An Oxford student has died after a tragic accident in southwest France on Wednesday afternoon. His two friends, also from Oxford, tried but were unable to save him.

The victim was 24 year old American Kojo Owusu Minta, who was Vice-President of the St Hilda’s College MCR last academic year. He had just completed an MPhil in History at St Hilda’s and was due to begin a DPhil at Lincoln in Michaelmas.  

The three students were part of a group of a dozen Americans and Britons staying at a cottage in a nearby village. They had spent the day on the banks of the Gave d’Oleron near Dognen in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, when Minta lost his footing and was swept away by the current.

His two friends were unable to catch up with the current and soon lost sight of him. After another British tourist on the other side of the river alerted the emergency services, he was located downstream by a rescue helicopter.

A fire department doctor attempted for over an hour to resuscitate him but was unsuccessful.

The tragedy is said to have shaken the small town of Dognen, as the area of the river is reportedly popular for swimming with tourists and locals alike. The site is generally considered safe, with no previous history of accidents.

Dr Georgina Paul, Tutor for Graduates at St Hilda’s, told Cherwell this week: ‘The College is feeling the loss of Kojo Minta very sorely. He was a man of style and panache, a great personality in the College community, and it is impossible to comprehend how someone so dynamic could have had his life cut short in this way.

‘But he was also a man of quiet good works and deep convictions, and I think all of us are feeling the strength of that legacy: his love of the Bible and of Milton, his work not just for the College, but for the University’s Race Equality Steering Group, and with the African Books Collective amongst other activities.

‘He had just attained a Distinction in his History MPhil and had the funding to continue on to his DPhil. His supervisors have written to me of his academic promise and energy and their shock, too, at his loss. This tragic accident has robbed the University of a talented mind as well as taking from all of us a very fine and special man. Kojo will for ever be remembered at St Hilda’s.’

A memorial webpage in honour of Kojo Owusu Minta can be found here:  http://www.forevermissed.com/kojo-minta.

The Bodleian Libraries, in conjunction with mobile application developer Toura, released their first mobile app last week.

The app, entitled “The Making of the King James Bible” is the first in a series designed to enable the Bodleian to share some of their greatest collections in new formats. It is being launched to coincide with the 400^th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, and the summer exhibition, “Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the King James Bible”.

Many documents and books relating to the King James Bible translation are being brought together for the first time, such as a copy of the infamous “Wicked Bible” of 1631, which contains a misprint in the seventh commandment which commanded readers to commit adultery, with most copies having been subsequently burned.

The app also includes commentary from the curators and fellow of St. Cross College Diarmaid MacCulloch, a leading authority on the history of the Church.

Whilst this is only the first app released by the Bodleian Libraries, it is part of a wider move to embrace emerging formats of distributing and displaying the Bodleian’s vast collection. The Gough map, the earliest surviving map of Great Britain, was recently released in a digital format for the first time by the Bodleian Map Library, as was reported on by Cherwell this week.

Andrew Teal, a fellow in Theology at Pembroke College, said, “I think all new ventures that make learning more interactive and less passive are good … there are already quite a variety of technophile resources (podcasts of lectures etc).”

“The Making of the King James Bible” has been made available for Apple and Android devices, for £0.69. The next app in the series is due to be released in autumn, and has been described as “a browsable collection of some of the Bodleian’s greatest treasures including the newly-acquired Jane Austen manuscript, ‘Magna Carta’, Shakespeare’s ‘First Folio’, Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’.”

American students taking part in an overseas study programme based in Trinity College were reportedly told not to venture outside the college gates on Wednesday night, in case the rioting seen in other parts of the country spread to Oxford. 

Although the porter on duty was unable to confirm this when contacted by Cherwell, the report claimed that those in charge of the programme, which caters for students from four US universities, decided that it was safest to keep all the students within their respective living quarters.

Though Oxford has not yet seen widespread riots like those in the UK’s larger cities, it has experienced several ‘copycat attacks’. 

An attempted arson attack on the Headington branch of McDonald’s took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and two youths, aged 18 and 16, have been arrested in connection.

Fires were also lit around Oxford on Tuesday evening. A 48-year-old man was hospitalised after a blaze outside a block of flats in Cowley, a bin in Botley Road and a skip in Mansfield Road were set on fire, and police officers found an Audi A4 in Great Clarendon St with a damaged petrol cap and a rag stuffed into the fuel tank which had been set alight but failed to spread.

Meanwhile, Oxford students have told Cherwell of their experiences in other parts of the country.  Joseph D’Urso, a second year PPE student at New College who lives in Birmingham, described Monday night’s riots in his home town, saying, “a huge number of people gathered, and started rampaging through the city centre, smashing up shops and looting. Public transport was cut at about 10pm and it was impossible to get taxis so the entire inner ring road was like a warzone, poorly policed and with no transport. Looting continued until 3ish.”

Dominic Parikh, a second year at St John’s, spoke of his dismay at seeing images of brutality in a familiar neighbourhood, telling Cherwell, ‘I used to live near and travel through Clapham Junction and it was sickening seeing the area trashed so mindlessly. I was pretty disappointed that there weren’t enough police to do anything more than watch.”

Alex Coupe, an English student at Corpus Christi, described the atmosphere of tension in South London following Monday night’s riots, saying that there is “lots of smashed glass in Brixton and empty shops, a few of which are burnt.”  He added: “it’s just eerily quiet, with most shops in Wimbledon and Tooting closed and shuttered. I saw two guys get off a train with what seemed to be looted computers. A man confronted them, saying, ‘Are you f***ing happy now, greedy p****s?’ That kind of reflects the general mood.”

A second year student at Brasenose who watched violence take place in Ealing in West London on Monday night commented, “What we have here is just a bunch of anarchists trying to get their hands on as much money as possible. I don’t think they have any particular political message”.  He called for a harsh punishment on those involved, insisting, “I really want to see these people humiliated, since they have brought shame to our capital and have brought pain to so many people’s lives.”

James Lawson, President of the Oxford University Conservative Association next term, also refused to ascribe any political motivation to the rioters, commenting, “This has nothing to do with protest and is simply opportunist criminal action: a classic example of the ‘Broken Britain’ the Coalition has to repair.”

Nicola Sugden and Colin Jackson, co-chairs of the Oxford University Labour Club, though condemning the riots as “unnecessarily destructive”, described them as “manifestation of the valid fears many of Britain’s youth have about their futures”.