The Bold and the Beautiful
Five men stripped in the chamber during a debate at the Union last week to protest about fees, revealing themselves to be painted gold - the colour associated with the anti-fees campaign.
The protest took place just after Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Higher Education, was introduced. As she rose to her feet, the five leapt up and began removing their clothes. They waved 'cheques' made payable to the "bank of debt", and shouted their opposition to tuition fees, but were swiftly removed by Union bouncers. The Minister responded by commenting that she "hadn't even had time to see what they'd written".
There were suggestions that the impact of the protest was lessened by the fact that it had been widely anticipated. Union President Charlotte Keenan had already announced that non-members would be excluded from the building for 'security' reasons and bouncers were quick to move in once the protests began. Before the "gold men" protest, there was also an attempt to unfurl a "grants not fees" banner, from the gallery: this was also prevented by security officials.
The protests divided opinion amongst students attending the debate. One second-year student from LMH described the protestors as "pathetic" and said that they presented an "unclear message", but another student from Jesus stated that "it was a perfect moment to protest", and instead complained that the bouncers has "over-reacted".
The demonstrations may have revealed a split in OUSU over the future of the Anti-fees campaign. Ruth Hunt stated that the "gold men" incident was "not an OUSU event and not discussed in Finance and Funding Committee", although adding that funding remained at the forefront of OUSUs priorities.
Hunt and many members of the Finance and Funding committee attended Thursday's debate, but restricted their actions to handing out flyers and making points of information.
As was revealed in the Oxford Student last week, OUSU do not plan to support one major protest or occupation planned for this term, instead preferring to rely upon a series of smaller events.
Two such events occurred last week. First was a protest on Wednesday at St. John's to coincide with two non-payers from that college being forced to pay up. Observors told the OxStu that the incident degenerated into farce, however, when protestors were banned from entering the college, and were eventually only able to gain access via the college kitchens.
A more organised protest occurred on Friday, when a further two non-payers handed their cheques in to the University offices in Wellington Square. Andrew Thomas, OUSU exec responsible for Funding, said that it was a "silent protest", in order to demonstrate disgust at the university's unprecedentedly stringent actions against non-fee payers including the suspension of email access. As a result of more stringent actions against non-fee payers there now remains only one non-fee payer, Laura Santana of St. Hilda's.
The university police did not appear to realise the low-key nature of this protest, however, placing added security on university buildings throughout the day.
A former topless model has won a sex-discrimination case against high profile Oxford photographers Gillman and Soame.
Kristy Green, 21, brought the case when the famous photographic agency, which is used by most colleges for matriculation and graduation photographs, dismissed her after her teenage modelling activities had been revealed. Miss Green, pictured above, originally of South Shields, South Tyneside, first posed as a page three girl for a well-known tabloid in 1996. This was later followed by a Bikini photo shoot for a North-East Newspaper and an appearance in a glossy calendar produced for Dunlop.
Gillman and Soame offered Miss Green a place on their Oxford based training course because she had achieved excellent results in college photography and art courses. Four days later, she was dismissed. The company claimed that this was due to Miss Green's disruptive attitude, and that she had often given the impression she "knew it all". Miss Green claims that she was sacked because the company could not accept her topless past.
An employment tribunal upheld Miss Green's view that this constituted sexual harassment as similar action would not "have been taken in those circumstances in respect of a person of the male gender."
Miss Green praised the tribunal's decision saying: "It shows a person cannot be punished for things they did when they were younger and less experienced." She has now signed a contract with a magazine and is unavailable for further comment.
Gillman and Soame claimed it was "inappropriate for them to comment on personnel matters". They also declined to speculate on whether the decision would have any impact on Colleges' decision to employ their services in the future. Compensation will be settled at a further hearing.
24th Jan 2002