NEWS IN BRIEF
Balliol fellow Adam Swift has argued in his most recent book that independent schools should be abolished. In 'How Not to be a Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed', Swift claims that private education creates inequalities of opportunity, disadvantaging the majority who attend State schools.
Arguing that "equality of opportunity implies that children's chances of success should not depend on their parents' bank balance," he also attacks the idea that parents are morally justified in seeking out the best possible education for their offspring.
Oxford researchers have developed a new blood test for Tuberculosis (TB). The so-called Elispot test detects T-cells produced by the immune system, is quicker and simpler than previous methods, and could replace the traditional skin test known to generations of British schoolchildren.
A team of debaters from the Oxford Union beat a rival team from American universities Yale and Columbia on April 9 in a debate entitled "The House would end the role of the United States as a global policeman".
The British team took the side of the propostion, with the main speaker, Rachel Carrell (Balliol), focusing on the benefits of a strengthened world community filling the policing role currently filled primarily by the United States. The opposition speaker, Aaron Lemon-Strauss (Yale '03), argued that the United States "has the moral right and duty to act so as to protect the rights of those that can't protect themselves." At the end of the debate, students were asked to exit through one of two doors to indicate which side they thought had won. The final tally, 69 to 35, was overwhelmingly in favour of the Oxford Union.
OUSU's offices have moved from Little Clarendon Street to Thomas Hull House, which is on the corner of New Inn Hall Street and Bonn Square opposite the Westgate Centre. The OxStu first reported the move in Trinity Term last year though complications led to numerous delays.
24th Apr 2003