After a five month enquiry into the behaviour and administration of Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), the Proctors have denied the society affiliation with the University for the current academic year.

The decision, made on Wednesday by the Senior Proctor, Laurence Whitehead, will mean that OUCA has retrospectively been officially disassociated with the University of Oxford since the beginning of Michaelmas and can no longer use the word “University” in their title.

This is the second time in recent years that OUCA has had to drop the “U” from their name, the first occurring in 2009 when the University withdrew their affiliation following an incident involving racist jokes being told during hustings.

According to a spokesperson for the University, “[the Senior Proctor’s] decision to deny the Association permission to register with the Proctors at the beginning of the current academic year is a result of the Association’s failure to reach the financial and administrative standards of a recognised student club.”

Miles Coates, current President of OUCA, told Cherwell, “We inherited significant problems this academic year from our predecessors, and we have since worked closely with the Proctors on detailed structural reforms. We obviously regret the Proctor’s decision not to register the Association this year.” 

Oxford University Labour Club Chair, David Butler said that in his view the ruling was fair, commenting “If OUCA have failed to meet the standards set by the Proctors, then it is right that their university affiliation is removed until they meet those standards.” 

One anonymous source, claiming to be a former OUCA officer, alleged, “It seems that there may have been a few financial irregularities in the accounts, mainly in Trinity 2011, which couldn’t be explained.” 

OUCA were the subject of controversy in the national media last term after a video showing one member singing anti-Semitic songs was leaked to the press. The investigation by the Proctors was instigated as a result of the reported behavioural misconduct and sparked a wider inquiry into the state of the Association leading to the decision made this week. 

However, after almost two terms of examination, the Senior Proctor ruled against taking disciplinary action against OUCA. The University Press Office commented that the investigation “determined that no Proctorial disciplinary actions are called for in relation to the specific allegations of misconduct.” 

Despite this, Robin McGhee, former Chair of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and a LibDem candidate in the coming elections, commented that, “OUCA have always been riddled with a rather nasty element of a privileged few, whose extreme opinion is in no way representative of the views of the Conservative voters or party. At the same time, they have apparently consistently demonstrated inability to actually bother to keep their books properly.” 

The problems with OUCA’s records were criticised by the inquiry and led to the Association being disaffiliated with the University. This decision, retrospectively active from the beginning of last Michaelmas, is effective for at least two terms before the society in question can re-apply to the Proctors.   

Coates stated that OUCA will comply with the outcome of the investigation and will attempt to reaffiliate with the University at the beginning of Michaelmas 2012. He commented, “The reforms we initiated leave OUCA with a comparatively rigorous administrative platform and I am optimistic that this will secure our registration on time for Michaelmas 2012.”  

Nina Fischer, President elect of OUCA emphasised the importance of the reforms, telling Cherwell, “My predecessors this academic year and the committee have been working hard to address the administrative concerns we inherited. I believe our reforms leave the society stronger in the long term, and well prepared to deal with any problem cases.” 

Former OULC Chair Colin Jackson commented that, “Regardless of how any of us may feel about their recent high profile actions, if the Proctors are correct in their assessment that OUCA have not kept up their financial records then they are being responded to appropriately.” He also added, “OULC collects dues from our members and proper financial record keeping is an obligation for us.”  

Butler reiterated that the record keeping required by the University of all its associated societies is “not arduous” and “would be done regardless of whether or not the Proctors forced us to do so.” He concluded, “To keep appropriate records is key to running a well-functioning society, such as OULC.” 

The anonymous former OUCA member said, “The Proctors’ investigation was kicked off by the scandal in the student media last term, but it turned into a much wider investigation into OUCA’s administrative procedures between Trinity 2009 and the end of last year.” 

The University has published statistics on graduate employment which reveal that, six months after graduating, more people worked as waiters or bar staff than worked as mechanical or civil engineers. 

Of the students who replied to the sur­vey, 49.5 per cent were in work only, six per cent in study and work, and 31.8 per cent in study only, with 5.9 per cent unemployed. In comparison, the most recent figures suggest that the national graduate un­employment rate is currently 20 per cent while the general national rate is 8.4.

Will Heard who graduated from Jesus in 2010 commented, “Oxford graduate un­employment is only just below unemploy­ment rate in the UK. Shocking.”

The director of the Oxford University Careers Service, Jonathan Black, told Cher­well that one reason for a lower unemploy­ment rate than the national average is that Oxford students are a “Highly desirable group of people, sought out by employers. They have fabulous transferable skills.” 

