The End is Nigh...
SEVENTH WEEK IS upon us, and with that the last edition of the OxStu. It hasn't exactly been the most news-packed term, but the perennial stories have at least deigned to crop up. Child of famous statesman comes to study at Oxford. Students protest about financial problems. Political motions in OUSU Council are met broadly with derision. In a shock move, Independent candidates sweep the board in the OUSU elections, while the Union's ridiculous rules make it impossible for any normal student to choose upon the best candidates for that institution, and prefer instead to vote according to the fitness rankings of the candidates.
Yet the term has hardly been boring. The events of September 11 have remained high in Oxford minds, with lengthy debates in Common Rooms, the by now infamous motion to OUSU Council and the subsequent attack on British students by a certain Ms Clinton. And Oxbridge hit the headlines again with the shocking revelations that students - including some girls - actually drink to get drunk, and occasionally even go so far as to behve badly in Guest Dinner because of it. If a college is slipping down the ranking, then that's the obvious reason, and the pissed students at Cambridge immediately become the scapegoats for the ridiculous diatribe in the "bourgeois press" (as some might call it), which heaps the sins of the world onto the shoulders of a few students. NUS seizes the opportunity as the perfect time to launch a new anti-drinking campaign.
It's not exactly doom and gloom though. With the government reconsidering its position on student funding, we can only assume that the pressure applied by the likes of the Finance and Funding campaign is actually being taken in by the powers that be. As individual colleges seem to be cracking down on non-payment of tuition fees, it's hard to see whether there will be an opportunity to demonstrate the support shown by students on a mass scale last year, when over three hundred took part in the Occupation of the Bodleian. One thing seems clear though - students, however lazy, are generally in favour of free education, and generally support any non-disruptive action taken against the government by the non fee-payers. Let's hope that, at this crucial point, they manage to keep involved with the campaign as it comes to a head next term, and keep applying pressure to ensure the Labour cronies back even further away in the forthcoming months.
22nd Nov 2001