For many, punting may be about Pimms, sun and boater hats.

But not for four Cambridge students aiming to travel all the way from Cambridge to Oxford in a motor-less pleasure boat, all in an effort to raise money for charity.

Engineers Toby Dickens and Andrew Marshall and hist
orian Karl Williams, of St John’s College, accompanied by natural scientist Rebecka Kiff of Queen’s, are will set out from Jesus Lock on the 19th June.

The total journey is approximately 200 miles. They aim to complete their journey within 11 days, hopefully ending by 30th June at Oxford’s Great Meadow.

The four students hope to raise £2,000 for the charity Help for Heroes, an organisation which provides aid for servicemen and women wounded in war.

The punt is scheduled to wend its way along the River Cam, the Great Ouse, the Middle Level Navigations, the River Nene, the Grand Union Canal, the Oxford Canal, and finally the Cherwell.

Some of the connections are treacherous, and not generally considered to be stretches of water through which leisure craft might pass, but unbeknown to many students of both universities, such a path does exist.
Over the course of this route there are 113 locks for the punters to contend with, and in order to be up for the challenge, the four students have devised a strict training regime. They punt every morning at 6:30am in preparation for the challenge ahead.

Toby Dickens said, “It’s going to be a race to complete the journey in 12 days, but we are determined to do it by punting through the night and doing shifts.”
He said that the real test is not the amount of time needed for completion, but, “the very impracticality of punting”.

When asked why the group decided to take on this particular odyssey, he said, “We wanted to do this to support all of the brave men and women in the forces who have been wounded in service because they rarely get the recognition they deserve”.

Dickens said that rather than any discouragement, the group’s goal has met with acclaim.

He said “people are really supportive of our challenge and are surprised you can punt between the two cities.”
The last group of punters to complete a similar course were Oxford students, who punted their way to Cambridge in 14 days in the summer of 2004. This latest may well be the inaugural group to punt upstream in the opposite direction.

Some Oxford students are slightly bemused by the proposed journey.

Elli Thomas, a Cambridge resident who studies at Oxford, said, “It’s interesting, but I don’t understand how you can punt between two cities not completely connected by rivers”.

Andrew Marshall said, “We’ve heard some pretty wild stories about what they get up to at the Other Place – crazy things like using the wrong end and aluminium poles.”

He continued, “We intend to put the record straight, and show the world that they’re not so different from us, after all.”

Figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency have shown a 2% increase in the number of state school pupils gaining places at Oxford and Cambridge this year.

 All universities have a benchmark for their intake of state school pupils set by HESA. Despite the increase this year, Oxford and Cambridge are both failing to meet their target for just under 70%. 62% of undergraduate applications to Oxford were from state school pupils this year.

 In October 2010, a projected 54.7% of new first-year students at Oxford will be state educated, compared to 53.4% of last year’s intake. Approximately 17% of sixth formers in England are privately educated, but they still make up around 46.7% of Oxford’s undergraduate intake.
Data shows that the majority of Russell Group universities did not meet targets for admitting state-educated pupils. Bristol only admitted 60% against a target of 74.9%, while Durham accepted 59.2% against a target of 74.6%.

 The increase in state pupils for the next academic year sees a reversal on last year’s trend, when the proportion of privately-educated pupils at Oxford increased.

Oxford runs 1,500 events aimed at widening participation annually,

with £2.8 million spent on such outreach projects.
A spokeswoman for the University told the BBC, “There are many economic and social factors which can prevent students reaching their full academic potential by 18.

“For our part, we are doing our utmost to encourage academic ambition from a young age by working with students from 11 up, and by working closely with parents and teachers.”

 OUSU VP for Academic Affairs and Access, Jonny Medland, commented, “It’s encouraging to see more students applying to Oxford from the maintained sector. Oxford’s increased emphasis on working with teachers and building relationships with schools is crucial for continuing to widen access and ensuring that the most talented students are applying to Oxford.”

Daniel Webb, President of Target Schools, is also encouraged by the rise in state school applications.

He said, “We believe that the main problem facing Access is misinformation about Oxford; the more we demonstrate to school pupils that Oxford is an egalitarian institution, the more we expect the number of state-school applications and places to rise.”

The number of state pupils at Oxford had risen through the 1970s, but had then declined through the 1980s, until beginning to increase again in the late-1990s. The new figure is the highest number of offers for state school students since 2002, but whether this projected increase will match 2002 levels depends on how many of these offers are confirmed.