However, Black added that employers, “Do mark Oxford students down on team­work and business awareness.” 

Emily Jamieson, a 2010 history graduate from Jesus, commented, “At other univer­sities far fewer people are going to choose to keep on studying, or even have the op­tion available to them. So the fact Oxford has low unemployment is maybe more a reflection of people carrying on study than being able to go straight out and find work.”

Those studying medical sciences were most likely to find a job six months after leaving university, with only 2.2 per cent of them unemployed, none of whom were undergraduate medics. In the humanities, this figure jumps up to 7.8 per cent, with 13 per cent of graduates from the Oriental Studies Faculty unemployed.

While Magdalen had only 2.4 per cent of students claiming to be unemployed, Mansfield has the highest unemployment rate of 10 per cent.

However, Susanna Elliott, an Orien­tal Studies student from Mansfield, commented, “I’m not particularly worried about my employment pros­pects – which degrees are most val­ued come and go in phases. Having a good degree from Oxford, in what­ever subject, is still a solid basis for gaining employment.” 

Joshua Felberg, another Mansfield student reading Oriental Studies, commented, “While I am confident about my prospects in the future, I am worried that this disparity be­tween colleges comes down to nep­otism within other colleges. An Oxford degree should be worth the same whatever college it is from.” 

According to the report, science undergraduate students were the best paid, with materials scien­tists claiming an average salary of £35,300. Those who graduated from the English Faculty were the worst paid, with an average salary of £18,700. 

Univ English student, Louise Car­ey, commented, “I’m taking this de­gree because I love the subject rather than because I think it will land me a great job. I find English fascinating and rewarding so I wouldn’t say it’s been useless to me. If I’d wanted to maximise my employability I would have taken PPE or something.” 

Keble undergraduates had an av­erage salary of £35,900 six months after leaving, whereas those who graduated from Wadham were paid an average of £20,700. The college with the most students going on to further study is Merton, at 54.3 per cent. New College had the highest percentage of undergraduates find­ing employment, with 59.6 per cent of all students securing a job six months after leaving. 

The largest employer of Oxford students is the NHS, which employed 281 graduates over the last three years. Oxford University employed 266 six months after their gradua­tion. Thereafter, the major employ­ers are financial services firms such as Deloitte, PwC and Deutsche Bank. 

40 per cent of those with under­graduate degrees earned less than the student loan repayment thresh­old of £21,000. 

Considering graduates of both graduate and non-graduate degrees, 51 per cent of humanities students were paid less than this figure, whereas only 15 per cent of the Medi­cal Sciences division had a salary less than this. 

The figures also highlighted a sig­nificant gender divide in salary lev­els. In the Social Sciences, 62 per cent of male undergraduate students earn the median wage of £24,500, whereas only 37 per cent of female students earn that amount sixth months after graduating. 

Marta Szczerba, a 2011 PPE gradu­ate from St John’s, and now a man­agement consultant, claimed that there was “a definite advantage” from studying at Oxford. She as­serted that many companies only visit Oxbridge, LSE and Imperial so students from those universities are much more likely to be employed in those services. She also said that an Oxford education was a “signal” to employers, making Oxford students “more credible candidates”. 

She added, “I think the job situa­tion was much better for those in my year who got a job in third year, even for industries such as banking and management consultancy. Those of my friends who did not find work in third year are finding it a lot harder to get a job now.” 

Matthew Robinson, a 2008 Law graduate who was employed by McKinsey after leaving Oxford and then co-founded a technology com­pany, commented, “I think Oxford graduates have the same level of workplace-related skills as other graduates. However, it does give a huge advantage in how employers perceive you. 

“There is an increasing value in technology skills which make busi­nesses more efficient, and degrees which give these skills or rigorous maths-based skills are more valu­able. The exception to this is PPE, which employers believe gives a suit­ably broad skill-set.” 

Oliver Moody, a journalist who graduated last year from St Anne’s, said, “I think it is easier for Oxford students to find jobs – as long as they focus. If you know what you want to do, build up a half-decent CV and think hard about where you want to go after university. You can make an Oxford degree work for you.” 

However he continued, “There were a lot of people who just assumed that an Oxford degree would magi­cally confer a perfect, well-paid job without any real effort or thought. They didn’t do so well. There are a lot of hungry, focused students at less prestigious universities who are serious competitors in the market­place, and, as employers are increas­ingly looking for the finished article, they have the edge over Oxford stu­dents who don’t get around to look­ing beyond university. 

