scope
Night Watch
LEEDS STUDENTS were held hostage in their own Common Room after a fire alarm was set off by drunken tricksters. The alarm sounded at 2.20am at the Charles Morris Hall of Residence when at least half the residents had just got back from a party at Berlin's and had just begun to settle down for the night.
However, some of the revellers continued the party. As the alarm sounded, the sleepy students wandered outside by themselves. "We went down of our own accord but there were no wardens standing outside," complained Geography fresher Rosie Hemsley. "It was really cold." The shivering students waited in sub-zero temperatures for about ten minutes, but when nobody turned up to explain the situation, they went back up to bed.
However, they were grabbed soon after by University Security officers who arrived and ushered them downstairs to the Junior Common Room. "Half the people didn't even come down, and they didn't take names in the Junior Common Room, so there were obviously people who slept through it," said Music fresher Lowri Davies.
Jacqui Brown explained: "When we know it's a false alarm we don't take a register and it was difficult to know who was in and who was out because some people were still coming home from nights out."
It was 3.30am before the students were allowed to return to bed, a wait of one and a half hours. Security Advisor Peter Vincent tried to explain the delay. "No one is allowed back into the building until it is declared safe. We were simply acting on the advice of the fire officer at the scene."
Crisis? What crisis?
YORK'S STUDENT UNION have launched a bold new innovation on their website, the 'Essaybank'. Stocked with pre-written piece on anything from "Byron and Beckford" to "Kant and the Moral Worth" it is of course for - ahem - research purposes only. "Please remember that if you have made use of the Essaybank in writing an essay, you must acknowledge this in your bibliography." Yeah, right.
An idea, perhaps, for OUSU's new Academic Affairs sab to take up; it would certainly boost the popularity of the website no end...
Taken For A Ride...
TWO BRISTOL UNIVERSITY students managed to blag their way to Washington DC as part of a sponsored RAG jailbreak.
Along with over thirty other students, Hammy Gross and Roddy Chishick started off from Bristol City Jail and were given 36 hours to get as far away as possible without paying for any transport. Whilst other contestants were heading to the South or even France, Holland and Germany, the intrepid duo decided to create a new RAG legend by taking on the Atlantic.
First they sweet-talked a first-class train ticket to London, they then went one further by persuading British Airways staff to part with a pair of one-way tickets to New York. Once stranded in Manhattan, they were forced to sell their BA sponge bag to get subway fairs before taking the train to DC and crashing outside the White House at 3am.
Following a second, more comfortable night, eating sushi, they returned to England courtesy of BA again. They are now having problems collecting their sponsorship money, especially from the unfortunate few who sponsored them per mile...
'Pleasure In Paradise'
A SHOCKED LEEDS student saw more than she bargained for when borrowing a copy of the film Even Cowgirls Get the Blues from her department. She was stunned to discover a pornographic movie, Pleasure in Paradise, appeared at the end of the video (which bore the stamp 'to be used only for educational purposes').
The revelation of the lecturers' lecherous tastes has mostly been received with good humour - "I would pay good money for that", or "I hope the history department decides to introduce a similar scheme" being typical reactions. But not everyone agrees - one student commented, "I am disgusted. You come to university to expand your mind, not your penis."