A University wide campaign, launched to discourage freshers from joining the Union has been traced to anti-smoking campaigners. In a renewed attempt to ban smoking in the Union bar, anti-tobacco activists entitled ‘Students for an Honest Union’ (SHU) have placed posters and distributed flyers urging freshers “Please Don’t Join the Oxford Union”. These moves fulfil an ultimatum made to last term’s Union President Ambrose Faulks. In an email, the campaign’s perpetrator Patrick Mackerras, warned that if a referendum was not initiated on the issue, he would “run the biggest anti-membership drive Oxford has ever seen”. Patrick Mackerras, who completed his studies at Oxford three years ago, and was a former head of the student wing of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), organised the successful campaign that banned smoking in Michaelmas 2000, though this was subsequently overturned in a controversial referendum two years later. Union President Markus Walker responded that it was “pathetic that a man who left Oxford years ago cannot let the matter lie.” Although SHU have attempted to maintain anonymity, indeed naming their spokesman as the non-existent “R Smith of Balliol”, it is thought that a Mackerras family contact in Oxford has conducted the campaign in the city.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Clubbing students watched in shock as a tourist plummeted two storeys through a glass roof outside the Bridge nightclub on Monday night. The young girl in her twenties miraculously survived the fall from a backpackers’ hostel next to the nightclub, but she sustained multiple wounds to the arms and stomach. She was taken away in an ambulance after firefighters arrived at the scene to free her from the collapsed roof. A second-year linguist from LMH, described her witnessing of the event as a “horrific” start to a night out and is still traumatised as a result. Police believe that the fall was accidental, but environmental health officers have been called in to investigate the hazardous area. The Bridge was quick to dissociate itself from the incident, reassuring students in the queue that their premises were not the site of the accident.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

A former drug and gambling addict has been awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize by a committee chaired by Merton’s Professor of English, John Carey. DBC Pierre scooped arguably the most sought-after prize for English Literature with his first novel, Vernon God Little. The book, which describes a Texan high school massacre, was described by Carey as a “coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm but also our fascination with America”. The judges voted four to one in favour of Pierre’s book. Carey insisted it was the quality of the novel rather than the author’s private life which captivated the judges. He commented, “The language is extremely vivid, most inventive, it’s extremely exciting and very funny”. DBC Pierre or ‘Dirty But Clean Peter’ is formerly known as Peter Finlay, but took on the pseudonym to hide his colourful past. He recently confessed to betraying his friends to fuel his drug and gambling addictions, running up huge debts in the process.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003

University of Cambridge Cambridge’s Christian Union has some useful ideas about exam ‘technique’, as students attempting to access its revision advice website have been taken to a hard-core porn site. The portal, set up without CUSU’s knowledge, features such finalist diversions as ‘just turned 18 cam’ and ‘fast schoolgirls ride ponies’. One History student was delighted, saying “it provides a marvellous method of stress relief.”ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

University of Melbourne, Australia A female Biology student was rushed to hospital last week after being accidentally shot by a friend with a James Bond-style gun disguised as a pen. The tragic accident occurred in a Bond-themed party in a local nightclub, organised by the University’s Film Society. Federal Police Detective Constable Naomi Binstead said the victim required surgery to remove the projectile, believed to be made of metal, fired from the pen gun.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