Oxford still admits few pupils from underprivileged backgrounds despite attempts to boost participation.

HESA defines ‘low-participation neighbourhoods’ as postcodes in which the participation rate is less than two-thirds of the UK average rate. Just 2.7% of full-time undergraduates at Oxford in 2008/09 – around 75 students out of a total intake that year of around 2,875 – were from these disadvantaged areas.

 Oxford has recently introduced a system of “contextual data” for widening the range of pupils who are invited to interview, which looks at factors such as the academic level of applicants’ schools and pupils’ postcodes, but stresses that there is no dilution of the standards of the University’s intake.

 Medland commented, “”In Oxford, places are awarded on the basis of the student’s intellectual ability and academic potential, not to reach targets.

“However, it’s right that the University continues to develop how to use contextual data in admitting students so the circumstances of individual students are recognised in the admissions process.”

The Covered Market has launched a new project to boost its global profile, following a £50,000 Heritage Lottery fund grant.

The new initiative, organised by charity Oxford Muse, the Oxfordshire Town Chambers Network and Oxford Civic Society, is called ‘Who Is Oxford’s Covered Market?’ and aims to increase the market’s presence online.

An exhibition about market traders is also planned to take place at the Museum of Oxford in 18 months’ time. It will feature traditional photo portraits and unique portraits created by charity Oxford Muse.

Ratana Brooker, who owns “Thena” and “Red Opia” in the market, told Cherwell “I think the Covered Market is the most important thing in Oxford.”

Butcher Ian Pavier said, “I think it’s a good opportunity to take this historic market into the 21st century while at the same time making sure that it keeps its old-world charm.”

Lib Dem MP for Oxford West, Dr Evan Harris, has this week become the subject of an angry leaflet campaign, aimed to deter constituents from voting for him.

Dr Harris has been branded “Dr Death” due to his support for voluntary euthanasia and the removal of some restrictions on abortion. 

One leaflet was from anonymous “concerned constituents in Oxford West and Abingdon”. The other was issued by Keith Mann, from the Animal Protection Party, who is running against Dr Harris. It said, “Harris is the most vocal supporter of Oxford University’s secret animal research programmes. Here researchers attack the brains of monkey’s [sic] in order to replicate the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.”

Dr Harris admitted that he was worried for his seat, in what has become a marginal constituency after recent boundary changes.

This week the race for the Oxford Professor of Poetry has taken a new turn, with the nomination of Steve Larkin, a slam poet and writer “for the hip-hop generation.”
In contrast to the establishment favourite, Geoffrey Hill, Larkin says he represents the “pleb candidate”. Larkin vows to overcome the association of the title with “dusty books and civilised lectures” and aims to bring poetry to bars, nightclubs, and festival tents.
Such is his belief in performance art that he will not allow his work to appear in print.

“As a practitioner of live literature,” Larkin said, “I represent a major and significant form of poetry that is increasingly relevant in modern society, a form of poetry adapted to live performance as well as to new media…I aim to create new enthusiasm and energy for poetry which will complement Oxford’s rich and varied tradition of poetic expression.”

Unlike many of the other candidates, Larkin is a well-known figure around Oxford.

He founded and runs the national live poetry organisation Hammer & Tongue, and lectures on Performance Poetry at Oxford Brookes University.

Guardian journalist Stephen Moss revealed that he is also hoping to be nominated for the position.
Moss stated that he would stand in an article in the Guardian in June 2009. he pedged that if he won, “the £6,000 stipend will be made available to assist struggling poets and poetic ventures.”

With less experience at spoken word performance than Larkin, Moss once attended a poetry slam, saying that it was “good fun, but quite distressing that my entire oeuvre was finished in under three minutes.”

Michael Gibson, a poet who entered the contest last year, but failed to gain enough votes for a nomination, has announced he is planning to run again . He will be visiting Oxford later this week to try to win support.

Larkin hosted the first Oxford University Poetry Slam Podcast competition last year. It was won by Chris Turner, a student at St Hugh’s and a member of the Oxford Imps. He won the Spoken Word Olympics in 2004.

Larkin is the founder and president of Hammer & Tongue, the UK’s leading poetry slam promoters.

In an exclusive interview on the Cherwell website, Larkin can be seen performing a recent piece, Fat Sex, which is a frenzied assault on women’s magazines and everything they represent.

Forget Facebook. The “Fit Finder” phenomenon has reached Oxford University.

