The Classics department at Cambridge suffered embarrassment this week as the £1.3 million renovation of their facility resulted in a misspelling on the doors of their new foyer.

Academics had chosen a Greek inscription from Aristotle’s Metaphysics which translates as “all men by nature desire to know” to grace the facade. However, the word “phusei”, meaning “by nature”, was spelled with the English letter “S” rather than the Greek letter sigma.

The glass doors of stylish new entrance on the university’s Sidgwick site have also been criticised for opening too slowly and causing queues of staff and students.  
University officials have declined to comment on the doors.

Television comedian Russell Howard was the anonymous special guest of an Oxford comedy show.

Sunday night’s ‘Ministry of Mirth’ student stand-up comedy night billed him as “special unnamed anonymous faceless reclusive” guest, but word of mouth spread quickly over the weekend and the Sunday night event at the Wheatsheaf was full.

The ‘Mock the Week’ and ‘Russell Howard’s Good News’ star told the audience that he liked to crash small comedy gigs in order to test new jokes. His material included the Cumbria shootings and Lady Gaga. He commented that he found Oxford “intellectually daunting.”

The Ministry of Mirth is a student run stand-up night which attracts both newcomers and professionals from the London circuit .

A sharp rise in the number of people admitted to university makes it impossible to compare degrees awarded by different institutions in different subjects, according to a report by the HEPI.
The report said that it was “unrealistic” to compare the standard of firsts, 2:1s and 2:2s between institutions, since courses at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge require “greater intensity of study”.
It concluded that the university sector “should press on” with finding alternatives.
However Janet Beer, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, said, “We know our 2:1 is of a national standard.”
The Press Office at Oxford University refused to comment on the difference between degrees at Oxford University and other institutions.

An American visiting student at Exeter College has been killed following an avalanche in Switzerland. 

Henry Lo, from Williams College in Massachusetts, was on a hiking trip with eight other students, including five Williams students and two Oxford students, when the fatality happened on Sunday.

The police have said Lo, from New York, was swept away by snow and fell down a 100 metre cliff. He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Another student, Amy Nolan, was injured and subsequently taken to a Swiss hospital. Nolan has since been joined by her family.

The other Williams-Exeter students have written a tribute to Henry, a major in Maths and Religion, saying: “You made the most of your time here at Oxford: football, kickboxing, working out, wine-tasting, truly loving your academic work, not to mention all your socialising.

“This list only scratches the surface. To borrow some of your own words, you were not a gamer, you were a competitor. You made such a huge impression on all of us in less than a year – we all wish we could spend more time with you, get to know you even better. We can’t believe you’ve been taken from us.”

None of the other students were injured and Swiss authorities organised a response team to take the students to Bern. The students have since returned to the UK. 

International media has speculated that a skier above the group of hikers caused the avalanche. A police investigation is ongoing and the University has yet to confirm these reports. 

The Rector of Exeter College, Frances Cairncross, said: “Henry was a popular student who played on the Exeter College football team. He had many friends both on the Williams Programme and among Exeter College students. We will miss him greatly. Our thoughts are with his parents and with Amy and her family.” 

President of Williams College, Adam Falk has written a letter to the College community saying: “At this profoundly sad moment our hearts are first with Henry’s family for their sudden and devastating loss. As a parent, I can’t imagine the effect of such an occurrence.”  

Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten is set to co-ordinate the Pope’s visit to Britain in September. 

The government is due to confirm his appointment this week. Lord Patten will organise the three day papal trip, which is expected to cost around £14 million.
The appointment of Lord Patten should prove a popular choice, as he is both a well-known practising Catholic and an experienced diplomat.

The papal trip was originally planned to cost in the region of £7 million but costs are believed to have doubled since then.  

It has suffered a series of setbacks after an offensive Foreign Office memo was leaked and costs spiralled. 

Civil servants formerly involved in the trip had to be replaced after 23 year-old Oxford graduate Steven Mulvian wrote a memo suggesting the Pope take a trip to an abortion clinic, bless a homosexual marriage and bring out his own range of condoms. 

Diplomat Anjoum Noorani approved the memo and has been suspended and banned from overseas postings for five years due to the severity of the case. 
The University has made it clear that Lord Patten is working in a personal capacity in relation to the visit. 

A spokesperson for the University said: “He will only be coordinating the Government side of things, not the religious side. He is very pleased to be able to help, particularly because of the Oxford connection with Cardinal Newman.” 

Third year St. Hilda’s student Ellen Hughes said: “In light of everything going on at the moment politically and economically it might be best that someone who is perceived to be an independent is indeed involved.

“Ultimately, I think it’s great that the Chancellor is involved.”

