Two drug users were found outside University College accommodation last Sunday afternoon.

Concerned students have immediately informed the police and the porters, but the two men fled the scene before the University Security services or the police arrived.

Needles and other drug paraphernalia were left lying around by the entrance.

At between 5 and 6pm last Sunday night, two men walked into Logic Lane and sat in the entrance of Durham Buildings, a student accommodation block. They proceeded to prepare and take the drugs in the entrance, as puzzled Univ students looked on.

Tim Fowler, the second year medic who called the police described how the men “sat preparing the drugs for around five minutes” before proceeding to inject themselves with what onlookers assumed to be heroin. At this point Fowler called the police for the first time. He commented “it is a relatively narrow entrance, people could have got past but nobody really wanted to.”

Fowler added “They were there for another thirty-five minutes and I phoned them [the police] again, but still nobody came.”

During this time, it is understood that the college porters were also contacted by several students. The porters then passed on the message to the University Security services, who are used for the protection of many of the University buildings. Representatives arrived approximately twenty minutes after the drug users had left, which was around an hour after the phone calls were made to the porters.

One student commented, “The police said it wasn’t an emergency, and gave us a non-emergency number to call…I normally feel very secure at Univ, especially as the Logic Lane gates are shut quite soon after it gets dark.”

The Thames Valley Police later arrived at the scene, but were unable to locate the men as they didn’t know what the men looked like.

Alice Heath, JCR President said, “Security is definitely not a general problem at Univ – we have keypads on every external and internal door, the gates to Logic Lane are locked at 7pm and our porters are extremely vigilant and trusted by everyone in college. I’ve never had anyone report any worries about security at Univ.”

A student is pioneering what is believed to be Oxford’s first pop-up restaurant. Lara Tyrrell, an MPhil student at Merton, launched the idea in an attempt to make as much money as possible from a starting budget of £1.

A pop-up restaurant is one that appears to have been set up out of nowhere, and disappears as quickly as it arrives. Often established in people’s homes, Tyrrell has located hers in Merton MCR, holding two events, one last Sunday, and a grand closing, to be held on Saturday.

Another reason for setting up the restaurant was to promote the value of using local produce. “The main point of this is to show to students that there are better food options in Oxford [than the supermarkets].

“Even if you bought the exact same list of items in the Covered Market as at Sainsbury’s, your carbon footprint would decrease dramatically.”

As with many such restaurants, guests pay an amount they deem appropriate. Last Sunday, Tyrrell raised £155.

Xchanging PLC, a global business re-invention company, is to become the first title sponsor of the 156th annual Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race next April.

The new event logo, visible along the Putney-Mortlake course, will feature Xchanging’s brand. The Race has been drawing increasing audience figures, with 153 countries screening the event in 2009.

The 2010 Xchanging Boat Race commences at 16.30 BST on Saturday, 3rd April.

Enterprising students have been putting their skills to the test in an ice cream selling competition.

As part of the Oxford Entrepreneurs’ “OxPrentice” series, competitors in the G&D’s Challenge were asked to come up with a flavour of ice cream and pitch it to a panel of experts. At the end of 6th week, the best two flavours were made, and the ice cream that sold the most was declared the winner.

The two teams went head to head with flavours “Jaffaholic”, made of jaffa cake chunks soaked in cointreau, and a festive ice cream which contained chunks of gingerbread and white chocolate.

Thirteen tubs of each ice cream were produced and distributed to the three G&D’s shops around Oxford. The ice cream went on sale at noon on Friday of 6th, and the winner was the flavour which sold out first, or which had sold the most by midnight on Monday. Both teams were given a budget of £200 for ingredients and £100 for marketing.

The winning flavour was Jaffaholic, which triumphed by a margin of just half a tub.

Ushma Soneji, Hertford College, from the Jaffaholic team said, “We came up with the idea because we wanted something that hadn’t been done before, but would work well with the other flavours available at G&D’s so it could realistically become a long term regular flavour.”

Suzanne Winder, a Hertford graduate, and also on the winning team said, “We had the brainstorming on Wednesday when the idea was chosen, the ice cream was made on Thursday while we got our strategy together (fitted around work), it went on sale Friday lunchtime and I spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday entirely focussed on telling everyone about my flavour and letting them taste it. We weren’t really warned about how quick the challenge would be, we just had to get on with it.”

Tom Corcoran, manager of the St. Aldate’s G&D’s, said, “One of the things we were looking for in the competition was that they had to be able to source local ingredients. It was partly because that’s what we prefer to do wherever possible, but also it ensures for us that if the competition was running on Wednesday, as it was, we could guarantee that we could have the ice cream on sale on Friday.

“We could literally go to the same places that they’d sourced the products giving us the prices, everything we needed to know, so it made it very straightforward for us to then go out and make their flavour as they wanted it to appear.”