The website www.thefitfinder.co.uk can be used to track down a “fitty” in various locations around Oxford, be it the college bar, library, laundry room or croquet lawns. The gender and hair colour of the fitty can be specified as well as the location.

One post on the “Oxford Fit Feed” sent from “Univ Library” says “Female, Brunette hair. witness the fitness. shame about the big ears.”

Another from “LMH Bar” reads “Female, Brunette hair. I can’t wait to see this one at the Ball on Fri. I see her in the quad a lot. Always in jacky wills. Standard.”
With posts about LMH fitties dominating the Fit Feed, there are so far no fitties listed from Merton and Oriel.

Portia Roelofs, former OUSU Women’s Officer told Cherwell that she did not think the Fit Finder would have a negative impact on female students in the workplace. Roelofs said, “I was interested to see how [Fit Finder] would turn out but it does not seem to be problematic. I don’t think it advocates a derogatory view of women, and I don’t think its an especially priviliged forum that will have much authority on students’ views.
“This website is a trivial and ridiculous caricature of sexism, and does not compare to that which goes on in the wider world.”

The project was launched at UCL by Rich Martell about a week ago. He said, said, “I got the idea after a number of my friends said they text each other when they saw “fittys” in the library at UCL”.

Martell sayd his site was intended “just for a few of us to communicate on throughout the day, however word got out at UCL, and after 2 days of it being online, the UCL one alone had over 25,000 unique users”.

 So far, sites exist for six universities: UCL, Imperial, KCL, LSE, Cambridge, and Oxford. Martell is looking to set up sites in a number of other universities, including Nottingham, Reading, Newcastle, SOAS and Durham.

Two Balliol graduates at the heart of a Foreign Office scandal which threatens a deep diplomatic rift in Papal relations have been let off with a slap on the wrist.

The circulation of a dossier entitled “The ideal visit would see…” included proposals that Pope Benedict launch his own brand of “Benedict’ condoms”, open an abortion clinic and bless civil partnership.

The memo also recommended that the Pope could apologise for the Spanish Armada, and join the Queen in singing a duet for charity. It was proposed that the national anthem should be changed to God Save the World.
Such was the offence caused by this incident that it led senior officials in Rome to consider cancelling a trip to the UK scheduled for September.

Anjoum Noorani headed up the team of civil servants who fielded these suggestions. The proposals were then circulated around Whitehall by Steven Mulvain, a junior administrative assistant.

Both Noorani and Mulvain studied at Balliol. Noorani was JCR Vice President and graduated with a first in PPE in 2000. Mulvain graduated in 2008 with a 2:2 in English.
Mulvain wrote a covering letter for the document, which warned that the “contents should not be shared externally” because they included “even the most far-fetched of ideas.”

In a section entitled “Climate Change”, one proposal of the dossier reads, “‘God will make trees fall on illegal loggers.'”

These recommendations are reported to have been the result of a “brainstorming” session involving Noorani and three other civil servants.

Senior officials in Rome were particularly outraged as the Foreign Office decided not to sack anyone in connection with the affair. Noorani has now been taken off the taskforce planning for Benedict’s trip.

Mr Mulvain escaped punishment because he was given authorisation to send the memo by a more senior civil servant, who has now been “transferred to other duties”.

Jim Murphy, who is leading the preparations for the Pope’s tour to Britain, described the suggestions as “absolutely despicable” and “vile”. David Miliband, Foreign Secretary, is said to have been “appalled” to hear of the paper.

Cardinal Renato Martino, the former head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said, “The British government has invited the Pope as its guest and he should be treated with respect. To make a mockery of his beliefs and the beliefs of millions of Catholics not just in Britain but across the world is very offensive indeed.”

Will Jones, who knew Mulvain from Balliol, told Cherwell, “The ‘prankster’ reputation is all Daily Mail guff, I think. He seemed a sensible, quiet guy. Not quite the ‘wild rebel’ the press hysteria paints him as.”
One undergraduate at St Hugh’s decried the story as “symptomatic of some of the idiocy Oxford’s ‘banter culture’ fosters.

“Friends of mine said they guessed it was a former Oxford student who’d written it almost immediately – we’re the only people who’d think it was a good idea”.

A Balliol undergraduate said, “Though I find the Catholic stance on issues raised here that have had fun poked at them abhorrent and out-dated, it all seems rather juvenile.

“Of course the obviously childish and light hearted nature of the memo should negate the seriousness with which the issue is being viewed. But it is as ill-informed as the stances it criticizes.”