Letters to the Editors
Dear Editors,
College standards unequal? No shit, Sherlock! We should be asking why this has not already been addressed by our Student Union. Here at Mansfield College (once again inexplicably omitted from your reporting), students don't have their own pigeon holes, all have to live out in the second year, and only a fraction of finalists live on-site, where there is no ethernetting. Not that I'm complaining - the teaching on my course has never been less than superb, we generally have excellent food, and my college seems to be the friendliest and most laid back of all I have visited.
But for a marginal rent rise at Wadham to be front page news, while at some colleges undergraduates must pay eleven months of market rent (instead of six months batteled rent) AND put up with living at a distance from the convenience of college for the majority of their course, is ridiculous. The drain on the money and time of students is a clear inequality issue - and therefore an access issue. That nothing serious has been done about this before is a disgrace, and OUSU should have dealt with it a long time ago. Now that it has got round to it (for which those responsible deserve credit), serious action should be taken by the University if that designation is not to be an empty word.
Jonas Twitchen Mansfield College
Dear Editors,
I wonder where the authors of the OUSU study got there [sic] figures from. You report them as saying that Magdalen spends on its library twelve times as much as St Peter's receives as top recipient under the College Contributions Scheme. On the £266,628 figure for Magdalen's library (£160,000 in their 2001 accounts) this would imply that St Peter's got less than £25,000. It in fact received £720,000. As reported, OUSU would appear to be out by a factor of more than twice the gross disproportion it asserts.
John Flemming Wadham Chair, College Contributions Committee
Dear Editors,
Emma Hill-French's editorial for Ox2 was enlightening in its ability to so completely destroy the Oxford myth of ability amongst students. In response to her argument that "Oxford does not do drama well", I would argue that Oxford left the festival with four awards, not to mention the achievement in having two plays accepted for the festival. In response to her argument that the shows were weakly directed, I would remind her of the two directing awards given to Lucy Foster at the Festival. To her argument that Oxford is purposefully inaccessible, I would remind her that Foster's play was primarily assaulted for its attempt to make the play more accessible. To the argument that Oxford is "clever", I would read aloud her editorial, the apotheosis of both poor journalism and stupidity. Ms Hill-French, were you turned down for a part?
Jonny Barnow, Wadham
Dear Editors, I am writing to applaud Mr Slaikeu-Lawhead's flawless logic (Letters, 25 April): "stop with the anti-American campaign, and it's no use saying that there isn't one, because all Americans I have spoken to... agree with me". On similar lines, I strongly urge you to decease from your anti-Santa campaign (all the five-year-olds I've spoken to...), your anti-UFO campaign (all the conspiracy theorists I've spoken to...) your anti-Cherwell campaign (all the muppets I've spoken to...) [Hehe - Eds] and your anti-Israeli campaign. The fact that Drake and numerous other American immigrants unanimously agree that there is a conspiracy against them proves incontrovertibly that Americans are always right. God bless the USA. Angus Young Somerville
The author of the best letter will receive a pair of free tickets to see the film of their choice at the Phoenix.
9th May 2002