Uni Watch

Imperial College London

Sir Roy Anderson, the Rector of Imperial College London has resigned from his post after serving for just 16 months. According to The Times, Sir Roy is relinquishing the position in order to focus on his “deep and abiding research interest in global health”, the fight against infectious disease being the field in which he made his name. This was the explanation which he stated to university staff and students in an email. Sir Roy took up the £370,000 per year post in July 2008. At the end of this year Sir Keith O’Nions, the Director of the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial, will become acting Rector until a replacement is found.

Oxford University

Dr Toby Ord, a post-doctoral research fellow in Ethics at Oxford, has vowed to give £1 million to charity before he retires. Ord has made this promise due to the launch of new society Giving What We Can, encouraging members to pledge 10% or more of future earnings to charity. He currently earns £33,000 per annum and has decided to cap this at £20,000, in order to donate £10,000 a year to charities he will choose from a selection deemed the most cost-effective by the society, according to Cherwell. Ord estimates he can save 500,000 years of healthy life for some of the poorest people in the world. He has also already enlisted two well-known moral philosophers to join him in pledging.

Sheffield University

Dr Brooke Magnanti (pictured), who studied for her doctorate in Informatics, Epidemiology and Forensic Science at Sheffield, revealed that she is the former escort behind the anonymous “Diary of a London Call Girl”. Magnanti hid under the pseudonym “Belle de Jour” and even her agent was unaware of her true identity. Many critics have speculated that her blogged accounts are untrue. The revelation of Magnanti’s identity brings with it the fact that she was actually a prostitute in London for 14 months. She took up the £300 per hour job through a London agency in 2003 while finishing her doctoral thesis due to a lack of job prospects in her chosen field and lack of funds. She has since gained a book deal and a television adaptation starring Billie Piper.

London School of Economics

LSE Student Union (LSESU) officials visited all the college’s halls of residence last week as part of their “Your Hall – Your Call!” consultation. This intends to gather feedback and opinions on many issues relating to life in halls and the governance of hall committees. The exercise marks the biggest movement by a student union to gauge satisfaction and move forward with what students want, according to the LSESU. Although turn-out at sessions in different halls varied somewhat, discussions were productive and officials will break down the suggestions offered by each hall in order to make feedback from the initiative more relevant to individual halls.

Brown University

On Saturday night, four men were arrested following disorderly conduct at a party themed “Scandalous”, hosted by the Brown University sorority Delta Sigma Theta. The arrests were made after fights between partygoers escalated. The university security guards were forced to call the city of Providence’s own police force. It is unknown whether or not the men in question are students at the university as non-students were permitted to attend the party on the condition that they had notified the sorority in advance. As a result, the police chief has suggested a ban on parties sanctioned by the university itself. esme nicholson