An asylum seeker who believed she would be unable to afford her place at Oxford has had her fees waived by St John’s College.

Sholeem Griffin, whose family left Pakistan for the UK in 2003, initially thought that she would have to reject her offer from St John’s College to study biochemistry, because as an international student she would have had to pay £10,000 a year in tuition fees.

However, she was told by St John’s that she would be able to take up her place with financial help from the College and the JCR on the condition that she gained three ‘A’s at A-level. She went on to gain four ‘A’s and a ‘B’.

Describing how she felt when she learned that she would be able to come to Oxford, she said, "That was awesome really; I didn’t expect that. I was a bit disappointed at the time. I thought I wasn’t going to university until this whole thing got sorted out.

"I knew the fees were high for an international student and that it would be difficult. The alternative was sitting at home because I really couldn’t do much more with education as at every university it was the same problem."

Sholeem’s family came to the UK because they feared that they would not be able to practise Christianity in Pakistan, and were granted asylum in Wales. However, immigration law states that only those granted refugee status, which Sholeem did not have, can apply as home students to a British university.

She chose to apply to Oxford in 2006, after encouragement from her school, hoping that the long interval between sending off her UCAS form and starting her degree might have led to a change in her status as an asylum seeker.

St John’s JCR President Rhys Jones said, "I think it’s really good that she’s coming to study her chosen degree here. It’s encouraging to see the College using its funds to help those who would otherwise be unable to realise their ambitions." St John’s Equal Opportunities Officer Sophie Brockmann added, "The advantage of studying at a rich college like St John’s is that students do have help available to them." Sholeem hopes to study for a master’s degree after Oxford, and eventually go on to do research.

OUSU has clashed with the Oxford Union following a financial review that revealed generous subsidies for Union advertising were being paid without OUSU’s knowledge.

Demands for more money were sent to the prestigious debating society, including for a stall at Freshers’ Fair, advertising in The Oxford Student and distributing Union promotional material in freshers’ packs.

The University’s Senior Proctor, Dr James Forder, attempted to pressure OUSU into reducing their demands following a request from Union President Luke Tryl.

OUSU President Martin McCluskey said, "We discovered that the deal the Union were given was not viable, and came up with a new price which was at cost and presented them with a fairly reasonable package.

"We made sure that we’re not subsidising Union services. Our financial advisers from the University were advising us that the cost we were charging was right.

"OUSU hasn’t really had a working relationship with the Union in the past two years," he added.

Union President Luke Tryl denied that OUSU’s offer was fair. "The deal was overpriced given that we’re a student organisation and given that we don’t exist to make a profit," he said.

The Union responded to OUSU’s requests by enlisting the help of the Senior Proctor to moderate the financial demands. "They were called in to get our status within the University clarified," said Tryl. "The University encouraged them [OUSU] to treat us more favourably. From what I gather they [the Senior Proctors] put pressure on OUSU to treat us more favourably."

OUSU Vice-President (Finance) Rich Hardiman said that the toughening of OUSU’s financial demands came after University authorities criticised its management and called for a reordering of its finances. "In the past it was a very generous deal that didn’t treat them [the Union] as a commercial client. We were told by the University to stop making ‘mates rates’ for people.

"As a result, we re-evaluated our relationship with the Union," he said.

He also claims they were advised by the Senior Proctor that "although the Union is not officially part of the University, it is morally". OUSU responded by informing the University authorities that they had no jurisdiction in the matter.

"For the Proctors to lean in and say you can’t charge this much would be like a University department going to a limited company and telling them how to run their business," Hardiman said. "We took on board their concern, but at the same time I had to prioritise running the company."

A compromise was eventually reached, although the Union decided against buying advertising space in The Oxford Student. The Union will continue to pay for a stall at freshers’ fair and for sending out packs to freshers at a rate of £800 a year, well below the initial £1500 demanded by OUSU.