HRH Prince Charles spoke at the Sheldonian Theatre on Wednesday, on ‘Islam and the Environment.’ 

His lecture focussed on what he described as the “division between humanity and nature”, which is caused by “global industrialisation.” 

The lecture was organised by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, of which the Prince is patron, to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Prince Charles said that “the Islamic world is a custodian…a priceless gift to the rest of world.” He made a plea to Islamic scholars, artists, teachers and engineers to fuse the spiritual and practical worlds, on the model of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. 

The Prince, whose income last year was just over £19 million, said “we are clearly living beyond our means.”

He argued that the current economic and environmental crisis is the result of a deeper crisis of the soul.

“We need a recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Only the sacred traditions have the capacity to do this”, he said.

The Prince of Wales blamed a lack of belief in the soul for environmental problems, and said that the planet will not be able to sustain a population likely to rise to 9 billion in 40 years.

He said that it was “baffling” that so many scientists claimed to have faith in God, and yet science was till used in a “damaging” way to exploit the natural world.

Prince Charles even criticised the work of Galileo. Condemning the drive for profit behind scientific research, he said, “This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in nature but quantity and motion.”

The election for the Oxford Professor of Poetry has again become mired in controversy after the only woman in the race pulled out in protest at sexism and “serious flaws” in the election process.

Paula Claire, an Oxford-based poet, informed the University on Tuesday that she was withdrawing from the contest because she thought the election was biased against her. There is less than a week until voting closes on Wednesday.

She said she was dismissively described as a “performer and artist” in Oxford’s official announcement, which omitted to mention that she is also a poet.

The “last straw” for Claire was a flysheet in last week’s Oxford Gazette, the official University journal, which backed Geoffrey Hill’s election campaign.

Hill, 77, is the favourite to win the election. He is seen as the establishment candidate, with more than fifty Oxford academics supporting him.

Described by Claire as “repugnant,” the flysheet said that Hill was “quite simply a giant…the finest living poet in English today.” Claire said that the University was backing Hill, “and the rest of us are ignored as not worthy to be in the set-up”.

Claire said, “I haven’t withdrawn in a pique – I’ve withdrawn for women.
“The post was founded in 1708. They haven’t had a woman since then and I think they’re still determined to put a man in.”

Some have suggested that Claire did not understand the nature of the flysheets. Any candidates with support from ten members of Oxford’s Congregation (academics and senior administrators) can place a flysheet in the Gazette. Hill is the only one to have done so as yet, but others are expected to follow suit.

Her resignation letter demanded that a committee independent of the Faculty of English be set up to run the election “in a genuinely reformed and modern way: efficiently, transparently and democratically, backed up by advice from internet experts and given an independent complaints procedure”.

A University spokesperson said that Oxford did “not accept her allegations that the election process has been unfair. No special arrangements have been made for this election that are inconsistent with normal University operations in this respect.”

The disgraced former Oxford Professor of Poetry, Ruth Padel, has also been criticised for publicly endorsing two friends, including Hill, from the ten remaining candidates for this year’s election to the Professorship.

As she is the most recent holder of the post, many feel Padel ought to remain independent.

She resigned after only nine days in the illustrious position last year, after Cherwell revealed that she had been involved in a smear campaign against her opponent, Derek Walcott.

She had sent emails to journalists detailing accusations of sexual assault made against Walcott in the 1980s and 1990s.
But Padel, 63, told the Camden New Journal last week that she would endorse Geoffrey Hill and Michael Horovitz.

“Geoffrey is a great poet – he is full of such wonder. Michael Horowitz is very good at enthusing people. Both of them are friends of mine and both would be good,” she said.

The duties of the Professor are to give one public lecture each term, for all five years that the Professorship is held. Professors must also “encourage the art of poetry in the University”, according to the University’s regulations.

“Geoffrey is world class and gives some truly extraordinary lectures,” Padel said.

“But three lectures a year for five years is actually rather taxing for someone of a certain age because they are not just any lecture – they have to be really, really good ones.”

The University had hoped that this year’s contest would be controversy-free after the scandal surrounding Walcott and Padel last May. However a confrontation has also erupted between Michael Horovitz and a rival candidate, Roger Lewis.

Lewis, a literary critic and biographer, attacked the two favourites, Hill and Horovitz. “I’m sure they are nice old codgers, but I’m afraid I find their work serious-minded to the point of pain and obscure of purpose,” he said.

“No more solemnity and pompousness, please.”

Horovitz responded, “Lewis has conflated a superficial impression of Hill with a blurred and misleading one of me.

