York University

Saturday saw a memorial service to celebrate the life of Tom Eleftheriades, a second year student at York University. Although Eleftheriades, who was a member of Vanbrugh College, died suddenly during the university’s Freshers’ Week, the memorial service was not held until last weekend pending results of an inquest into the student’s death. Eleftheriades, who was studying linguistics and was said to be committed, talented and enthusiastic in all aspects of life, died at his house in Frances Street, York. Since the beginning of term, York University has also been hit by another death: that of first year Chris Woodhead who died of natural causes in York Hospital.

London Met. University

The governors of London Metropolitan University have been given six days to “consider their positions” in light of a report which found the institution has misused public money. The institution must now repay the £36.5 million debt as the inquiry found the university had received tens of millions of pounds in overpayments from the Higher Education Funding Council for England because it submitted inaccurate student data to the council. The report, which will be published this week alongside a second inquiry by Deloitte, attributes the situation to a combination of false reporting by the university and the institution’s failure to address high rates of incompletion.

University of Liege

Coma specialists at the university are pioneering new ways to understand and treat coma victims after they discovered that 46-year-old Rom Houben, presumed comatose for 23 years, had been fully conscious. Houben was unable to communicate due to paralysis from a car accident in 1983 which left him in what doctors thought was a persistent vegetative state, but remained aware of his surroundings as hope for his reawakening dwindled. It is three years since Dr Steven Laureys used new scanning techniques to find that Houben’s brain was still active, but it was not until last week that Laureys published a paper on a study he conducted. This study draws attention to the fact that there are certainly other misdiagnosed patients who are conscious but locked in paralysis and capable of feeling pain.

Oxford University

The JCR of Magdalen College Oxford has passed a motion to rename itself ‘Gryffindor’ and will henceforth be referred to as such in official documents. Successful amendments to the motion include purchase of a ‘Sorting Hat’. Less successful, was the suggestion of a letter to the college President asking that he change his name to Albus Dumbledore. The JCRC President also has a mandate to contact his peers at Christ Church, St Hugh’s and Merton to propose renaming their own combination rooms Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. 

With the blasphemous prospect of the UL becoming ‘The Deloitte Library’, Varsity suggest we jump on the Rowling bandwagon with ‘The Azkaban Library’ to start, John’s as Slytherin and Christ’s as Hufflepuff, of course.

University of East Anglia

Hundreds of emails and documents hacked from a computer server at the University of East Anglia are being used by skeptics against the idea that humans have a lasting impact on climate change. These global warming skeptics claim the emails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, show that scientists conspired to over-exaggerate the anthropogenic causes of climate change by discussing whether or not to release certain data, withholding it and deciding collectively how best to combat the arguments of skeptics The university has brought in police to investigate the security breach.