Tryl claimed to be pleased with the outcome, saying, "It was the best deal given the circumstances. In the end we get a deal that, far from being satisfactory, was still pretty good for the Union and its membership."

He also suggested, however, that the dispute had damaged the relationship between the two organisations. "If they treat us in a commercial light then we will be forced to do the same with them," he warned. "This is a step back in our relationship with OUSU. I hadhoped for our two organisations to work much more closely together, and I think this makes us working with them difficult in the future."The Senior Proctor was unavailable for comment.

A review of Oxford’s Permanent Private Halls published last week has voiced concerns about their practices, academic standards and the experiences of those who attend them.

The ‘Review of the Permanent Private Halls associated with the University of Oxford’, published in the University Gazette last Thursday, criticised PPHs for not always conforming to the "liberal ethos" which characterises the rest of the University.

The seven halls under scrutiny, four of which are Roman Catholic, two Anglican and one Baptist, have also been questioned as to their suitability for school leavers.

The document recommends that the University assume greater control or let the PPHs risk losing their University licence, and it warns that "substantial and challenging changes in some, if not all the halls" will be required.

The report states, "The admission of such young students into an overwhelmingly mature community of students does not provide the best learning environment for them or remotely replicate what is understood in the University at large as the collegiate experience of education." It concludes, "The right of those Permanent Private Halls which are principally communities of mature students to matriculate school-leaver-aged students should be withdrawn."

In response to this criticism, Wycliffe Hall Principal Revd Dr Richard Turnbull pointed out the panel’s failure to consult students at the private halls. He said it would have been useful to "find out what students think about their environment and setting".

Turnbull added, however, that he welcomed the report and that he "looked forward to working with the University in implementing these findings". He added, "All that is needed is a positive dialogue between the Permanent Private Halls and the University."

The report deals specifically with Wycliffe Hall in an appendix. It says, "There is a persistent concern outside Wycliffe about whether the strong emphasis on the evangelical tradition in some way inflects the teaching of theology and ministry into a narrow compass of interpretation.

"The panel feels that Wycliffe Hall does need to make a determined effort to clarify these matters to the rest of the University if it is to achieve manifest harmony with the University’s principles of education."

James Goldspink, a theology student at Wycliffe, raised concern that recent reports were unfair. "Those people who expressed views have only expressed upset. Everybody thinks it is a terrible shame about what is being reported about Wycliffe," he said. "Wycliffe are top of the private halls’ academic list. Therefore you cannot accuse us of not conforming to Oxford’s liberal standards."The panel has recommended to the University that a supervisory committee appointed by the Vice-Chancellor inspect the halls and make an annual report to Council.

I meet Jason Braham in a West London pub on a sunny day in September. He and his wife Julienne have come up to London from their new home in Wales where they have opted to live a quiet life as artists. It is the day before the anniversary of Lucy’s death and he and Julienne are preparing to go to a festival where a band will be dedicating their set to Lucy.

Jason talks to me about his daughter. He describes her as a "very good, friendly person" but says, "I don’t think she was a fool in this case. She knew the sort of character that Jaggs was. His is a fairly obscene bunch, really. She wouldn’t have normally had anything to do with him. The guy rolled up with this wretched cat.

"Since her death we’ve found a load more out about her as a friend from her pals, because you don’t necessarily know your own children incredibly well. I mean, you know them, but I hadn’t realised just how much fun she was. We always thought she was possibly even slightly reclusive because she would like her own space, and often didn’t like going out to the pub every night or anything like that. But, when she did go out, she was the life and soul, apparently."

Contrary to some reports in the press, Jason’s daughter and Jaggs were not friends. She was three years older than him and they only knew each other vaguely through their parents.

Both Jason and Julienne Braham taught Jaggs, at preparatory school and at Harrow respectively. He tells me what he remembers of Jaggs at Harrow.