“Such blanket misrepresentation, bearing out Alexander Pope’s warning ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’, qualifies Lewis for a Services to Dumbing Down award rather than for the poetry professorship he craves.”

Brasenose-educated Horovitz believes his beatnik background and involvement in performance poetry will give him more credibility than his rivals.

“I’ve devoted most of my life over the half-century since I graduated from Oxford to extending the then generally approved and educationally transmitted boundary lines controlling arts media and poetic communications in Britain and elsewhere,” he said.

But his claim to be the best performance poet of the election is challenged by the well-known Oxford slam poet Steve Larkin, who has also been nominated for the role.

Larkin is a familiar face on the Oxford stage, from the Cellar to the backroom at the Bullingdon Arms, and lectures on Performance Poetry at Oxford Brookes.
He hosted the first Oxford University Poetry Slam Podcast competition last year. It was won by Chris Turner, St Hugh’s, a member of the Oxford Imps.

“I intend to reload the literary canon and fire it through the walls of any stifling ivory tower that blocks the emergence of an exciting and inclusive live literature scene,” Larkin said.

This year’s election for the professorship is attracting particular interest because it is the first year that eligible voters have been able to vote online. In order to vote, you have to be a graduate of Oxford, and have registered your intention to vote. Voting closes on Wednesday of 8th Week and the results will be announced on Friday.

Stephen Moss, former literary editor of the Guardian, is another of the ten running for the post. He told Cherwell that he was the “democratising candidate”, which is no bad thing given the “Oxford-insidery fancy franchise” nature of previous elections.

The potential to reach about 200,000 electors has brought the contest to Facebook. On this front, Larkin is ahead with 406 members of the “Steve Larkin for Professor of Poetry” group. Geoffrey Hill’s group has 316 members.

Finalists celebrating the end of their exams at Wahoo on Friday were treated to an unexpected sight: an appearance by world-famous actor Hugh Grant.

Grant  had been attending a dinner at New College, and was persuaded by students there to accompany them to the newly-reopened Friday night clubbing venue. He purchased 10 tickets from college Entz Reps.

The actor spent a brief time in the club, as well as stopping off for a drink at the Kings Arms pub on Holywell Street.

Grant, who was an English undergraduate at New College between 1979 and 1981, ate dinner on the High Table there earlier in the evening.

He has donated generously to the College in the past, although his name does not appear on any of the public donor lists. He is thought to have been invited to dinner in recognition of this contribution.

Following the dinner, Grant went with students to the college bar. He was quickly surrounded by large numbers of undergraduates, and remained in the bar for over an hour.

Despite previous incidents of conflict with photographers, he appeared amenable to the attention he received in the bar. He bought drinks for a number of students and posed for photographs with many of them.

Andrew Symes, New College Bar Rep, said that after about half an hour Grant handed him his bank card and said, “From now on, all drinks are on me”. However Symes was forced to refuse the offer, because the bar can only accept cash or Bod cards.

At one point Grant was ‘pennied’ by second year Modern Languages student Hursh Mehta.

Mehta said, “I asked ‘Are you familiar with the concept of pennying?’ He wasn’t.

“After a brief explanation, he responded ‘That sounds like good fun.’ ‘Oh, really?’ I said and dropped a penny into his pint of bitter.”

Grant then obligingly downed his pint of White Horse to a rousing chorus of “We like to drink with Hugh”.

Some students expressed embarrassment at the behaviour of those crowding around Grant. One second year at New College said, “I just found it slightly pathetic how all these girls who want to be treated with respect turned into fawning sycophants who would definitely have let him have sex with them there and then if he’d offered.

“One of them was heard saying something along the lines of ‘Let me make you happy, Hugh’. It was disgusting.”

Matthew Kain, JCR Entz Rep-elect, and Oliver Greening, Bar Manager, approached Grant and offered him tickets to Wahoo, which they had been selling in the bar before Grant’s arrival.

Greening said, “We asked him if he was coming to Risa [Wahoo’s former name] and he replied ‘Yeah, why the f*** not!’.

“He asked how much the tickets were, and we told him they were £5. He whipped out a fresh £50 note and said, ‘I’ll take 10!'”

Grant’s visit to New College bar came on the same evening that the College welfare team were holding ‘Pee for a Pint’, an event designed to encourage students to take a chlamydia test in return for a free drink.

Grant was apparently offered a test kit, but declined to take it.

However his presence in the bar meant that the event was far more successful than previously anticipated. Over 130 students received vouchers for their free drink.

One of the students organising the event said, “It was a lucky coincidence definitely.

“We used up all the tests that the screening programme gave us because so many people were in the bar, although at the moment he walked in the people who were about to do the test ran off screaming to see him!”