A new project has been launched this week to explore East Oxford’s Roman and medieval archaeological sites.

Led by the University’s Department for Continuing Education, the project has been made possible by a £330,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Academics on the project will spend the next three years working with Oxford residents on digs, excavations, and surveys at sites believed to include Roman settlements, a medieval leper hospital and Civil War siege works.

The project is the biggest community outreach scheme of its type to be launched by the University.

Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton said, “Oxford University spends a lot of time looking out at the world, but we are also totally grounded in the local community.”

“The University is 900 years old, but this will find many things that will go far beyond that period.”

Dame Vivien Duffield is set to retire as the chairman of the Oxford Thinking fundraising campaign, reports the Telegraph.
Since taking up the post in 2008, Dame Duffield is credited with having raised more than £1 billion for the University’s fundraising campaign.

Oxford Thinking, “the biggest fundraising campaign in European history,” has raised £961 million to date, and is aiming to reach £1.25 billion.

Last year, the University’s endowment stood at £585 million, with combined college endowments reaching £2.4 billion.
Dame Duffield, a graduate of Lady Margaret Hall, has also contributed £5.1 million of her own money to the campaign and is estimated to have donated £176 million from her various foundations.

An NHS review announced last Friday that paediatric heart surgery should no longer take place at Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital.
The review aims to reduce the number of specialist centres in Britain. Out of the eleven centres inspected, the John Radcliffe received the lowest ranking assessment by a “significant margin”.

Parents of children who have undergone surgery at the unit have expressed their outrage at the NHS decision and have launched a campaign to save the service.

Heart operations were suspended at the hospital earlier this year following the deaths of four infants at the surgery unit. The surgeon Caner Salih has since been found by an independent investigation to have made no errors in judgement.

Fears about student safety have been raised this week following three violent assaults in central Oxford.

These latest attacks follow two stabbings Cowley last week.
Third year student Laurence Osborn was robbed by a group of five men on Parks Road, opposite Keble college, leaving him with severe head injuries.

“I was walking into the centre of town for a friend’s birthday when I saw a group of guys on bikes and a moped coming towards me on the pavement rather than the road. I didn’t think for a moment that I was a target because I was so close to town.”

The group pushed Osborn against a wall and threatened physical violence unless he handed over his phone. Osborn complied but the attackers decided the phone wasn’t valuable enough to steal and broke it instead.

After punching him, the group began to move away. However, when Osborn stayed to attempt to retrieve his glasses from the ground, the attackers threw a bottle at him and forced Osborn to run in the direction of The King’s Arms.

Despite his injuries, Osborn commented, “It’s more psychologically wounding than physically wounding. I’ve been having flashbacks, but I’m alright. I’m not going to let it affect the academic year and my tutors have been supportive.”

The attack left Osborn with a broken nose and fractured cheek. He was admitted to A&E because of blood clots and worries that the compound breakage of bone as well as cartilage in the nose was consistent with skull fracture.

Although the attack occurred at nine o’clock at night, no passers-by witnessed the incident, and Osborn’s attackers made off with his passport, bank cards and keys. The student was forced to remove any valuables from his college room and sleep elsewhere until the lock was changed.

A second student, Ian Maconnachie, was assaulted on his way home from Park End last Wednesday. The attack took place outside O’Neill’s pub on New Inn Hall Street at around 3am.

“My memory of the incident is a bit hazy, but I remember that there were two people I didn’t know having an argument and it got heated. I attempted to intervene and for my trouble I was punched so hard it knocked me out.

“I’ve never been hit before and I was in A&E for six hours that night. I’m quite light-hearted about the whole thing but it was so avoidable.”

The police are still investigating both incidents but there have been no arrests made so far. The rapid spate of attacks since the beginning of term has raised concerns that students are being deliberately targeted.

Osborn agreed that the attack felt like more than a straightforward mugging. He said, “Once they took my things they argued about what they were going to do with me. They decided to hit me anyway even though they’d already robbed me.
“I live in a very rough area of London, and I’ve been mugged before, but I’ve never had an experience as horrible as that. It didn’t seem like they needed to steal. It just seemed like they wanted to hurt me. When I was assaulted before it was a means to an end – they hit me first and then took my wallet. I just got the impression that they hated me.”

A further incident was reported to police on the same evening that Osborn was attacked. A 23-year-old student was admitted to hospital after being hit with a glass bottle at the corner of South Parks Road and St Cross Road. The man was walking with friends when confronted by a larger group of people at around 10.45pm.
The incident is also being treated as grievous bodily harm but no-one has been arrested.

