standards of a recognised student club”, according to Proctors.

George Mawhinney, president of OCA, explained, “Mr Lee did offer to co-host events with us, however the terms of these offers were not in OCA’s best interests and so I declined them.’

Police were called to a house party held by Mansfield second years in Bullingdon Road in Freshers’ Week following noise complaints. They were reportedly joined by an angry local and a TV camera crew.

The arrival of the police, following noise complaints made by neighbouring residents, caused the house party to come to an early end just after 1am on Thursday 4th October.

One Mansfield visiting student, Brendan Caldwell, wrote on his blog, ‘Brendan’s Adventures Across the Pond’, “A man who was reportedly homeless began banging on the front door of the house, demanding we keep it down and tried to pick a fight with several people at the front of the house. At some point he smashed one of the windows at the front of the house.

“Immediately upon leaving the house I found a police officer, a drunk homeless man, and a camera crew. The camera crew was for a BBC documentary being made about a ‘party patrol’ that scours the town of Oxfordshire looking for parties to bust.”

Oxford City Council and police have been working together to target disruptive social behavior with a new “Party Patrol initiative”. A spokesperson for Oxford City Council commented, “A number of complaints were received by the Police about parties on 3rd October. Party Patrol was operating on that particular night and dealt with all calls received.”

A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said, “I can confirm we received several calls from members of the public about noise coming from a party taking place at a property in Bullingdon Road, Oxford, in the early hours of Thursday 4th October. Police attended just before 1am and the party was wound down within thirty minutes.’

Mansfield Entz Reps, in an email to the JCR, invited all its members to the “traditional freshers house party” as organised by residents in a house on Bullingdon Road. Following the event, they gave a “massive thank you to everyone who lives in Bullingdon Road for a storming house party last night”.

One Entz Rep told Cherwell, “This was one of the few events in Fresher’s Week which Entz reps were not involved in organising.”

One Mansfield fresher, Luke Rollason, said, “I knew about the noise complaint. I’m pretty sure there was an angry homeless guy. There was also an angry neighbour. He was pretty angry.”

Another first year, Tom Babb, added, “It’s just another stellar night from ladtastic Ladsfield”.