Corpus Christi college in Cambridge has sparked controversy this week by opening its Formal Hall to members of the general public.

Organised by ‘The Cambridge College Supper Club’, the service advertises a ‘Harry Potter-style’ dining experience. This will be the first time that any college in Oxford or Cambridge has set aside space in hall during term time specifically for paying guests.

By cashing in on Oxbridge’s associations with the wizarding world, Corpus Christi hopes to boost college funds without adversely affecting its students’ education.

For £57.75 per person, guests will be given a tour of the college courtyards and treated to a “delicious supper” and “college wine direct from the college cellars” normally reserved only for Corpus Christi students. The club promises guests a “delightful evening” where “couples, friends, family and the lone diner can all enjoy a sociable supper in stunning surroundings”.

However, the decision to open Corpus Christi hall to paying visitors has been met with conflicting responses. One Cambridge student, Sam Gilbert, said, “This is yet another example of the Colleges’ mercenary attitude towards their reputations.”

Yet the idea has been successful with the paying public and the service is now taking books as far ahead as April 2011. Described by tourists as a “fantastic idea”, visitors are already inquiring if it is possible to book Formal Hall in Oxford colleges.

Christ Church College, Oxford, which houses the famous hall used in the Harry Potter films, says it has no plans to set aside space for paying tourists at its Formal Hall.

Commenting on Corpus Christi’s new scheme, John Harris, the steward of Christ Church, said, “Christ Church will continue to give priority to its junior members during term time.”

A Magdalen student, Matthew Chan, has become the latest University Challenge ‘celebrity’ after his team’s demolition of Durham in the first round of this year’s competition.

Under Chan’s captaincy, the Magdalen team amassed an impressive 340 points, but it was his personal allure more than his sharp mind that spurred Chan, 21, into the elite group of contestants with a Facebook page created in their honour.

According to the description of the page, ‘Matthew Chan: phwoar’, its hero “won [the] hearts” of those who watched.

One fan credited him with having “made University Challenge suitable for 20 year-old girls” while another was sufficiently moved to declare, “I wanna have his baaabies, get serious like crazy”.

Unfortunately for this devotee, Chan is not interested. He said, “Hopefully [she] hasn’t found out my address”.

His attitude may have something to do with the fact that the sentiment expressed by his infatuated follower is not unusual. As Will Wright, Chan’s proud college son, explains, “he’s a sexy man.”
Nevertheless, Chan has not been showered with purely positive comments.

“For the first time ever I want to kill every single contestant on University Challenge. Last to go is Chan – I’d take pleasure in his death,” was one view expressed on Twitter.

Such attention, a phenomenon that peaked in 2009 with “genius” Oxford contestant Gail Trimble, is not something that Chan takes personally, although he does find it “bizarre”.

“It’s not like knowing that Baron Rees of Ludlow is the Astronomer Royal, or that JPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or that there’s a geographical effect called Coriolis, has any particular moral value attached to it, good or bad. It’s just knowledge”, he said.

While Chan is not particularly entertained by the tweeter who expressed such interest in killing him, he does enjoy some insults, finding them, “genuinely amusing”.

Moreover, they could even fulfil a social, and potentially a profit-making, function. “It’s nice that University Challenge offers people the opportunity to work out some of their anger. We should charge”, he said.

Such grand schemes are perhaps a long way off. At the time of writing, ‘Matthew Chan: phwoar’ has 115 members and is largely dominated by Magdalen students. This pales in comparison to the followings of previous contestants Alexander Guttenplan or Gail Trimble, who had thousands of supporters on Facebook as well as numerous articles in the national press devoted to them.

Whether Chan can scale such peaks will depend largely on how he and Magdalen progress in the tournament. It is, as Chan is keen to point out, “far too early to tell” if they can ultimately be successful, although they have already made quite an impression.

The ‘Life After Mastermind’ blog, which, reporting on the show, focused more on the contestants’ performance than appearance, lauded the “breathtaking” performance of the whole team, also consisting of James McComish, Kyle Haddad-Fonda and Will Cudmore.
Perhaps a place in the stars awaits Matthew Chan. For now, he hopes, “maybe people will recognise me in the street, ask me to hold their hand, kiss their mouth, write their essays, that kind of thing. Maybe not, though.”

Oxford Union members will no longer be able to enjoy discounts from the Adult World sex shop on Cowley Road.

