False Professor
A former OUSU Executive Officer and ex-Librarian of The Oxford Union was sent to China last week, with Beijing academics apparently mistaking him for a Professor of the same name.
St Peter's student Matthew Richardson was offered an all-expenses paid teaching trip by Dr Raoul Cerratti, who owns a private tutorial college in Oxford.
The student claimed he thought he would be giving repeated two hour presentations to teenagers, but on arriving in Beijing found that he would be expected to give 20 hours of lectures to an audience of PhD students who had travelled across China.
Although bluffing his way through notes ripped from an A-Level textbook on global financial markets, the 4th year engineering student left prematurely after fearing that he would be found to not in fact be a leading economist.
He told The OxStu of the incident: "It became obvious that I was coming to the end of the A-level book that I was reading from. I thought that I would be better off cutting short my engagement. I don't know how I became involved in such an incident, but it was one hell of a ride."
It has now emerged that the Beijing Police launched an investigation into his disappearance, and that little-known "global university" Warnborough College who arranged the trip are now believed to be seeking legal advice.
Much speculation surrounds whether he actually went to China, with several media organisations dismissing the incident as purely a publicity stunt until Richardson provided proof of his Visa and plane tickets.
With the student today making the front page of The Daily Telegraph, the incident has sparked yet another media frenzy at St Peter's College, with other students recently making the national papers regarding romance with Charlotte Church, the war in Bhutan and a blunder by The Guardian.
19th Feb 2004