Chaos and confusion ensued at yesterday’s protest against the Browne Review, as a student was punched in the face by a policeman and thrown to the ground.

The protest was organised ahead of Vince Cable’s talk at Exams Schools. Despite Cable’s last minute cancellation, hundreds gathered to voice their anger about the cuts and removal of the cap on tuition fees.

Students chanted, “No ifs, no buts, no education cuts” and “Vince Cable, shame on you, shame on you for turning Blue”.

Though the event had been planned and advertised as a peaceful protest, violence erupted after police prevented protesters moving onto the High Street and enforced a change of route.

A bystander described how a line of police blocked Catte Street. As some protesters tried to break the line, a student was punched in the face by a policeman and thrown to the ground.

Lewis Greaves from St Hilda’s said “I saw two cops trying to beat up a guy, I asked them to stop and a policeman grabbed my neck and threw me to the floor”.

As protesters retreated and moved back to Broad Street they were confronted with a line of police barricading the road between Trinity Gates and the entrance to Turl Street.

Some students shouted “charge, charge” and some were restrained by the police. The protest eventually moved down Turl Street and onto Market Street, where they were again confronted with a police line preventing access to Cornmarket Street.

Some tried again to charge the line, but many students put their hands in the air and chanted, “We are peaceful, what are you?”
Jordan Waller from Wadham said, “It’s disgusting seeing them ‘break up’ the protest so aggressively- I’m ashamed. The police are instigating all the violence, I didn’t see a single student instigate anything.”

Leo-Marcus Wan said, “It’s ridiculous that the police are trying to stop us exercising our right to free speech. We disagree with the decision of a government we did not elect, made with no consultation of students.”

Not all students were satisfied with the way the protest was conducted. John Lavrey, a St Catz fresher, defended the police’s behaviour, saying, “I think the police dealt well with the situation- in the circumstances they dealt a lot better than they have in the past.”
Another student said, “We’re trying to gain respect and change people’s views. How can we show that we’re educated if we’re fighting the police?”

Aditya Balachander, an OUCA member, commented, “I’m here to support free speech, but I fundamentally disagree with this protest. It turns what should be debate and discussion into a shouting match.”
The protest was organised by OxfordEducation Campaign, ahead of Vince Cable’s talk at Exams Schools, which was part of the Lessons in Government Seminars.

Cable initially claimed that his cancellation followed guidance from Thames Valley Police. However, a TVP spokesperson said that they were happy for the event to go ahead, and had merely informed Cable that a protest was being organised.

A spokesman for the Oxford Education Campaign said: “Vince should come clean and admit that he ducked out because he didn’t want to face the hundreds of demonstrators who disagree with his vision for the future of higher education in this country.”

Kathryn Smoraczewska, a 4th year from St Hilda’s, said she felt “massively let down” by Cable, and is “wondering how yellow the Lib Dems really are”.

Yaro Walker from St Peter’s said, “We were lied to before the election by both the Tories and the Lib Dems. Vince Cable can give any excuse he likes, but he’s a coward, he doesn’t want to admit he betrayed his principles for a seat in power.”

Thames Valley police said that the protest had passed off “pretty peacefully.” OUSU president David Barclay said, “OUSU fully supports the protest. The test of its success will be the impact on the wider debate.”

A spokesperson for OxfordEducation Campaign, who organised the protest, said, “What today demonstrated was the fantastic energy of a hundreds of autonomous individuals – students, academics and town residents – acting collectively to send a clear message to Vince Cable and the coalition government: We reject the Browne review, we reject your public sector cuts, and we know why you were afraid to present yourself to us in person. You cannot defend the indefensible.”

OxHub, the University’s focal point for charity work and community volunteering, celebrated the unveiling of its new building on Turl Street with a launch party on Tuesday.

The building is still in the state left by the Corner Club, the private members’ club that previously occupied the space. There is mock pony skin on the walls, a leopard print carpet in one of the rooms, as well as an unexplained bed in the basement.

The four story Georgian house is owned by the council but was opened to public bids following the bankruptcy of the previous business on the premises.

OxHub placed a bid and competed with multinational corporations including Starbucks and Jack Wills for the property. The bid included letters of support from colleges and comments from their ‘Supporting the new OxHub central venue’ Facebook group.

Hannah Martin, the centre’s director, said, “University is where we have the opportunity to think big. This is a place where people will be able to have amazing thoughts and meet amazing people. We want to create a culture change in Oxford – for people to come here and think, ‘you know what? I want to be involved’.”

To help fund the new OxHub building, there are plans for an eco-friendly cafe-bar, open to all members of the public and students.
Rachel Stevenson, one of OxHub’s managers and founders, said “It’s completely surreal. When we were creating the bid that seemed to be the endpoint for us. We were so proud of it – but we didn’t dream we’d get accepted.

“This is the kind of place where you’ll be able to come back to Oxford in twenty years or so and say ‘I felt at home there’.”

She admitted that the new premises were challenging, “To be honest, we don’t really know what we’re doing. None of us are restaurant owners or business people.”

Hannah MacDiarmid, OxHub’s President, said, “I’m most excited about the building itself. I see myself coming back in five years and knowing I was involved when it started up.”

The cafe is planned to open next June and the OxHub building is expected to open by Michaelmas 2012.

