Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Reader, you would be forgiven for making the egregious mistake that ‘BNOC’ is a ‘one size fits all’ label. If you’re unlucky enough to be friends with one, you would be well acquainted with an impromptu trip to Hassan’s becoming a small meet and greet. If you’re even luckier, you may not even know what […]
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Trinity was a busy term for Oxford’s politicos. In late April and early May, many were busy canvassing for their parties in the local elections which saw Labour gain two seats and win a total of 18 (75% of seats available). The Liberal Democrats kept their four and, with only one seat, the Greens are […]
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Here at Oxford, plans are underway to change the current nature of the history curriculum. The most important proposal, as far as present purposes are concerned, is to move away from a focus on British and European history towards more “global” or “extra-European” history. The motivation is to enable students to study a wider geographical […]
Continue ReadingA lot has been written on the NUS conference, so I will quickly summarise my argument to avoid re-reading: the NUS is not great, but we have to stick with it.
Continue ReadingSo I am a self-confessed OUSU addict and got sucked in the way a lot of people do – started off as a JCR rep (because nobody else wanted to do it), then ended up as Chair of Scrutiny Committee, then Chair of Council and so it goes on… At the start, I probably felt […]
Continue ReadingA member of OUSU’s Scrutiny Committee resigned last week, citing concerns over an “unhealthy culture” in the OUSU Council. Jack Matthews, a postgraduate Earth Sciences student, was a member of the Scrutiny Committee, which delivered a critical report into the tenure of former president David J. Townsend last Trinity term. According to the report, there […]
Continue ReadingLast week, JCRs and MCRs across Oxford voted overwhelmingly to leave OUSU’s name off the NUS motion to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. However, the BDS motion will still be discussed at the NUS conference this year, with endorsements from the student unions at the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield […]
Continue ReadingFor many of us, OUSU can all too easily seem nothing short of a passing irrelevance, easily ignored throughout most of our university careers- something corroborated by the survey last year revealing that we possessed the UK’s second least popular student union. For we have common rooms to represent us, right? The OUSU hack seems […]
Continue ReadingSome are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. There are others who fail completely and get RONned. In Michaelmas 2011, I ran to be JCR President of St John’s: this was the first in a string of four failed attempts to “make it” in college politics. But it doesn’t […]
Continue ReadingThe streets of Quebec have been echoing with the sounds of the student uprising that has swept over this province in the last eight months. Sparked off by the provincial government’s move to raise tuition fees by 75 per cent, over 300,000 students went on strike in the longest and largest popular movement in Canadian […]
Continue ReadingFor all their faults, Sam Richardson thinks college JCRs are still hugely important
Continue ReadingLizzie Porter interviews the outgoing OUSU President, David Barclay
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