“Hi, I’m from The Scan.”
It’s that awkward moment when somebody from a rival organisation, midway through a massive sports tournament, approaches you and you’ve never even heard of them. Turns out Lancaster’s student newspaper isn’t too shabby, though at Vision we (or I) hadn’t done research on Lancaster so extensive that we (or I) remembered what their newspaper was called.
That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? Throughout the year we’re completely and utterly unaware of our rival university’s existence until we hit Roses weekend, the two universities go head-to-head and we noisily declare our disgust at the other side. But getting back to The Office (as it’s ominously known) and doing a quick scan through The Scan I realised, pretty quickly, that we have a fair bit in common.
Did you know, for example, that we both have Vice-Chancellors despised by the student body? (If you hate your VC, that is. See page three, or sustain a conversation with any YUSU Officer for long enough for evidence.) The difference is that Lancaster have managed to drive VC Paul Wellings out. All the way out to the University of Wollongong, Australia, in fact. Initial hatred seeped forth after he got six of his students imprisoned in his first year of tenancy, the “George Fox Six incident.”
Even if we’re stuck with our esteemed Professor Cantor, we also have a college system in common. They have Bowland College, we have the Bowland Auditorium (it’s in the Berrick Saul, which is probably why you haven’t heard of it); we have bars that are closed, they have bars that are closing. We have ducks, they have cats. That’s right: cats.
The Scan reported earlier this month that the feral cat population had reached the point where “action needed to be taken.” They have had a map of cat sightings since July 2010, and have an extensive Trapping, Neutering and Release (TNR) programme. The programme is designed to prevent the cats from becoming pregnant, as well as reduce the size of the “cat colony” and prevent serious conditions like the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) and cat AIDS.
It’s a far cry from Duck of the Day, but between angry VCs, college bars closing and cat infestations, in Lancaster and York, we should celebrate our similarities.
Providing we annihilate them again next year.
What did you base this slander on? Lancaster did not “drive” Wellings out, he has previously spend a lot of time in Australia, meeting his wife there who is now quite homesick, and he has obviously decided after that after nine years as VC it is time to step down and let someone else take the university further. Just because the author of this piece is clearly ignorant doesn’t mean they can just spout nonsense about a rival university.