Candidates Line Up
The University has announced that by Tuesday's deadline they had received six nominations for the position of Chancellor.
Four of the candidates have been officially named as Chris Pattern, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Sandi Toksvig and Lord Neil of Bladen QC.
One of the other nominations was believed to have been renegade philosopher Andrew Malcolm, though a University Spokesperson told us that they had received no eligible application from him, suggesting that his nomination form was invalid.
This leaves one other candidate who the University Press Office refused to name by the time OxStu went to press, as the 50 signatures on their application had yet to be verified as members of Convocation.
However they confirmed that Bill Clinton, despite much speculation, had not been nominated for the position. The vote will take place on 14 and 15 March.
Sandi Toksvig has entered the race to become University Chancellor- despite being a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge,
The writer and broadcaster is famous for her role in Call My Bluff and has a long and distinguished television and radio career.
Ms Toksvig has also declared her opposition to top-up fees, saying "education should not be an individual burden for the student but a Government investment for our future as a nation."
"Oxford has benefited over the years from many students who have brilliant minds but little cash. It could be extremely influential in speaking out against student fees and speaking up for the student body which risks increasing social division."
Ms Toksvig has also signed OUSU's statement for prospective candidates that includes the promise: "I will push the Government for a return to a Higher Education system properly funded through the welfare state."
One of the other candidates, Lord Bingham, has spoken out in favour of top-up fees. He said he "would certainly prefer that there were top-up fees than that there should be a shortage of money and to slide into mediocrity"
AN OXSTU INVESTIGATION HAS suggested that Lord Bingham, one of the candidates for University Chancellor, was implicated in a political cover-up in the late 1960s.
The apparent whitewash occurred in the fallout from sanctions that were been imposed on Rhodesia in the late 1960s and 70s in response to Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence from Britain. From this point onwards, allegations were repeatedly made that major oil companies Shell and BP were undermining the embargo by illegally supplying oil to Rhodesia, forcing Foreign Secretary David Owen to launch an inquiry in 1977.
The inquiry was led by Bingham, and although the report admitted both that oil companies had been breaking sanction laws and that civil servants had been aware of this defiance since 1965, it is said to have considerably downplayed the affair.
A Social Audit report, published 1978, criticized the Bingham inquiry's conclusions for being 'incomplete, tentative [and] bland', and further criticized its lack of intelligibility. The report, although 500 pages long, was not cross-referenced and was written in 'dense, legalistic form' making it 'effectively inaccessible'.
It has also become apparent that Lord Bingham's wife, Elizabeth, has sent out an e-mail inviting barristers who are Oxford graduates to support her husbands bid.
Ivo Dawnay, a lobbyist for the Bingham campaign, has stated that Lady Bingham acted entirely above board and that she merely sent two e-mails to lawyers who were family friends.
20th Feb 2003