News in Brief
Staff at St Edmund Hall are said to be "up in arms" following the suspension of the college's head chef. The circumstances of the suspension are unclear, however the Hall Butler resigned from her position the same week.
The Bursar at St Edmund Hall refused to disclose any information about the situation and made no indication of whether the chef would be returning.
The Bodleian has purchased an important Mendelssohn manuscript at a Sotheby's auction for £600,000, thanks to generous donations from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Friends of the Bodleian and individual supporters.
The 'Hebrides Overture', completed in 1832, is now for the first time available to scholars for detailed study. Very much a working copy, including numerous deletions and corrections, it will complement the Bodleian's existing collection of world famous archives of Mendelssohn material.
The manuscript will be on view to the public in an exhibition of the Bodleian's treasures opening in July, part of a series of events marking the 400th anniversary of the opening of the Library in November 1602.
Oxford has been beaten by Cambridge in a new set of University league tables, this time based on teaching standards. The tables, drawn up by The Guardian, place Oxford second to Cambridge in overall teaching quality, with 20 departments in the top ten compared to Cambridge's 23. In individual departments, often for newer degree subjects, many former polytechnics came above older universities. Oxford Brookes also beat Oxford in rankings for courses on Art and Design.
THE NUS HAS condemned one of the Government's leading science advisors for suggesting Britain should adopt a US-style system of 'elite universities'.
Sir Richard Sykes, who sits on the Government's Council for Science and Technology, said Britain would never become a world leader in science unless Britain's best universities were allowed to charge students higher fees.
We would like to apologise unreservedly to the staff of Cherwell and OSPL for carrying a number of allegations in last week's front page article that we knew to be false and misleading. We were aware that the allegation that 'the trustees "don't really want to get involved"' was false, because we were aware that a trustee of OSPL and senior member of the University had been involved in the inquiry process and had met with both Niall Stewart and Cherwell's Council of Management. We were also fully aware that two of the staff departures were due to Mods and Prelims, and we accept that to use the phrase "apparently unconnected" to describe them was misleading.
Another apology to Cherwell is due, as we used unprofessional methods which may have breached the University's Rules and Regulations Governing IT Use when investigating news stories. These methods were wrong, and we apologise unreservedly to the people this affected.
6th Jun 2002