University of York York builders, previously featured in Cross Campus for innuendo and sexual harrassment, have stepped up their campaign against exasperated students. Last week, a computer room of students lost important work and emails after their screens suddenly went dead. Shortly afterwards, the panicking finalists heard the sound of laughter from the scaffolding outside, as the builders revealed that they had mistaken a vital ‘twist’ cable for some masking tape, and cut it off with a pair of pliers.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Students at Jesus were shocked to return to heavily inflated bar prices at the beginning of Michaelmas. A JCR mandate to reduce the price of a pint seems to have back-fired, making it the most expensive college at which to drink in Oxford. In a drive to bring their college bar within former University guidelines and fulfil their manifesto, Jesus JCR petitioned the governing body in Hilary to bring the average cost of drinking to twenty percent below that of local establishments. Relevant surveys by Senior and Junior Common Rooms were subsequently found to have marked discrepancies; the latter’s with the lower average price. Consequently the JCR’s report was thrown out by the governing body in favour of their own, and bar tariffs raised by fifty pence on alcopops, fifteen pence on beer and up to £4 on a bottle of wine, bringing the college in line with the original request. A source at the college told Cherwell that the JCR survey had been based on special offer rather than standard prices. However, the JCR President, Rich Davies, flatly denies this claim. The rise in prices comes alongside a college clampdown on binge drinking, highlighted at a specially convened meeting between the Dean and College Sports’ captains. Despite the hike in prices, the bar’s turn over on Friday of Freshers’ Week was £1200, Bar Rep Caroline Howe said that “Prices have had no effect on binge drinking, people are just poorer”. Disgruntled second year engineer Rhys Jones advises “Don’t drink? Come to Jesus.” JCR President Rich Davies, in an interview with Cherwell, admitted that the inflation “came as a major blow to the JCR’s campaign” but is “pleased the College now has a long term policy on bar prices to prevent future increases.” He added that the JCR enjoys a “much better relationship with our SCR than most colleges but we are seeking a compromise that will suit both the students and the SCR”.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Mothers all over the country are going online to keep their children well-fed at university. Oxford students, however, seem more capable of buying their own groceries. Food deliveries to college campuses have quadrupled in the past six months, according to Tesco, and orders from distrustful parents determined on a healthy diet for their offspring are largely responsible. Popular products include pasta, fresh fruit and vegetables, a far cry from the usual student diet of beer and ready meals. London students receive the most internet orders followed by those at Cambridge, whilst Oxford is low on the list. This might suggest that Oxford students are more competent shoppers, more independent of their parents, or just less-loved than their fellows around the country. Students were divided on the findings. Rebecca White studying at University College said “That’s such a great idea. I’m going to have to ring up Mum immediately. It’s such a pain having to do it for myself.” Whilst David Griffiths of Brasenose said “Well, we always knew that Cambridge was full of mummy’s boys.” A spokesman for Sainsbury’s said that “Parents send their children to school with lunch boxes and this is just a continuation of that.” Supermarket deliveries to students are now worth £136million. Oxford students’ mums however, just don’t seem to buy it.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003

Gay men could be the product of a failed abortion according to an Oxford professor. Bryan Sykes, Professor of Genetics, suggests that homosexuality may be the result of a maternal instinct to kill male foetuses in the womb. Sykes finds the current ‘gay gene’ theory – that homosexuality is carried on the Y chromosome – problematic: if men pass on the gay gene, why isn’t it dying out? The Professor proposes that the genetic predisposition to homosexuality is linked to mDNA, which is found only in the female egg. Sykes, whose new book “Adam’s Curse: A Future without Men” also predicts the imminent extinction of the male sex, thinks that mDNA actively tries to destroy male foetuses or to make them gay, so eliminating the Y chromosome and guaranteeing the perpetuation of X chromosomes alone.ARCHIVE: 1st Weeks MT2003 

Dame Ruth Deech, Principal of St Anne’s College, announced her retirement in an open letter to staff and students at the College last Sunday. Dame Ruth has never shirked controversy, and she has been described as “never afraid to challenge or to act” by a member of St Anne’s JCR. She has attracted media attention for her active role in the Jewish community and as a prominent supporter of the state of Israel and critic of British media coverage of the country. She remarked, “one cannot separate anti-Israel from anti-Semitism” Dame Ruth has revealed the three aims she set for herself when she was elected as Principal of St Anne’s in 1991. Her first aim was to lift St Anne’s academically, something she certainly achieved, with the College ranked eighth in this years Norrington Table. Secondly, she hoped to ‘beautify’ the College, something that the ongoing building works should in time accomplish. The third task she set was to improve the College finances; something, which she admits, has been “very difficult”. When asked about higher education funding, Dame Ruth said that she wished students didn’t have to pay towards their tuition but that the “need for funds is desperate”. The proposed figure of £5000 is deemed “too low” by Deech and believes the very term ‘top-up’ fees is something of a misnomer, as students’ education is already heavily subsidised by conference guests and corporate donors. Dame Ruth writes on family law and continues as a BBC Governor.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003