The decision comes after several national papers reported that there was disagreement within the Union over one of the ‘Treasurer’s Treats’ discounts offered to Union members.

It was claimed that some members of the Union found the ‘Treat’ offensive and that it undermined the women’s initiative.

Up until this term, students had been able to take advantage of the discount their Union membership gave them in Adult World in Cowley.
The decision means that the discount has not been renewed for students this year.

However, when contacted, Adult World’s store manager claimed that, “They [the Union] hadn’t actually informed us of that.”

The Union’s spokesperson, Alistair Walker, said, “It’s not that the discount has been removed, just that it has not been renewed.”
The Union said that shop had been approached, but that they had not made contact, following which the contract could not be re-negotiated.

“No conscious decision was made to discontinue the discount; however, the Union’s committees chose to pursue other priorities instead, such as securing top speakers and debates, as well as negotiating new Treasurer’s Treats for this term”, said Walker.
Roisin O’Hare, store manager of Adult World, was surprised to hear that they were no longer included as part of Treasurer’s Treats.
She went on to explain that she thought that many students’ sex lives benefited from the shop.

O’Hare said, “I think that having safe, consensual, fun sex as a student is something that is quite often part of student life.”
“Anything we can do to facilitate that, I am all in favour of.”
Some students were disappointed to hear the news. Savs Tan, a second year linguist, said, “I can’t believe that there will no longer be discounts on battery powered love.”

“Joking aside, I enjoyed the fact that there was a range of discounts available to us and am disappointed with the news that we now have one fewer.”

The opening ceremony for Oxford’s planned School of Government, to be funded by a £75 million donation from a American industrialist, took place on 20th September.

Leonard Blavatnik, a Soviet-born American citizen who also has a home in Kensington, announced his intention to donate the sum earlier this year. The University will also contribute £26 million, and land in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.

This year’s Forbes World’s Billionaire’s List ranked Blavatnik 93rd, estimating his fortune at $7.5 billion. He is believed to be the sixth richest man in the United Kingdom.

The source of the billionaire’s wealth has come under scrutiny among students at a time when universities are becoming increasingly reliant on large cash gifts from individual donors.

Some have claimed that this is leading them to accept money from business tycoons regardless of their backgrounds. In 1996 the University accepted over £20 million from Wafic Said to establish the Said Business School, despite Said’s role in the notorious Al Yamamah arms deal.

Leonard Blavatnik is the founder, Chairman and President of Access Industries, an international industrial group which holds investments in industries such as oil, coal, petrochemicals, plastics and real estate.
He appeared in front of the High Court in 2008 when TNK-BK, a Russian oil company of which he is a partner, became embroiled in a $360 million tax dispute with BP.

In June 2009 he sued investment bank JPMorgan Chase for losing $98 million of his money in toxic sub-prime mortgage investments. Earlier that year it was reported that ABN Amro, a Dutch bank owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, had given a £2.5 billion loan as part of the underwriting provided to Basell AF in its buyout of Lyondell. This was a part of a bigger loan funded by a consortium of banks. At the time, Basell was controlled by Access Industries. This move which was heavily criticised in light of the government bail-out of RBS.

When asked about the source of donations to the University, a spokesman for Oxford said, “It is not for us to attempt to prove or disprove allegations as part of a scrutiny process: the University has neither the expertise nor the resources to carry out private investigations more properly conducted by civic institutions.
“We are entitled to rely, and do rely, on the police, the courts, and other national and international regulators.”

The annual Ross-CASE study, which measures the philanthropic performance of Higher Education and Further Education institutions, found that cash donation to British universities has risen by 18.8% in the past year, exceeding an annual total of £0.5 billion for the first time.

There has also been a rise in the number of major cash gifts worth £500,000 or more. There have been 1655 in total this year, compared with just 119 two years ago. 22 institutions received a cash donation of £1m or more.

Rod Schwartz, who lectures in social entrepreneurship at the Said Business School, commented, “On a general level we are quite open to the idea of bringing private sources of capital into the university arena. This can be very effective, especially given that we are in a fiscal crisis.

“Having said that, it is essential for the long term survival and sustainability of universities that the capital is screened. Capital must come from sources that do not act against the independence or the ethical character of the university.”

The School of Government will be the first of its kind in Europe, and will offer one-year Master’s degrees to “outstanding graduates” in the “skills and responsibilities of government”.