He added, “Of my friends from Oxford, about half have just started white-collar professional jobs, and the other half are still living with their parents.” 

A 42 year old man has been arrested after a cyclist was knocked off her bike in Cowley. The 25 year old cyclist was struck by a brown Jaguar heading towards the city centre. The collision happened near the Hobgoblin pub on Cowley Road on Saturday February 11th at around 8pm.

Georgina Brooke, of St Hilda’s, who was also knocked off her bike recently, told Cherwell that the problems cyclists have on Cowley road are due to a number of factors. “There are lots of traffic islands which are supposed to control the flow of traffic, but motorists try to overtake cyclists through these traffic control measures. There are also a number of pedestrian crossings of all types, as well as a lot of side streets. Also, pedestrians sometimes pose a hazard.”

A 22-year-old man has been left in hospital after suffering multiple stab wounds to his arm and stomach following an attack on St Clement’s street on Sunday 12th February.

Power cuts across three Oxford libraries and faculties led them to cancellations and closures on Monday morning. 

The St Cross building, which houses the English Faculty Library as well as the Law Faculty, was forced to briefly close due to lack of electricity, though the power was back on by 10am. The Law Faculty had to postpone a 9am lecture in Administrative law.

The lecturer, Dr Alison Young, broke the news to her students saying, “You may have thought that you had a substantive legitimate expectation that today’s Administrative law lecture, on legitimate expectations, would take place. After all, there was a clear representation that the lecture would take place on the timetable, this may have been reinforced by statements made in previous lectures, and past practice would tend to suggest that lectures do take place at the times set out on the published lecture list.”

However, she continued, “It was a proportionate response to re-schedule the lecture in the light (or more accurately ‘non-light’) of the complete lack of electrical power in the St Cross Building.”

Second year English student, Juliet Roe, commented, “No self-respecting English student would be at the EFL at that time, I imagine there were some pretty disorientated dust mites and the odd irritated librarian though.”

The Social Sciences Library was affected by the power cut, but remained open. A spokeswoman for the library told Cherwell, “The main way that it affected it was that most of the lights in the right hand side of the library went off, and, although our readers PC’s were getting power, they could not connect to the internet. The system we use for checking books in and out was down as well (which was an obvious cause for concern!), as were the printers.”

She labelled it “uneventful” but an “inconvenience.”

Wadham student Alistair Smout commented, “It was nice to have some mood lighting in the nation’s favourite library.”

Monday’s events came after a power cut on Saturday, which affected around 1,100 homes in Marston and Headington, as well as Oxford Brookes.

Oxford’s Institute of Human Sciences and Oxford Research International have conducted research to prove that fewer than one in three Libyans would support a democratic regime.

While thousands were killed at the hands of Muammar Gaddafi during a despotic reign spanning four decades, the study also revealed that more than a third of citizens would rather see a return to dictatorship than the installation of a democratic government.

This is arguably because of the tribal divisions within Libya, which has provoked concern that without an iron fist, the power vacuum left after Gadaffi’s death in October will lead to fighting between the factions which united to remove him. While the Oxford research found that more than two thirds of Libyans would like some democratic proceedings in elections, 35% of Libyans would like to see a return to dictatorial rule within 5 years.

The director of Oxford Research International, Christoph Sahm, said that ‘although there appears to be a push for an early election, the population seems to be happy with the National Transitional Council [NTC]”.

‘Perhaps more significantly”, he continued, “Libyan people have not yet developed trust towards political parties, preferring a return of one-man rule. Yet they have also resoundingly said they want a say in how their country is run, which suggests Libyans who have had autocratic rule for decades lack the knowledge of how a democracy works and need more awareness of the alternatives to autocratic government.

‘It seems that the majority of Libyans are not in support of the NTC, with 81% putting their faith in the regime which helped topple Gaddafi. As many as 16% said they were ready to resort to violence for political ends.

However, many have expressed concern about the violence which has broken out as a result of the militia providing law enforcement. Médecins sans Frontières have suspended their involvement in Misrata after law enforcement officials asked them to give medical treatment to prisoners mid-way through torture sessions, only to begin torturing them again. Amnesty International found that 10 of 11 Libyan detention centres they visited were using torture or mistreating their detainees. 