Hayato Maedo, OxPrentice director, commented, “I’m delighted with the event. We managed to hold a really cool event, the companies were pleased with the outcome, the feedback from the participants was (I think) the best we’ve ever had (averaging in the region of 9 out of 10) and what’s more, one of the winning teams managed to get onto BBC Oxford radio to talk about their flavour.”

Corcoran added, “We were very impressed with the quality of the flavour ideas they came up with and they were quite diverse. Both of the two finalists flavours were fantastic and we promised that we would repeat the winning flavour throughout the course of the year anyway but in actual fact I would be very keen to produce both of the flavours and they will probably be a flavour on and off throughout the year and probably for a few years to come as well.”

Other entrants included Super G, an energy ice cream which was targeted at sports teams and gym enthusiasts, and Banoffee Crunch and Nostalgic Nana, an ice cream based on the banana flavoured sweets from the 1980s.

The panel of experts was made up of managers from G&D’s, the marketing firm Purple Frog, and a marketing representative from Nestle.

Jordan Poulton, President of the Oxford Entrepreneurs, explained the motivation behind

the competition, “We want to help people learn business skills by testing themselves in a risk-free environment. They don’t have to invest any money, only some time, and they get the chance to prove their abilities in real life entrepreneurial scenarios. We have a number of events lined up for the year, and we also have an iPhone App under development at the moment from the previous OxPrentice challenge.”

A lack of advice and service for dementia sufferers and the people who care for them has been condemned by Tony Hope, a Professor of Medical Ethics at Oxford University.

“When a person is diagnosed with cancer, a wide range of services can be accessed. This is not true in the case of dementia”, claimed Hope adding, “Many people with dementia receive little support once the initial diagnosis is made.”

A report on dementia published last month and chaired by Professor Hope, warned against a “‘tick-box’ culture” that “dehumanises the relationships and the care.” Hope also declared that “more information and support from professionals is needed… the Equality and Human Rights Commission should provide practical guidance.”

Dementia sufferers occupy one in four hospital beds, and eighty percent of nurses felt they needed more specialist advice, according to a survey of 1300 carers and 1100 nurses published last week by the Alzheimer’s Society.

Oxford University scientists are using brain scanning technology to investigate how we learn to recognize and comprehend the facial expressions of others.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive technique that measures the magnetic fields generated by brain activity, is being used to examine the face processing abilities of 96 children aged 5-16.

The study, which samples participants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), will compare the reactions of children in order to examine how the development of such vital brain responses is affected by ASD.

Dr Swettenham who is leading the study commented, “There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty with processing faces.”

St Peter’s College has sold the only double Victoria Cross awarded during World War One for a record fee of almost £1.5 million.

The double VC was bought by Lord Ashcroft. It will be displayed as part of his medal collection in the Lord Ashcroft Gallery, due to open in the Imperial War Museum next year.

The Gallery is funded by a £5m donation from the Tory peer. His collection of 160 Victoria Cross medals is worth £30m.

The first Cross was awarded to Captain Noel Chavasse for his heroism in the Battle of the Somme, whilst the second posthumously for his bravery at Ypres where he died in 1917. It is one of only three double VCs to have been awarded since Queen Victoria created the medal in 1856.

The medals were left to St Peter’s, which was founded by Chavasse’s father in 1929.

A college spokesman praised this opportunity for the medals to “be seen by the public in their proper context” with the proceeds going to unspecified “educational purposes”.

This term Oxford has welcomed the first Afghan woman to study at the University.

21-year-old Shaharzad Akbar is studying for a Master’s in Development Studies after receiving the prestigious Weidenfeld Scholarship.

Akbar’s route to Oxford was far from conventional. She studied Philosophy at Kabul University and then transferred to Smith College, Massachusetts in the United States. However, her education before university was disjointed due to the war. Akbar’s family moved often and she attended school in Pakistan for some time. As a result, she was mainly home-schooled.

Akbar said, “I remember reading about Oxford University when I was a child.” She names Benazir Bhutto as her role model, saying, “She went to Oxford, but I never thought I would end up here. It is truly a dream come true.”
She is one of 29 students who have received the Weidenfeld Scholarship. The programme is mainly open to students from transition and emerging economies in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

A spokesperson for the University said of the programme; “The scholars are encouraged to reflect on the nature of a ‘good society’ and explore how they can work towards this goal in their own field.” Scholars are expected “to return to their country of origin in due course and play a significant leadership role in public life in their own countries or internationally.”

Speaking on education in Afghanistan, Akbar described how it is improving, even since she first attended university in Kabul in 2005. She says things were different then, “very political” and students had “very few options”.

There are now more private institutions appearing in Afghanistan, though many of them also have limited options for study usually restricted to economics and accounting.
While she praised the increasing opportunities to study abroad for Afghan students in countries like India and the arrival of international teachers in Afghanistan, she pointed out there are still many problems with schooling in Afghanistan, chiefly due to issues with security.

