An Oxford student has suffered a serious head injury while skiing in the French Alps.

Isla Kennedy, a second year Christ Church student, slipped while trying to cross an icy patch on a cross-country course near the Swiss border. She injured her head and was unconsciousness for a short time before being taken to a hospital in nearby Geneva.

A source explained Kennedy’s current condition. “She is stable and left the intensive care ward on the 1 April. She can now open her eyes for prolonged periods, and likes holding her sister’s hand. She can also respond to simple commands such as being told to raise her arms and legs. She is stable enough to be moved to England now, and her family are waiting for a bed to be made available so she can fly back.”

A close friend of Kennedy and fellow Christ Church student, Rob Amey, added, “Isla was on a particularly challenging cross-country skiing trip when she slipped and injured her head. However, she is currently making good progress in hospital.”

The hospital in Geneva, Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, confirmed that she was released on 9  April, just over a week after being discharged from intensive care.

Isla Kennedy, a PPE student, has been an active member of her College, having been elected as JCR Freshers’ Rep in her first term at Christ Church. She founded the Oxford University OTC Mountaineering Club last year and is also heavily involved with the group Oxford Women in Politics (OxWip). She edited the society’s magazine, Tone, last term.

Reacting to news of the accident the Vice President of OxWip and friend of Kennedy, Victoria Andrenkova, said, “I am very upset at the news. Isla always seems like the girl who can do anything. I know how much she loves the OTC (Officer Training Corps) and was looking forward to going to the Alps, so it is even more of a shame that this had to happen. Always energetic, spirited and up for a party, she is the kind of person you think this would never happen to. I am in disbelief – but optimistic. I have no doubt that, once she returns, she will be back to her fantabulous, outgoing diva self again! And I can’t wait to have her back.”

In an email to the student body, the JCR President Laura Ellis wrote, “We have received sad news about Isla Kennedy, a 2nd-year PPE student [who] was badly injured on a skiing trip with the OTC over Easter. We won’t be seeing her around College this term, so take all the time you need and get well soon Isla!”

The JCR Vice-President Freya Reeve said, “All the thoughts of the Christ Church JCR are with Isla, we wish her all the best and hope she’s back with us soon.

“She was freshers rep and was actively involved in the JCR, she will be sorely missed until she’s back with us”

The Commanding Officer of the Oxford University OTC, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Channer, commented on the incident. He said, “I can confirm that Isla Kennedy is a member of the Oxford OTC and that she was injured during an overseas ski touring adventurer’s exercise. The accident took place in March in the French Alps and Isla has now been brought back to a hospital in the UK.” He was unable to confirm the precise nature of her injuries.

The Officer Training Corps is a special part of the Territorial Army and consists of 19 contingents of University Officer Training Corps based at universities across the UK. According to its website, its aim is to “promote the image of the army amongst undergraduates and encourage a deeper understanding of the Armed Forces amongst future employers and managers.”

A man was charged following the sexual assault of a 20 year old woman in Cowley on 10th April.
Mark Edwards, 49, is said to have approached the woman from behind as she was walking along the Cowley Road at around 2am. He is alleged to have threatened her and forced her into the alleyway where he sexually assaulted her. Edwards is due to appear in Oxford Crown Court for a Preliminary Hearing on Friday 18th April. The police were unable to confirm whether the victim was a student.

Six new genes relating to type 2 diabetes have been discovered by scientists. Each gene increases the risk of diabetes by around 10%. The discovery followed a study carried out by  Nature Genetics involving 90 researchers and gathering genetic data from over 90,000 people. Diabetes affects over two million people in the UK and according to Simon Howell (Chairman of Diabetes UK),  “This research offers new opportunities for more effective ways of treating and preventing this condition.”

The University of Cambridge is proposing to abolish its admissions’ requirement for a grade A to C in a foreign language at GCSE, to attract more students from state schools. As national curriculum changes have meant a foreign language is no longer compulsory after 14, there has been a 30% drop, resulting in only half of pupils taking a foreign language to GCSE. Only 17% of state schools now enforce it. Cambridge is currently the only university with this requirement and as of next September proposes to leave the decision to individual departments.

One of Britain’s best loved butterflies, the small tortoiseshell, is under threat according to research which shows how numbers have plummeted by 80% in the last 20 years. Conservationists believe that the sturmia bella fly is to blame, because it lays its larvae inside the caterpillar until it cocoons. Dr Martin Warren, Chief Executive of Butterfly Conservation, told The Daily Mail that he was “deeply concerned”.