"He was very clever; he had a very high IQ. He didn’t work particularly hard… his results weren’t particularly good. He left his first boarding house and went to another one, and of course we now know why. The question that people ask is if enough was done to follow that up. I suspect it wasn’t. It was an attempt to force sex on a boy, a junior boy and, later on, we also heard in court that that’s the way he saw sex in general, even when it was consensual. He obviously fantasised about raping someone… He obviously had some sort of obsession with her [Lucy] because that came out in court, but we didn’t know that; nor did she."

Jason expresses his conviction that staff at Harrow could have done more to prevent the sequence of events that led to his daughter’s death. "You’ve got 800 boys you’re responsible for [at Harrow]. I reckon he was a danger to them, given his past record, on that score, and he was a danger to all the daughters and all the wives and the other staff. But simply no one was thinking about it. No one was recognising that he was a danger.

"This might sound hard, but I do believe that pressure on teachers, above all, to achieve the ‘perfect score’ with their examination candidates, a knock-on effect of the obsession with the ‘league table’ as a measure of a school’s worth has impacted on their family lives and on their ability to take a balanced view of their role in the community. In a less frenetic time I am sure the degeneration of William Jaggs and the behaviour of his circle would have been addressed long before the crisis was reached."

He describes William’s parents, Alan and Stella, as being "a little too innocent" in the way they handled their son’s behaviour. He says, "They were too amateur in the way they dealt with the problem. Alan took Will away to the country, to try to get him away from the influence of the gang he was with, to get him away from drugs and his drug dealer, thinking this would cure him, or at least would help."

Despite this criticism, Jason seems tolerant and forgiving of Jaggs’ parents.

"My wife has had Stella round for coffee," Jason tells me. "Not to talk about the crime, obviously, but to talk about how she was coping. I think for me it would be difficult, actually. Knowing exactly what their son did to my daughter I’d find it quite difficult to sit down… although I don’t actually bear him [Alan Jaggs] any malice."

I then ask him how he feels that Jaggs is only to be detained in a secure hospital, rather than a prison.

"There is an illiberal part of me that would have liked to see him spend time in a regular jail first, where he would see just how foul even hardened criminals consider crimes like his. It would also serve to remind people that Jaggs is a criminal and not just insane."

When we broach the subject of Jaggs’ drug habits, Jason tells me that he has been carefully following reports about the dangers of drugs. He is clearly concerned about the possible link between cannabis use and mental illness. "A lot of those reports were from the nineties but I don’t think skunk had appeared on the scene until a few years ago. So I would have thought the effects on teenagers now, who will be starting with skunk, will be much more devastating. I think actually this is just the tip of the iceberg."

He tells me he is considering giving a talk at the festival he will later be attending warning about "drugs and teenagers and the general complacency of my generation and it’s acceptance of… how it’s inevitable that teenagers take drugs. I think some people, because they did drugs themselves… it sort of holds them back from speaking out."

Speaking about his daughter’s death, Jason tells me, "Obviously, we will never properly come to terms with it; it would be very hard. But we decided to try to follow our creative work; I certainly would have found it difficult to go back to Harrow, if not impossible. And I think actually they would have found it awkward, too, because other people involved are still there and you can’t just carry on as if nothing’s happened. I have said we’re going to take in young graduates to work alongside us as artists. When they leave art school it’s quite difficult to carry on making art; you want to get a job. I’m hoping we can give people the chance to spend up to a year with us, working alongside me as a potter or Julie as a painter. Because that’s, in a way, what we were doing for Lucy."

Dons have forced one of Vice-Chancellor John Hood’s key modernisers to resign from the University Council after a rebellion against giving him a new term in office.

Sir Victor Blank, who read history at St Catherine’s College and is Chairman of Lloyds-TSB, has announced that he will not seek re-election after seven years as a non-academic member of the Council.

Over the summer, the Council voted 15-2 to offer Sir Victor a new term of four years on the Council, the main policy-making body of Oxford University, responsible for academic position and strategic direction. It contains 26 members, of which 4 are non-academics.