Many schools, especially girls’ schools, are burned down or destroyed and there have been incidents of teachers and students being attacked. Akbar’s mother is a primary school teacher and notes that many students are working in insecure areas and are often not able to concentrate in school. Even in safer regions, problems can arise when teachers are under-qualified or there is a lack of resources.

Jonny Medland, OUSU VP for Access and Academic Affairs said, “Shaharzad Akbar has an amazing story, and it’s great that someone from her background is now a student at Oxford. An inability to find funding is one of the major obstacles to graduate study at the university, and a priority for OUSU this year is working with the university and government to improve the scholarships which are available to graduates. Scholarships targeted at talented students from developing countries are particularly important, and the award of this scholarship is a very good example of why such funding is crucial.”

Akbar described her experience at Oxford so far as “great” and said she particularly enjoys having “access to so many resources.” She also appreciates the array of different events on offer at Oxford.

She is interested in working in community-based development, possibly in areas such as reproductive health, education and women’s rights.

Akbar began her studies in October. She has said of coming to Oxford, “My family are very proud, I am the first to go to university, but all of this would not have been possible without the support of so many people.”

Students from Oxford University Amnesty International protested last Saturday afternoon outside the Shell garage in Headington.

The students were demonstrating against Shell’s actions in the Niger Delta, and specifically against gas flaring.

Gas flaring is the practice of burning off the gas when oil is pumped from the ground. James Kilby, a student at Jesus College explained that gas flaring was causing “significant environmental and health issues” for the people of the Niger Delta region.

The Amnesty group claimed, “The local people’s human rights have seriously been abused – leaving them to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathing in air that stinks of oil and gas.”

They accused Shell of contravening Article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights that calls for “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” The students called on Shell “to stop putting profit before people.”
The protesters encouraged various passers-by to sign petitions and letters to Shell in order to put pressure on the company. One protester stated that there is “no stronger action than consumer complaint.”

Björn Bremer, press officer for Oxford University Amnesty International, was enthusiastic about the protest, commenting, “The response from the public was very positive”. He argued that such protests can be a powerful tool, “It’s definitely a good way of increasing the public pressure…they will be forced to think about their actions.”

A spokesperson for Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) explained that Amnesty’s original accusations were made in a report released in June. “In our opinion, the report makes a number of unsupported allegations and draws superficial conclusions with little underlying analysis and fails to offer new insights and solutions to the complex problems in the region. The root causes of the Niger Delta’s humanitarian issues are poverty, corruption, crime, militancy, violence and political instability.”

He added, “Amnesty forget that about 85% of the pollution from our operation comes from attacks and sabotage that also puts our staff’s lives and human rights at risk.”

“SPDC welcomes on-going dialogue with Amnesty International, and other similar organisations, to promote a better understanding of the complex realities of doing business in Nigeria.”

The committee set up to review sports provision in Oxford has this week announced a near doubling of the funding for sports within the University.

It also proposes greater coordination between the University and colleges, which should save colleges money.

The funding increase would be achieved by an increase in the college levy. Colleges currently contribute £150,000 per year to sports facilities, but since 1966 this has fallen behind inflation. The report recommends that £30 million be raised to develop the sports facilities at Iffley road.

The report heavily criticised the current state of sports provision in Oxford. “Facilities for sport at Oxford are seriously inadequate for modern requirements in terms of quality, quantity and r

ange of activities covered.”

Oxford did not compare well with its peer universities in terms of sports provision. There was also concern on the over-provision for team sports at college level. The cost to individual colleges per game of team sport such as rugby can be up to £900.

While welcoming increased funding for sports in principle, OUSU has struck out at a part of the report which appears to suggest that if funding for the Iffley Road development cannot be met through donations and other fundraising, it should be covered by introducing a charge to all students.

The report states that the £30 million needed for the Iffley Road plans could be covered by borrowing the money. This would lead to £3 million per year interest, which could be covered by a charge of £150 per year to each student. A motion passed unanimously at OUSU Council on Wednesday opposed “the possibility of a regressive per capita levy on individual students of £150 per year for the next 30 years.”

Jonny Medland, OUSU VP for AcAff commented, “Broadly speaking the review has come back with excellent conclusions. There’s a definite need to improve sports facilities at Oxford… Sport is an integral part of student life at Oxford and anything which improves the student experience in this way is a good thing.”

His concerns lay with the principle of charging students for improvements to facilities. “Even if this is the worst-case scenario for funding the project, it’s important that we say now that the costs of the project shouldn’t be charged to students in this way.”

A spokesperson from Oxford University stated that, “The mention of tuition fees and a £150 levy within this report was illustrative of the maximum per capita cost of funding a new sports complex. It is there to give a sense of scale and context. It was certainly not a proposal.”