Three squatters have been evicted from a college-owned property, which they broke into during the Easter vacation.
A window was smashed, furniture was damaged and rubbish was strewn about the house during the illegal occupation.

One of the students currently living at the house, Sebastian Kaupp-Roberts, made the discovery after passing by and noticing that the front gate had been taken off its hinges. A notice detailing ‘Squatters Rights’ had been placed in one of the windows.

Roberta Klimt, another student resident, described how they realised what was going on.

“Later that night on his way home, Sebastian peeped in at the kitchen window (which can be seen from Walton Street) and saw a man helping himself to my low-calorie hot chocolate supply.

“The porters told us that they’d spoken to the squatters who had said they hadn’t realized the house was a student house, and that they wouldn’t have moved in if they’d known.”

After two days, police and bailiffs evicted the squatters and the students were allowed back into the property. Klimt said, “We had a look around the house. The squatters’ belongings were still lying around because they’d been apprehended without having time to gather their things together. It was at this point that things started to turn out as quite amusing.

“The house was in a pretty big mess. Various bits of furniture had been moved around from room to room inexplicably. They’d pinned up a couple of Page 3 girls on our living-room wall, where pictures of Chairman Mao and Germaine Greer used to be. ”

“The nicest touch was the shopping trolley we found in my friend George’s room, which contained but a single egg” she said.

Although the break-in ended without significant damage, the students were initially concerned for the safety of their possessions.

Another housemate, Marielle Cottee, said, ”I was shocked to hear that squatters had gained access to the house, particularly because we had only left it a few days before and some of my belongings were inside. Once the squatters had got in, they removed the doors from our bedrooms and boarded up the windows to stop anyone else coming in.”
“I was fairly horrified to see the state of the house from the outside” she said.

Miss Cottee explained that the housemates who were in Oxford at the time were allowed back into the house in order to identify what damage had been done and what belongings were their own.

“All of our beds had been slept in, they had broken into our medicine boxes and there were newspaper clippings everywhere about previous squatter escapades” she said.

Thames Valley Police have confirmed that they were called in to assist in the eviction of the three squatters who had taken up residence in the house.

The house, which is owned by Worcester College, has since been cleaned and the college has made improvements to the security of the building. The Domestic Bursar, Steve Dyer, commented, “The squatters were discovered in the house on the 25 March and were removed two days later. ”

“We’ve put extra locks on the windows in the house and the police have advised us that the property should not be left un-occupied for long periods of time.”

Klimt praised the efforts of Worcester College to rectify the situation. She said, “College were very helpful and reassuring to us. We were very happy with how they handled the situation.”

{nomultithumb}A former Oxford student, Toby Kendall, has been uncovered as a spy working undercover in an anti-aviation group.

The 24 year old graduate, who studied Oriental Studies at Wadham College, aroused the suspicions of activists in the group Plane Stupid and was exposed as a spy working for C2i International, a private investigation agency.

Kendall joined the London based group last July.  Plane Stupid is a network of groups which protest against airport expansion and aviation’s climate impact, who last Sunday staged a protest on the roof of the Scottish Parliament against plans to expand Scottish airports. Kendall told fellow group members that his name was ‘Ken Tobias’ and became a committed activist, allegedly always being the first to arrive at meetings and constantly pushing for more direct action.

Kendall’s excessive enthusiasm and expensive dress sense raised suspicions amongst activists. They discovered that he wasn’t on the electoral register for the area in which he claimed to live. The rugby club which he said he played for held no record of a ‘Ken Tobias’ either.

The group began a mole hunt and fed Kendall false information about direct action, and within 48 hours UK airport security had been alerted.  The content and locations of meetings that Kendall attended also appeared in the Evening Standard.

Activists confronted Kendall earlier this month and asked to see some ID but he claimed to have lost his wallet.  Eventually Kendall was identified when the activists showed an Oxford acquaintance his photograph.  A Bebo social networking profile provided further evidence that Toby Kendall worked as an analyst in ‘security and investigations’ at C2i International.

In a statement, Plane Stupid activist Tamsin Omond said, “The aviation industry brought its special brand of bumbling incompetence to the task of spying on us. The secret agent was more Austin Powers than James Bond though the question still remains, who paid the espionage agency?”

BAA, which owns Heathrow and has repeatedly been targeted by Plane Stupid, denied having any relationship with C2i or with Toby Kendall but admitted that it had rejected an invitation by C2i to offer its services.  C2i claim to have been unaware of Kendall’s infiltration of Plane Stupid, stating that he was employed to carry out counter-surveillance such as debugging company offices.