There has been some criticism of the project, which has been described as a “finishing school for international statesmen”. Oxford claims that it will groom future statesmen in “a unique balance of the humanities, social sciences, law, science, technology, health, finance, energy and security policy”

Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, said, “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity for Oxford.

“Through the Blavatnik benefaction, Oxford will now become the world’s leading centre for the training of future leaders in government and public policy.”

The school is set to capitalise on Oxford’s history of educating politicians. 26 British Prime Ministers, including David Cameron, studied at Oxford. There are currently around 117 Oxford-educated Members of Parliament, and 140 Oxford graduates in the House of Lords.

The School of Government, due to open in 2012 will have posts for 40 academic staff and offer places to 120 students.

The Ruskin School of Art, in collaboration with Modern Art Oxford, is supporting one of 125 projects shortlisted by the nationwide scheme ‘The Big Arts Give’.

Ruskin will match the funds raised by the donations on certain conditions. If £20,000 is raised by 5th November, the scheme will match this amount, provided that an additional £40,000 is raised through online donations in just one week in December.

The money raised will go towards a project on Modern Art Oxford’s archive, called “50 years of Exhibition Making”.

It will fund a doctoral researcher to go through the archives, which contain a wealth of previously unexplored material, providing ideas for future exhibitions and rediscovering highlights from the gallery’s past.

Falling in love will cost you two close friends, an Oxford University study has found.

Participants in the study were asked how many people they had lost from their inner core of friends after entering a relationship.

Men tend to have around four or five ‘close’ friends, while women have five or six – but on average, people saw their core group of friends reduced to three once they were caught up in love, said the survey lead by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropology professor at the University.

“What I suspect happens is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don’t get to see these other people that you did before and those relationships deteriorate,” said Professor Dunbar.

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican nominee for Joe Biden’s Delaware senate seat has been accused of pretending that she studied at Oxford University.

O’Donnell is a member of the radical right wing ‘Tea Party’ movement in America. She advocates the teaching of creationism and once led a campaign against masturbation.

O’Donnell was described on professional networking websites as having received a certificate in ‘Post modernism in the New Millennium’ from Oxford University. Ms O’Donnell had in fact attended a summer school run by the private Phoenix Institute, an unaffiliated institution that rents teaching rooms in Oxford.

Ms O’Donnell said in a statement that she was not responsible for setting up the account on the networking site Zoominfo.com.

The Oxford-based choir Cardinall’s Musick has won the prestigious Gramophone Early Music Award for their recording of William Byrd’s ‘Infelix Ego’.

Winning the award for the fourth time, Cardinall’s Musick secured the title with their recording of Byrd’s Latin mediation piece, which incorporates music from the late 16th and early 17th Centuries.

Three musical groups based in Oxford made up the complete shortlist for the Early Music Award this year. Cardinall’s Musick beat rival groups Phantasm and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir for the prize, awarded by classical music magazine Gramophone.

A panel of critics selected the three nominees from thousands of CD releases from the past year. It is unprecedented for all three groups to have strong Oxford links.

Both Phantasm and Christ Church Cathedral Choir are directed by members of the University Music Faculty, and Cardinall’s Musick was founded in Oxford when its director, Andrew Carwood, was a lay clerk with Christ Church Cathedral Choir.

Professor Jonathan Cross, Director of the Oxford University Music Faculty, spoke of his pride at the shortlist.

“In the Music Faculty we are delighted by the nominations of both Christ Church Cathedral Choir and Phantasm, directed by our colleagues Stephen Darlington and Laurence Dreyfus.

“Like the Oscars, it’s as much an honour to be nominated as to win!” he said.

Dr Stephen Darlington, the Director of Christ Church Cathedral Choir, agreed that the Oxford-dominated nominations reflected the high calibre of music at the University.

He said, “Overall, it shows the national recognition for the quality of music-making in the field of Early Music at Oxford, an area which has a long history of distinction here.”

The Gramophone Awards are among the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical music industry. The winners are selected by critics for the Gramophone magazine, music retailers, broadcasters, arts administrators, and musicians.

In 2008, the Early Music prize was also won by an Oxford group. The Choir of New College carried away the prize based on their performance of ‘Missa Benedicta’, conducted by EdwardHigginbottom.