Congregation, the University’s supreme government body composed of 4,000 academic and administrative staff, effectively blocked this proposal by collecting almost 250 signatures calling for a full debate and vote. With the prospect of a vote on his position being held on 26 September, Sir Victor announced that he would not seek re-election.

Sir Victor was eager to go forward with the debate and vote but was persuaded not to by John Hood, the University Vice-Chancellor. According to the Financial Times, Hood was concerned that the debate risked damaging the reputation of the University regardless of the outcome, which would have taken attention away from the launch of a new fund-raising campaign.

It was also feared that a row could cause difficulties for the Vice-Chancellor, who is due to decide whether he wishes to seek a two-year extension when his tenure in office ends in October 2009.

Hood’s term as Vice-Chancellor has already divided public opinion. In 2006, he proposed for Council to have a majority of non-academic members, which would have brought Oxford in line with all other British universities except for Cambridge. The current Council would have been replaced by a 15-member Council with 8 non-academic members, including the chairman. An amended proposal was defeated at a meeting of Congregation and a subsequent postal ballot of Congregation members was also rejected.

Mark Robson, Treasurer of Lady Margaret Hall, led the opposition to Sir Victor’s re-election. He claimed to be worried that allowing Sir Victor to stand for re-election would be contrary to the corporate governance principles espoused by Hood and his supporters in their arguments for reform.

Hood has previously argued that the University has to comply with the Committee of University Chairmen’s (CUC) code of practice, which advises that non-executive members should remain for no longer than nine years on Council.

Robson demanded that guidelines on terms of office should be adhered to by the University.

In a document circulated to senior academics in June, Robson said, "I am not, however, aware of any particular skill or expertise that he [Sir Victor] brings to bear that it would be impossible to find in any new external member of Council, such that it would be necessary to invoke the exception in the CUC code. […] To extend his term automatically to eleven years (or more) in the face of accepted best practice in corporate governance would, in my view, be a great institutional mistake at a time when the University’s governance arrangements remain under intense national, political and press scrutiny."

It is uncertain whether Sir Victor, a supporter of Hood, will remain on the committee that appoints the Vice-Chancellor. He had served on this committee when it recommended Hood’s appointment in 2003.

This is not the first time that Sir Victor has been involved in disputes with dons. In 2006 he used lawyers to obtain an apology from the Master of St Catherine’s College, Professor Roger Ainsworth, after sitting together on a committee investigating the distribution of ‘quantum’, the system for allocating money between colleges and the University.As chairman, Sir Victor sent the committee’s recommendations to Hood and the chair of the Conference of Colleges. Prof Ainsworth then wrote to the Conference of Colleges with a response, the content of which is not known. Sir Victor reacted to this by hiring the libel specialist law firm, Carter-Ruck, who succeeded in obtaining a retraction and an apology from Professor Ainsworth.

An Oxford academic and fundraiser has been told that she must pay her council tax after she withheld it in protest at the city’s waste collection scheme.

The District Judge enforced her liability to pay outstanding tax, but denied the Council’s request for legal costs or any penalty fee from the defendant.

Dr Frances Kennett had refused to pay a month’s tax as a protest against Oxford City Council’s introduction of a fortnightly rather than weekly waste collection, which she said has made her home a health risk. Dr Kennett, who lives in Jericho, claims that the rat problem caused by waste in her garden has forced her to spend money taking rubbish to the dump and making repairs to her house.

The Judge presiding over Dr Kennett’s case at the Magistrate’s Court on Friday expressed sympathy for Oxford’s widespread infestation issues, and linked them directly to the Council’s decision to reduce waste collection. He said he was obliged by law to insist on tax payments, but hoped that the Council would contact the Jericho resident to discuss their next steps before taking further action.