Kendall emailed Plane Stupid the day after he was confronted expressing his upset at how the group dealt with the situation.  He said “As you guys made clear [the accusation] is not personal, but I can’t help but feel that the manner by which you went about it was aggressive and cold…it is now clear to me that at no point did you consider approaching me in a friendly way first”

He added that he could no longer trust Plane Stupid enough to volunteer for the group again, “even with my proof of ID I don’t feel you would trust me and to be honest with the way in which you approached this, I do not feel that I can trust you…I am very sorry to have to leave it this way and I can assure you that I came into the group with a pure heart wanting to make a difference.”

Pete Doherty may be taught Shakespeare by an Oxford student next month whilst behind bars in Wormwood Scrubs. Doherty, serving a 14-week sentence, has the chance to enrol in a Shakespeare workshop to be given at the prison by post-graduate Yvette K. Khoury, currently studying for her DPhil at St John’s College.

Ms Khoury, studying Shakespeare in Arabic for her Doctorate, pledged to give a teaching workshop at a charity auction for her local west London church without knowing who would buy it. When a teacher at Wormwood Scrubs called to say she had bought the pledge, Ms Khoury was surprised but happy to teach the inmates.

The workshop is not until May 19th, and so details remain speculative at this stage, with Ms Khoury saying she will have to ‘play it by ear’. However, she knows her underlying aim will be ‘for them to have a good time, just like with anything else – not teaching as such but a workshop, reading and getting them involved.’

Doherty has been in the prison since April 8th, after failing to attend drug tests as part of a suspended sentence for possession of heroin, crack cocaine, cannabis and the horse-tranquiliser ketamine. Since being inside Doherty has been the subject of claims from tabloid newspapers that he has been injecting heroin inside his cell and that he has been given privileged treatment, with extra bedding and his own cell.

As an inmate, Doherty now has the chance to sign up to educational opportunities such as this one. The former Libertines and current Babsyhambles front-man may perhaps be keen to take up the offer, having dropped out as a
student of the first-year of his English Literature course at the University of London and since become famous for the creativity of his song-writing.

At the same university, Ms Khoury also studied English and achieved a first- class BA, before taking an MA in Shakespearean Studies. She is keen to dispel the fiction that Shakespeare is too difficult to be enjoyed, and hopes this will come across to the inmates.

‘I want them not to be frightened of approaching Shakespeare. A lot of people seem to think Shakespeare is too intellectual, too highbrow… I don’t want them to think of Shakespeare as something monstrous, lurking away.’

Prison officers may be hoping Doherty will attend and sprinkle some stardust on their classes – others, knowing the singer’s renowned self-destructive capabilities, may be less optimistic. When asked about whether Doherty might be one of the twelve inmates she will teach, Ms Khoury said ‘I can’t comment – I don’t know, it’s far too speculative.’

Second year medical exams have been surrounded by controversy again this year, after complaints that unhelpful phrasing, obscure content and inclusion of material not on the syllabus made them even more difficult.
The exams, known as 1st BM Part 2, take place after the end of Hilary, and candidates are due to receive their results this week.

The controversial questions, which appeared in the multiple choice section of the paper, asked the student to identify the incorrect or least likely answer rather than the correct one.

One second year medic, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “This made it incredibly easy to misread almost every question.’ Another pointed out that ‘the point of the examination [is] to test our core medical knowledge, not our grammar!”

A further objection was at the alleged inclusion of ‘extension’ material in the multiple choice sections. These are only meant to test a tightly-specified syllabus of ‘core’ knowledge, and typically carry a pass mark of 80% for each question.

Yet students claim that a significant amount of extension material was included in the examinations.

One question in particular, covering the mechanisms of diuretic drugs, asked for information that candidates claim was specifically excluded from the syllabus.

The University Press Office responded to the allegations, saying that if students were concerned, “There is a procedure for them to raise these concerns with the Proctors through their colleges. None of the First BM Part 2 candidates has done so.”

However at least two students, including Richard Rosch, a Magdalen second year, have instead contacted the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre directly.

The senior clerical officer, Ashley Morely, said that their complaints “may be reviewed during the post examination meeting.”

Last year students were unhappy about the content on the multiple choice sections, especially in the general pathology and microbiology paper. “Some of the questions [in this paper] were unbelievably obscure,” said one third year. “I remember everyone was very angry.”

 A summary of the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) report for that year admits “general unhappiness” about the issue.

The examiners defended their position, claiming that while some of the “distracter answers” may have been off-syllabus, this was not the case for any correct answers.

However the examiners’ report for the 2007 papers shows that they lowered the pass mark for a large number of questions in the pathology paper, judging that it was too high for eight out of the sixteen questions.