This week, the London Student revealed that London Universities have a huge stake in the arms industry, despite student antipathy towards the issue displayed in protests such as Disarm UCL.
This is another trend in Universities across the country not listening to their students but to their coffers.
Slightly closer to home, The Newcastle Courier wrote about a harrowing experiment that takes place at their University on wild-caught baboons. Critics have called this research on the intelligent mammals invasive and unsafe – the professor, Stuart Baker, was testing the effect of strokes on the brain.
He’s hit back, though, and said that the baboons enjoy a high standard of animal welfare – they have large cages apparently and big social groups.
This puts our rat testing scandal of last year into perspective a little, but it raises the question of whether science professors should listen to student concerns about animal welfare, or just get on with their research regardless. I’m sure our colleagues in the Biology department would agree with the latter.
On a more lighthearted note, my favourite story of late is that in Lancaster, the Scan reported that students are being threatened with fines upwards of £200 for being drunk in the Uni bar.
Imagine the uproar we’d get at York if it were implemented here, what with our apparent strong libertarian presence! I hate the idea of stopping our bright and beautiful from being able to get mortal – what else are those of us with six contact hours a week supposed to do if not spend our entire time either drunk or hungover?
Apparently all it did was inspire loads of students to go to the bar and get drunk to ‘protest’. Sounds a bit like a clever marketing scheme to me…
If you didn’t think that Durham could get more exclusive, then you’re in for a shock. The Palatinate revealed this week that secret societies exist in the University.
Because of this, they’ve had a backlash for being ‘elitist’. We can’t confirm or deny whether there are any secret societies at York, as they are, obviously, secret, but we definitely do not hold secret society meetings in the Vision office… We promise…