Dr Kennett said she was delighted by the ruling, and does not intend to pay the outstanding sum until she hears from councillors about their plans to resolve Oxford’s waste disposal issues. "I think my case is building pressure on the Council and increasing the chance of something happening. I think it’s incredibly positive," she said.

The move to reduce waste collection, headed by executive member Councillor Jean Fooks, was hailed at first as an attempt to increase recycling levels. "Faced with increasing charges for landfill waste, and fines if we exceeded our landfill allowance, we had no alternative," she said.

Eric Murray, head of the campaign ‘Collect Rubbish in Oxford Weekly’ (CROW) said that the refuse problem has moved from landfill sites to the streets of Oxford following the introduction of the scheme. "We have seen parts of our city turn into roadside rubbish dumps," he said. He commended Dr Kennett’s protest as "a very brave move".Her actions have also met with widespread support from residents of Osney and East Oxford, many of whom have experienced infestations of flies, maggots and rats since the Council’s decision was made nine months ago. Advice on avoiding smells and animals include putting animal carcasses in the freezer until collection day and sealing organic waste in newspaper and a plastic bag before putting it in a bin.

Plans to accommodate hundreds of additional graduate students to meet new University targets will be realised when Green and Templeton Colleges merge next year.

The new college, to open in October 2008, will be based at the Radcliffe Observatory site where Green College is currently located. Templeton College will cease to be situated at the Egrove Park campus in Kennington, south of Oxford.

Green Templeton will contain around 450 students and 80 fellows. The merger is designed to combine Green College’s focus on medical and life sciences with Templeton College’s strengths in management and business studies.

The Warden of Green College, Professor Mike Bundy, said that the move was part of the University’s plan to increase provision for graduates.

"The main benefit to Green College is that the new College will have greater capacity. In particular, it will be more able to respond effectively to the University’s new policy emphasising graduate studies and requiring higher levels of support for graduates," he said.

Green College, founded in 1979, contains 300 students and 50 fellows. Templeton College, originally ‘the Oxford Centre for Management Studies’, became a graduate college in 1995 and has 130 graduates and 30 fellows.

The new college will continue Templeton’s emphasis on management and maintain links with Oxford’s Said Business School. Anuj Jhunjhunwala, Templeton’s GCR President, said that these links would benefit graduates. "Green Templeton College would specialize in management and medicine and thus the students with an interest in management would continue to be a part of SBS.

"The Green College students would be benefiting by getting a chance to interact with more and more management professionals," she said.

Extensive consultation with students took place at both colleges throughout 2006, with authorities holding both formal and informal meetings for staff and students.

The merger was approved by the University Council and Vice-Chancellor John Hood.Professor Michael Earl, Dean of Templeton College, said in a press release, "Green Templeton will be well equipped to explore policy and define agendas in its professional specialisms. It will continue to bring practitioners, graduates and academics together, and to explore the interrelations between its major academic areas."

Three gay students were attacked outside the Coven II night club in the early hours of Saturday morning in what may have been a homophobic attack.

The male St Peter’s students, who wish to remain anonymous, were leaving the Coven II at 3am when a stranger head-butted and punched them in a seemingly unprovoked attack.

This attack, the victims claim, is the latest in a string of homophobic assaults to take place near the club.

A man approached the students from a group of people outside the nightclub. Without provocation, the man told one of the students, "You’ve got a fucking attitude problem." The student denied this, after which the man repeated the statement before headbutting him in the face.

"I went down to try and comfort him and get him back on his feet and then I turned around and my other friend was on the floor with blood pouring from his face," one of the victims said. "The guy grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘Do you want a piece of it?’ or something like that. It all just happened so quickly. He thumped me in the face."

The attacker was described as a tall white male with a shaven head and black hooded sweatshirt who was with a group of 4 to 8 friends. Following the attack, they fled the scene.

One of the attacker’s companions then turned back, apologised to the students and requested that the police not be involved.

