4pm Iffley Sports Centre, for anybody that wants to see journos outside their office habitat.{nomultithumb}
Team line-ups are a closely guarded secret, but Aldate can exclusively reveal that Cherwell’s 11 players will have up to 15 surnames, of which three are hyphenated.
Aldate isn’t sure whether "He’s back!!!!!1111one" is the best way to open a headline. Sure, it adds cheeky tabloid indignation to the whole affair. But to others it could easily be substituted with "90% of this copy will be rehashed arms dealer story". Still, Aldate is sure the donations thing is of interest to those with a conscience. Must be an OUSU thing.
A bit like running a pirate radio station for two years. PR tip: if you’re doing something dodgy, don’t use it as an argument on a blog primarily read by journos. Many DJs will be glad to hear that the journo in question is going into exile next year. Aldate, however, will still be here to aid the station in its leaps forward in professionalism, to use the party line.{nomultithumb}
Cherwell news was far too dominated by Wadham, but both papers came out with strong news sections. The beer-swigging examiner story isn’t as strong as it looks, the clue lying in column 2:
"However it is not known when or where the photograph was taken. If it is an Oxford examiner…"
I guess the EXIF data saying it was taken two years ago isn’t enough to go on.
"Oxide has improved immeasurably this year" (Rich Hardiman)
There was no improvement to measure
"It’s not an easy project but I don’t think we have had a proper review" (Lewis Iwu)
It won’t happen but at least I have an excuse
"I don’t think it’s insurmountable in terms of the cost of the licence" (Martin McCluskey)
What’s a licence when you’re £250k in debt?
All
Tomorrow’s Parties – ATP to its friends – is unlike
other festivals. Firstly, it’s held in Butlins, Minehead. The
benefits are obvious: showers, beds, kettles, even a TV, as well as
the culinary delights of Pizza Hut and Burger King and some pretty
perturbed-looking Redcoats.
The
other notable feature of this festival is that you won’t find
Panic! At the Disco headlining here. ATP is a haven for obscure
indie, post-rock, electronica and the odd foray into hip-hop –
basically, the kind of thing you have to be a fairly serious music
fan to pay for a whole weekend of.
A
chosen band or artist selects each festival’s line-up. Past
‘curators’ include Mogwai, The Mars Volta and Tortoise.
This time the mantle falls, surprisingly given their stature in
comparison with such legends, to Texan post-rockers Explosions In The
Sky.
The
first highlight comes on Friday evening, as Tokyo’s Mono
craft a deep, brooding, relentless wall of sound. Epic,
guitar-heavy, vocal-less noise creates an overriding mood of beauty
juxtaposed with darkness. A great start to the weekend.
Disappointingly,
the same can’t be said for Explosions In The Sky
themselves. There’s a weird atmosphere around the main stage: a
huge perma-tent and vomit-inducing carpet just aren’t conducive
to losing oneself in the music. Also, the PA really isn’t loud
enough. Not much is gained from this set that you can’t get
from listening to Explosions on CD fairly loud – and that can
be done in much nicer surroundings.
Later that night
Four Tet tries to make the indie kids dance, failing miserably for the most part.
Classics like ‘Hands’ and ‘Glue of the World’
are beefed up, extended and mixed in with newer, clubbier material.
Pauses between tracks are confusing, as if this show can’t
really decide whether it’s a gig or a DJ set, but altogether
it’s good fun: shame the crowd doesn’t seem to ‘get’
it.
What was a minor quibble for Four Tet becomes a major problem for Saul
Williams, who comments repeatedly on the awkward shuffling of the
(overwhelmingly scruffy, male, twentysomething) audience in response
to his staccato hip-hop and diatribes on race as social construct.
The
crowd is back on more familiar ground for long-established art
rockers …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead.
Their set is joyous, the scuzzy complexities of their sound
translating well to a PA modified with extra amps so that, for the
first time this weekend, we leave with an agreeable ringing in our
ears.
Atlas
Sound also deserve honourable mention. Delicate, deadpan male and
female vocals recall Sonic Youth, as distorted guitars over a
background of pulsating, reverb-heavy looped samples create a
distinctive and impressive sound. Next up are Animal
Collective, offering something largely unrecognisable from either of their two most recent records. This is no bad
thing: the band’s live sound is heavy, intricately layered and
interesting.
Broken
Social Scene, meanwhile, bring the festivities to a triumphant
close. Inviting an ‘ATP orgy’ of J Mascis and member of
Explosions and the Constantines on stage, the band confidently
perform brass-laced versions of favourites like ‘Ibi dreams of
Pavement’ and ‘Shoreline 7/4’ alongside new
material.
And so it’s with smiles on our faces that we brave the M5 to be back in time for Monday morning tutorials. A wet weekend in Butlins has never seemed so cool.
It is not a set
designer’s favourite play, the one with nineteen scenes in nineteen different
locations, but at least Spring Awakening does it with a sense
of irony.