Both Osborn and Maconnachie have praised police assistance. Maconnachie commented, “When I came around the police were already there and somebody had called an ambulance for me.”
Osborn said, “The police have been very helpful. They explained that I’ll be entitled to compensation because it was a case of grievous bodily harm.”

Tom Perry, OUSU Welfare warned that students must not underestimate the dangers of walking alone late at night. He commented, “While Oxford may seem like a quaint place to live, it is a city, and students should be careful.”

Last week, an Oxford Brookes student was stabbed outside the O2 Academy on Cowley Road. A man has now been arrested for the attack.

Benjamin Hepburn, 22, appeared at Oxford Magistrates’ Court last week and will appear at Oxford Crown Court later today. He has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

St John’s students, fellows and alumni celebrated the official opening of the college’s new £35 million quadrangle on Saturday.
Kendrew Quadrangle is named after the Noble Prize winner and former St John’s President, Sir John Kendrew. The quad will provide seventy student rooms, a law library, a gym, café, archives, music practice areas and an events room. It is one of the largest building developments undertaken by an Oxford college in recent years.

Taking nearly a decade of planning by the college, the new quad’s design has been praised for its cutting edge approach to energy consumption and sensitivity to local surroundings.
Its innovative technology makes it one of the University’s most environmentally friendly projects to date. Geothermal heat pumps and a wood chip burner mean it has just half the carbon footprint of a conventional design.

Matthew Thomlinson, a second year St John’s student, said, “The law library looks like a really great working atmosphere, it will really help with my learning. I like that its green and eco-friendly.”
A spokesperson for St John’s said, “Kendrew Quadrangle is a first-rate building in a modern idiom that responds sensitively to the unique context of the college and the city. These top class facilities will help us to continue to attract the most able students and academics.”

Current third years at St John’s will be the first ever residents of the quadrangle. Its thirty undergraduate rooms were, according to the college JCR, “snatched up by Finalists” in the annual room ballot.

The extra accommodation space will allow St John’s postgraduates and academics to live in college for the first time.

The new building forms part of a larger project which involved the restoration of older college buildings, including a seventeenth century barn which was converted into a new exhibition and performance space.

MJP Architects, who designed the quad, also created St John’s garden quadrangle, completed in 1994, and the 2004 extension of the Senior Common Room.

President’s Drinks at the Oxford Union will start charging members for entry, it was decided at Standing Committee this week.
The proposal, put forward by Union President James Kingston, was passed by seven votes to six at the Committee meeting on Monday evening.

Kingston said that selling tickets on a first come first serve basis would reduce “hack patronage” at an event that has often been the preserve of friends of Union officers and committee members.

President’s Drinks take place every week after the debate on the Thursday and offer members an opportunity to meet guest speakers.

A former member of Standing Committee told Cherwell that previously there had been a clear policy that members on Secretary’s Committee could bring one guest. Those on Standing could bring two, officers could bring “about five” and the President as many they wanted.

The new move will see forty tickets going on sale to Union members at a cost of £5 each, and members will only be allowed to attend two of the events per term.

Although a suggestion was also put forward to charge for attendance of the dinner that precedes the drinks, Kingston said it was “a little ridiculous” that officers who were obliged to attend and entertain the speakers should be charged to do so.
Further modifications to President’s Drinks were also proposed, including turning the Drinks into a smaller event with higher quality alcohol.

However, the Union President maintained that both speakers and members enjoyed the weekly event. Kingston argued against calls to reduce the size of the guest list, reminding the committee that they existed “to serve the members”.

The decision to introduce the £5 charge has been met with mixed reactions from Union members.

One member who attended President’s Drinks regularly last year said he had used the Drinks as a forum “to hack” and stopped going once he had been successful in achieving a committee position.

He agreed that charging people would hopefully attract guests “who actually wanted to meet the speaker”. This, he thought, would be “a lot fairer”.

However, another argued that the “patronage” of the President would still apply since he or she selects who dines with speakers beforehand. Those at the dinner can attend the subsequent President’s Drinks.

He also predicted that the Union would struggle to sell forty tickets for the Drinks each week and that this will lead to Committee members inviting along their friends.

He commented, “It will very much retain a ‘Members’ Club’ atmosphere”.

The ticket charge is set to be introduced in third week. Standing Committee will re-open discussions on the proposals at its next meeting on Monday.