After the group fled, bystanders offered assistance and called the police. An ambulance was later called for one of the students, who needed stitches. All three had facial and in one case dental injuries.

The attacker was not seen in the club itself, but was causing trouble to the club’s bouncers before the incident. The punched fourth-year said, "As we left, there was a guy outside who was obviously very drunk. He was picking a fight with the bouncers, being rude, and they were trying to send him away. The group of friends were definitely in the Coven but I didn’t see the man in there."

Police have since told the students that they are unlikely to find the attacker.
Violent attacks at Coven II, located in Oxpens Road near the Oxford Ice Rink, are reported to be common and occasionally homophobic in nature as the club hosts a gay night every Friday.

"Guys just wait outside and wait for gay men to leave," said one of the St Peter’s students. "The police are aware of this, but they seem uninterested and I’ve never seen any signs of enforcement."There were no police. They know the situation but they wait for the incident before they arrive. If you go down a main street in Oxford on a Friday night, there are police everywhere, but the Coven is totally unmonitored, and there’s no CCTV," he added.

Merton College remains top of the 2007 Norrington Table for the second year in a row, but the table continues to be criticised for its unfair scoring system.

The Norrington score, which determines the colleges’ rank order, is based on the finals performance of students at each college.

Rising colleges include Hertford at 9 (up from 17 in 2006), Pembroke at 10 (from 23), St Anne’s at 13 (from 22), Keble at 18 (from 26), and St Peter’s at 20 (from 27). Colleges that fell include Corpus Christi at 23 (down from 11) and Wadham at 17 (from 7).

Each college gains 5 points for a first class degree, 3 for a 2:1, 2 for a 2:2 and 1 for a third, with the total expressed as a percentage of the maximum score possible.

The table does not account for differences between subjects in the proportion of students gaining first class degrees, with more going to science than arts students. In Cambridge the equivalent to the Norrington, the Tompkins Table, is weighted to account for subject variations.

Professor David Clary, President of Magdalen College, suggested that colleges’ positions varied greatly from year to year. "Norrington scores of different colleges are very close and a change in the degree results of just a few undergraduates can provide a major difference in the position of a college in the table," he said.

The table does not take graduate results into account, which disadvantages colleges that focus on graduates. "It is noticeable that several colleges placed lower down the Norrington Table put emphasis on graduate study and the table only refers to undergraduate performance," Clary said.

OUSU Vice-President for Access and Academic Affairs, James Lamming said the Norrington had variable effects on colleges,"The Norrington Table could potentially have benefits if it encourages those colleges lower in the table to increase academic support; but there are potential negative effects if Colleges become only concerned with academic achievement, and exclude students from opportunities for personal development and diverse experience."

St Catherine’s JCR have called a rent strike in protest at the College raising battels charges without consulting students or the College’s Governing Body.

The JCR rent committee claims that the College failed to inform them that students’ rent would be increased by nearly £175 per year, and that they had repeatedly and deliberately ignored attempts to communicate with members of the JCR.

In an email to members of the JCR sent out last Friday, the rent committee condemned the College’s actions and urged students to withhold part of their rent payment for the coming term.

"We believe that the College has acted in a despicable manner in coming to these charges. The College have ignored our emails, and not even informed us of what the charges were going to be, let alone consulting us over them," it said.

The committee also suggested that this was deliberately intended, saying, "They have admitted that it was their plan to actively withhold information about these charges from us."

The strike was called with the backing of OUSU President Martin McCluskey, who said he supported the JCR "wholeheartedly". He also suggested that it was only the possibility of a rent strike which meant the College re-entered negotiations again this week.

"The threat of the rent strike had made the College come back to the table and engage with them [the JCR]. This is hopefully going to end positively," he said.Earlier this week the College reopened negotiations with the JCR. A spokesman for the rent committee said, "We hope to reach an agreement about a fair level for charges and to ultimately get a fair rent deal for students."