For once you reach that nineteenth scene, and you think you have
encountered the worst of the stage directions, you are hit with the fruitiest
and most ludicrous of them all: Moritz Stiefel, with his
head under his arm, comes stamping across the graves.
I suppose that is
just one of many reasons why Spring Awakening is rarely
tackled either in professional or amateur theatre. With a cast of 37 characters
it is something of a behemoth of a play.
And then there is the content: teenage
rape, abortion and suicide. If that has semi-raised an internal eyebrow
somewhere on your mother’s side, it is quite astonishing to think the play was
written well over a hundred years ago.
Back in the 1890s,
they did not have the technology available to us now to bring the different
scenes to life. Our current idea for creating these different locations is
to leave the stage as a blank canvas, and suggest the different spaces with
careful lighting and suggestive pieces of flown physical set.
Without the need
to lug hulking great flats on and off, we hope the scene changes will be much
more fluid and add an ethereal quality to the vivid world these children
inhabit.
As for poor Moritz
and his disembodied head, that is very much a work in progress. As a Member of
the Magic Circle, I had tried to design an illusion that would enable us to
have a truly decapitated boy, carrying his talking head under his arm. But for
that detail, we would have had to sacrifice the stomping across the graves.
It
looks like we will end up resorting to old fashioned methods after all: the
willing suspension of disbelief. Something I have learnt from this project is
that it is all too easy to let technology get in the way and all that really
counts is the relationships between characters, the essence of our theatre.
We are still a way
off achieving all that and for the next three weeks, this is where our
attention lies. Between now and opening night, let us hope there are not too
many times when we would all sooner exit pursued by a bear.
An Oxford Laboratory has been persuaded to revisit the dating of the shroud of Turin by a physicis professor.
The shroud is the reported burial shroud of Jesus Christ.
The professor, John Jackson, has argued that carbon monoxide could have contaminated the shroud and distorted its radio-carbon dating results by more than a thousand years.
Former Oxford Professor Terry Eagleton has publicised his plans to sue the University of Manchester for age discrimination after being forced by the University to retire from his current professorship at the age of 65.
A failure to renew his contract, which states that every lecturer is under obligation to retire at 65, has led the famed literary critic to take action.
Students at Manchester have rallied behind Eagleton and argued that he should be allowed to stay on.
Police were called to a suspected bomb alert on Tuesday, after an innocent tourist had padlocked her suitcase to a wall of Christ Church Meadows building.
Having been alerted to the scene, just outside the Meadows building of Christ Church, the police were considering what further action to take when the tourist returned.
Explaining that she had left the briefcase to go shopping, the alarm was called off, and the briefcase was removed.
The College was temporarily closed whilst the area was cordoned off and inhabitants of Meadows building warned to keep away from their windows.
Police deny claims that they were ready to carry out a controlled explosion.
Repair work on the Oxford Castle’s Mound has led to the discovery of a ten-sided tower that has been hidden since the late 1700s.
The foundations of the tower that previously stood at the top of the mound overlooking Medieval Oxford were uncovered while work on a land subsidence was being carried out on site.
Visitors should soon be allowed to observe the excavated tower, which may have to be reburied for safety reasons once the repairs are complete.
A government report has found that British universities risk alienating foreign students as tuition fees become increasingly expensive.
Oxford University was one of 11 international universities sampled by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), and was named as one of the most expensive institutions, second only to Harvard.
There are currently over 6,500 international students at Oxford University, who make up a third of the total student body.
This includes 14 per cent of full-time undergraduates and 63 per cent of full-time graduate students.
The Hepi report says that: “UK universities receive on average 8 per cent of their total income from international students.”
The tuition fees for non-EU students are wide ranging, with £9,605 for a Bth in Theology; £11,205 for social sciences, humanities and human sciences; £12,810 for a degree in Fine Art, with the highest fee at £23,475 for clinical medicine.
Non-EU students are also required to pay the college fee, which vary between colleges, and are likely to be in excess of £4,800 per annum according to the Oxford website.
Nisha Sriram is a Singaporean clinical medical student and is at the higher end of the fee-paying spectrum.
Nisha described her undergraduate and clinical student fees; “Fees [undergraduate] were about £15,000 pounds a year and college fees were £4000.
“On top of this, flights were £2000 and I can’t remember living costs…now fees are up to about £24,000 but flights go down as I don’t go home as often.
“Most of the people here are on scholarships and don’t care where they go, because someone else is paying for it”.
Oxford does offer some assistance, such as the Reach Oxford scholarships for students from low income countries, however, competition is often fierce.
Ingrid Frater is the current representative for all graduate and international students, and works with OUSU’s International Students’ Campaign.
When asked about the international student fees at Oxford, she said, “This week I’m going to be preparing OUSU policy on international and graduate fees […] which will be taken to Council in seventh week.
“[There is] a University review just beginning, looking at fees policy, but want to consult widely before writing anything.”
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