Jane Austen’s writing contained numerous “counter-grammatical” mistakes and “broke most of the rules for writing good English”, new research at Oxford has shown.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland, an English tutor at St Anne’s, has studied more than 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten manuscripts, and noted hundreds of spelling mistakes and strong traces of regional dialect.

“The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not here,” said Professor Sutherland, who has spent three years working on the texts, comparing the published versions and the manuscripts line by line.

“The reputation of no other English novelist rests so firmly on this issue of style, on the poise and emphasis of sentence and phrase, captured in precisely weighed punctuation” says Sutherland.
“But in reading the manuscripts it quickly becomes clear that this delicate precision is missing.”

Austen’s original drafts were much more colloquial and free-flowing than the published texts of her novels, and closer to the spoken language of the day.

“This is a shock,” said Charlotte Geater, a finalist from Teddy Hall.
“Obviously spelling at the time varied depending on where you lived, but the discovered syntax and structure are so different from the style of the novels that I feel cheated.”

Austen’s carefully crafted prose seems to have been heavily influenced by her editor, the scholar and part-time poet William Gifford.

Despite these findings, Professor Sutherland admitted that the novelist was “even better at writing dialogue and conversation than her published novels suggest.”

“Her style is much more intimate and relaxed, more conversational,” said Sutherland.

“Her punctuation is much more sloppy, more like the kind of thing our students do and we tell them not to.”

A student was violently attacked at Fuzzy Ducks this week, as bar staff looked on, and students who tried to report the assault were thrown out of the club.

Two Christ Church students witnessed the assault, which took place in the early hours of Thursday.

Hannah Cutmore-Scott, a third year Engineer at Christ Church, said, “I was standing on the dance floor in Fuzzy Ducks and I felt like I was being sprayed with water. I looked down and my hands and arms were covered in blood; I had no idea where it was coming from.
“I looked around and I saw this guy being beaten up on the dance floor, about a metre away from where I was standing. It was really shocking and awful, I have never seen anything like it in a central Oxford club”

Another eyewitness confirmed that the victim was being punched in the face, and that blood was pouring out of his head, nose and mouth.
The two Christ Church students went to the bar to alert staff about the assault. However they found that the woman at the bar refused to call anyone for help, or give them a glass of water to wash the sprayed blood off their bodies.

Shortly after this, a bouncer arrived and took the victim outside, at which point the crowd dispersed and the assailant ran away.
Georgia Lindsay, a third year English student at Christ Church who also witnessed the attack, said, “We wanted to report the assault, so we could give our statements as eye witnesses.

“So we asked the bouncer what we could do and who we could speak to. He just told us to go back in and dance.”

The students then went outside to see if the police had arrived, so that they could give a witness statement directly. However, they were told by the bouncer outside that “no one is interested” and were barred from re-entering the club.

Cutmore-Scott said, “the bouncer was so rude to us, we told him we were only trying to help and he threw us out”.

Shortly after the assault had taken place, the victim said that he could not remember how he had incurred his facial injuries.
He told the police later that evening that he was unsure whether he was punched or whether he had fallen over.

A spokesperson from Thames Valley Police said “An incident was reported at 12.58am on Wednesday 27th October. An officer on routine control in Cowley Road was stopped by door staff at the O2 Academy.

“There was a male with a blood covered face, who said he could not remember if he was assaulted or fell over.

“Ambulances were called and he was taken to the John Radcliffe hospital. We have been trying to get in contact with him but have not heard from him since. We cannot fully investigate the case until the injured party gets in touch.”

Fuzzy Ducks is held every Wednesday night at the O2 Academy, at 190 Cowley Road. The night was voted by mens’ magazine FHM as being the easiest place to pull in the UK.

This week Fuzzy Ducks invited its guests to “Wear your favourite fancy dress and come enjoy the cheapest drinks…Let’s get ducked!”

Hertford College is to hold a ball at the end of Michaelmas to commemorate their formerly student-run bar. Profits from the award-winning drinkery will be used to celebrate its passing.
Former Bar Manager Oliver Stephenson proposed a motion for a “Winter Ball to celebrate and honour the life and memory of the student-run Hertford Bar” at the College EGM on Sunday of 0th week.
The ball is to be entitled ‘The Last Pango’, in reference to the infamous Hertford ‘Pango’ cocktail, which has been described as “so strong it’s illegal”.

The motion informed the College that the JCR bar bank account had £10,940.36, and suggested that this should be put towards the ball. It added, “The JCR should also contribute to the most fantastic sending-off possible, in line with our affection.”

However Christina Head, a third year History student, opposed the expenditure of the full amount and £4,999.99 was instead contributed from the appropriate JCR funds.

This means that the amount spent on each guest at the ball will be around £90: almost double the per capita expenditure of Hertford’s last summer ball.

In Trinity term of last year a professional was brought in to manage the JCR bar by Hertford College’s authorities. 96% of the JCR voted to oppose the abolition of student management, but the changes still went forward.

Anaar Patel, Hertford JCR’s Vice-President, said, “Everybody I’ve spoken to has expressed their regret and sadness that the bar has been privatised. The atmosphere down there is clinical and empty and the drinks are expensive.”

However second year Law student Jonny Ward was less downbeat. He said, “The bar went out with a bang last term, but now we want to add a bit of glam to its passing. Bring on the Pangos!”