Higher-earning students should pay more than those on low incomes to cover the costs of higher education, announced David Willetts, the Universities Minister.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference on Monday, Willets said, “When money is tight, it is right to expect people to make a substantial contribution towards the cost of their university education – not when they are studying but afterwards when they are graduates on a decent income. And there should be protection for the lowest paid”

The speech given by the Universities Minister appeared to confirm expectations that the upcomingBrowne Review will reccommend a significant rise in tuition fees.

Lord Browne’s report on higher education, which is expected to be released next week, has been predicted to say that universities should be allowed to increase current £3,290 annual fees to £10,000.

To support the substantial fee increase, Willetts proposed the introduction of a “progressive” funding system in which students take out loans to cover higher fees. Wealthier graduates pay back their fees at a more expensive rate.

Professor Steve Machin, a researcher for the Sutton Trust education charity, warned that undergraduate fees could “rapidly increase, particularly for those universities with the highest academic reputations”.
Lord Patten, the Chancellor of Oxford, has previously expressed his view that current tuition fees are “preposterously” low and must rise if Oxford education is to remain world class.

He said, “I would be prepared to cap the funding of our teaching grant if we were able as a result to set whatever tuition fee we wanted, provided that we could demonstrate that we were still guaranteeing needs-blind access with generous bursaries.”

Spending on Freshers’ Week by JCR committees varies greatly across the University, especially regarding the budget set aside to buy alcohol.

Queen’s College have allocated a budget of £4500 for Freshers’ Week, which includes £400 for a sightseeing tour of Oxford by bus for new students. Meanwhile, Oriel are spending £250 in total for the entire week.

Of the colleges surveyed by Cherwell, the average JCR spend on Freshers’ Week activities was £1900, all of which came out of the JCR budget. The only college whose MCR to contributed to Freshers’ Week was Mansfield.

The vast majority of JCR spending goes towards venue hire and alcohol, although other costs include magicians, barbecues, and a bouncy castle at Lincoln.

Many colleges try to win their money back through the sale of Freshers’ T-shirts and club night tickets.

Encouraging new students to go clubbing has been disallowed by some Colleges, after fears from College Governing Bodies that this could encourage excessive alcohol consumption, and endanger student safety.

But despite the concerns, some JCRs have spent thousands of pounds on alcohol for students. St Hugh’s budget totals £3000, of which £400 was spent on wine and £1000 on Pimm’s.

A cocktail evening and accompanying entertainment organised by Queen’s for incoming students cost £1000, and Magdalen have also set aside £1000 behind their college bar.

Chewell found that at least six JCRs are supplying no alcohol whatsoever. St Anne’s pastoral staff explicitly disallowed more than one official college club night this year after problems with drunken behaviour and an arrest in Freshers’ Week last year.

One member of the St Anne’s Freshers’ Committee commented, “It is ridiculous to only let us have one night where alcohol is officially allowed. By being so strict the College is making students more determined to go out and get really drunk.

“There would be less chance of something going wrong if college recognised that everyone is going to drink in Freshers’ Week, no matter what they say, and helped us organise it properly and safely.”
Corpus Christi organisers have also been monitored by the governing body, which has insisted on at least one “non-alcohol centred” night during Freshers’ Week.
“They told us there is enough drinking involved in Freshers’ activities as it is”, a Corpus Christi Freshers’ Week organiser commented. He went on to describe the attitude of the college as “stingy and generally anti-fun.”

Many new students are worried that their time at Oxford will not be as enjoyable as that of their friends starting at other universities. Facebook groups for incoming freshers express fears that Freshers’ Week will be “disappointing” and complaints that the planned schedule is “a joke.”

However, some students have welcomed increased involvement from staff. A second year Teddy Hall student commented, “Freshers’ is probably the same at every university but there are always people who take it too far with pennying and drinking games.

“Not everyone likes to get wasted five nights in a row and you shouldn’t feel pressured into it. There is a permissive lash culture in Oxford because of drinking societies and it can be a real social divide. It must be terrifying for shy new students.”

A second year History student said, “My friend drunk so much on the first night of her Freshers Week that she wandered out of a club to a building site and passed out. No one realised she had gone missing and eventually a passer by phoned A&E. She woke up the next morning in the John Radcliffe Hospital. It is really terrifying to think of the dangers of excessive drinking during Freshers Week.”

A University spokesperson said, “Everyone attending Freshers’ Week events will be an adult, and if not, should not be drinking. Responsibility for their behaviour lies with themselves.”