A 47-year old man has been jailed for 32 months after stealing thousands of pounds worth of goods from a student property, including a laptop containing a student’s dissertation.

Martin James, who has 27 previous convictions and has spent much of his life in prison, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court last Thursday.

The court were told that James’ offending began in 1982, and that he was jailed for 5 years in 1999 for conspiring to supply Class A drugs. This latest offence was committed within weeks of his most recent release.

A Thames Valley Police spokesperson told Cherwell, “I can confirm that Martin Sylvester James, aged 47, of Luther Street, Oxford, was charged with one count of burglary – relating to an incident on 1 October in which an iPod, Nintendo 3DS, DELL laptop (worth £500), HP laptop (worth £500) and a second DELL laptop (worth £750), and a wallet was stolen from a property.” 

The judge condemned James’ actions, stating, “It does seem an act of utter folly that you should have committed this crime which the jury convicted you of.”

He added, “This was a house where a number of young people were living and one of them lost all of his dissertation.” Students are now being advised to back up all their work.

A Living Wage Forum was held yesterday, involving economists, campaigners and academics, including the Director of the national Living Wage Campaign.

Ellie Horrocks of Trinity College, chair of the event, said, “Students may have voted on a JCR motion, or seen campaign posters, or heard about St. John’s recent decision to raise scouts’ wages from £6.49 to £7.20 per hour. But many people aren’t sure what the living wage is all about. The Forum intends to create a platform for exploring the idea of a living wage, dispelling misconceptions, and answering vital questions.”

She added, “Living Wage is especially imperative in Oxford: a city of dreaming spires and extreme income inequality.”

The Living Wage Campaign sent personal invitations to the bursars and heads of every Oxford college and PPH to the Forum.

An Oxford firm has developed two machines that can sequence the human genome in just hours.

An Oxford firm has developed two machines that can sequence the human genome in just hours.

One of the machines, called the MinION, is the size of a USB drive and the firm hopes that it will change the face of DNA sequencing and make it “universally accessible” by vastly reducing the time it takes to sequence DNA. The other, known as the GridION, is the size of a DVD-player and can stack onto itself, linking the devices to increase computation speed.Current machines, which are mainframe-sized, take days to decode the genome. 

The technology has a large range of potential applications, and may assist in helping to treat diseases such as malaria and HIV by sequencing their rapidly mutating DNA. It could also help in preventing genetic defects through prenatal screening, as well as preventing genetic mutations in plants.

The firm also expects the technology to find uses in agriculture. The technology has been developed under wraps over the past three years, in collusion with scientists at Harvard, Oxford and the University of California Santa Cruz, and was revealed at a press conference in Florida on Friday 17th.

The CEO of Oxford Nanopore, Dr Gordon Sanghera, explained that ‘The exquisite science behind nanopore sensing has taken nearly two decades to reach this point; a truly disruptive single molecule analysis technique, designed alongside new electronics to be a universal sequencing system. GridION and MinION are poised to deliver a completely new range of benefits to researchers and clinicians.’

The firm has developed a new technique, known as ‘strand sequencing’, which is markedly different to that which came before, exonuclease sequencing. In strand sequencing  an entire string of DNA is threaded through a hole created in a cell membrane by an engineered protein, known as a nanopore, allowing the DNA to be continuously read. Previously, the sections of DNA were separated by an enzyme and dropped in fragments through the hole.

Many students expressed excitement and admiration, with Sophie Avery, a third year physiologist at Balliol, saying “This device is especially exciting because of the speed at which it can resolve the genome. Clinically, there are a number of situations where time is of the essence – for example in prenatal testing where genetic defects need to be identified in time for termination of the pregnancy to be an option. The low cost is also very attractive – meaning more and more clinics could be using this kind of technology”. 

Raphael Chow, a second year biochemist, was equally positive, “I think that Oxford Nanopore’s novel DNA sequencing devices are absolutely mind-blowing. I was definitely very excited to find out that what scientists had been aiming to achieve – to make genome sequencing more ubiquitous by lowering the cost and sequencing time – culminated in such an awesome piece of technology. As a student, the brilliant academic and entrepreneurial minds behind the project will serve as a great source of inspiration for years to come”.

Other students also expressed their delight and amazement, with David Ding, a biochemist at Univ, explaining “this helps a lot especially in research, but also allows for personalised medicine (ie. certain cancer therapies can be adjusted according to certain mutations, leading to much more effective chemotherapies)”.