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FREE WEEKLY 07.03.2011 Funded by the Students’ Union

6 arts

Campus nursery closure: a mother speaks out

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The Oscars: did the right people win?

Sussex UCU lecturers vote for strike action

Ballot shows that 131 lecturers at the University of Sussex voted in favour of strike action Tom Wills Sussex lecturers have voted to go on strike against cuts to their pensions.

Members of Sussex UCU, the trade union representing lecturers, tutors and academic support staff, voted 73 percent in favour of strike action on a turnout of 34 percent.

Sussex is one of 63 universities where lecturers voted to strike in the national ballot over changes to pensions, which are negotiated at a national level by representatives of university bosses and trade unions.

Under plans put forward by university bosses, new employees would receive less money when they retire, and all employees would have to pay a greater proportion of their salary into the pension fund.

UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt said strike action was a last resort and called for university employers to resolve the dispute through talks, which are ongoing. But she added: “This is a fantastic result and a clear mandate for action should the employers push ahead with their plans.”

Sol Schonfield, speaking on behalf of the Students’ Union, said strike action could disrupt courses and classes, but called for students to support their lecturers.

“We recognise that this attack on pay and pensions is part of a wider assault on Higher Education, an assault that has removed unprecedented levels of public funding from the University and raised the tuition fee cap up to £9,000.

“If industrial action, as part of a wider anti-cuts strategy, is not taken now, we risk losing even more lecturers, courses and even departments.”

UCU negotiators said they would be recommending two weeks of

rolling strike action starting from Monday 21 March, with each individual employee going on strike for two days, unless the dispute is resolved.

By law the union will have to give a week’s notice of strike action, and the final decision will be down to union members at each university.

UCU also balloted its members over rates of pay and job cuts. That vote also went in favour of strike action, but by a narrower margin of 53 percent. Union officials are due to meet this week to discuss whether to call for strikes over this issue too.

Jim Guild, Vice-President of Sussex UCU, said: “I’m pleased that our members have shown a determination to defend their pension rights and to stand up for reasonable pay even in these difficult financial times.

Obviously we regret any inconvenience this causes to students but we know that students are behind us, and working together I’m sure that we can produce the best results.”

Across the country thousands of university staff have already lost their jobs, including over a hundred at Sussex, and UCU said up to 40,000 more jobs could be at risk, as a result of government plans to cut the university teaching budget by 80%.

Last year Sussex was one of the first universities to make compulsory redundancies after the government announced funding cuts. Sussex lecturers held several days of strike action, which failed to stop job losses but did secure bigger payouts for those made redundant.

Since the government’s October budget announcement detailing its austerity programme - which some critics dubbed “the Bullingdon budget” - campaigns have sprung up in defence of jobs and services. Some trade union leaders have mooted the

Last year’s strike on Thursday 18 March organised by Sussex UCU. Photo: brightontusc.blogspot.com possibility of co-ordinated strike action, and the unions have called a national demonstration in London on 26 March.

The government says the cuts are necessary to cut the budget deficit, but campaigners say cuts could be avoided, pointing to what they say

is billions of pounds of tax avoidance by British companies and the multi-million pound bonuses paid to bankers.

Come to The Badger open writers’ meeting on Fridays, 1.30pm, Falmer House, room 126

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Your opinion: should we support lecturers’ decision to strike?

On Wednesday last week 63 university lecturers announced stike action against the cuts to higher education. The Badger set foot on Library Square to find out what you think.

Yes: University funding cuts means a degredation of teaching and potential job losses for thousands. It’s important for students to support lecturers if they strike.

Yes and no: I wouldn’t support or condemn the lecturers if they strike as it is their jobs they are fighting for.

Sonja Coquelin: Third Year, Economics and International Relations, School of Business, Management and Economics.

Aden Simpson: First Year, English Literature, School of English.

No: Because although it would make a political point, if they strike, we will lose contact time at a vital point in our studies.

Yes: I do because it is important to continue lobbying against cuts to higher education. Students and lecturers should be united against these cuts.

John Bridger: First Year, International Development, School of Global Studies.

Hannah Parker: Third Year, Molecular Medicine, School of Life Sciences.

Yes: I don’t think lecturers should lose their jobs as Vice-Chancellors get pay-rises. If they do strike, I’ll be out supporting them.

No: I would be unhappy if my lecturer was to strike. I oppose cuts to higher education but I would not want to be left hanging. It is their duty to continue teaching us.

Kenny Duggal: Third Year, English and Media, School of English.

Kristina Wintermeier: First Year, International Relations, School of Global Studies.

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Editors-in-chief Juliet Conway Eleanor Griggs badger@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

News editors Raziye Akkoc Jamie Askew Inês Klinesmith Sam Brodbeck

badger-news@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Features editors Kieran Burn Joe Jamieson badger-features@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Comment editor Marcelle Augarde badger-opinion@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Letters editor Rosie Pearce badger-letters@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Arts editor-in-chief Olivia Wilson badger-artspages@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Arts editors Joseph Preston Louise Ronnestad Lucy Atkinson Lily Rae Wanjiru Kariuki Jessie Thompson Harry Yeates Samantha Graham Sophie Moonshine Bella Cockrell

Listings editor Olivia James

badger-listings@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Science editors Natasha Agabalyan Thomas Lessware badger-science@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Photo editors Anna Evans Polina Belehhova

Sports editors Matt Stroud Ben Denton

Sub-editors Luke Guinness Sydney Sims Barnaby Suttle

Students’ Union Communications Officer

Sol Schonfield communications@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

The Badger holds weekly open writers’ meetings Fridays, 1.30pm Falmer House, Room 126

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Break-in news: Activities Centre is burgled again Juliet Conway Editor-in-chief The Activities Centre was burgled for the second time in six months last Wednesday, resulting in two stolen laptops and damages to the office worth an estimated £2,000.

This follows just three weeks from the break-in of the Finance Office in Falmer House, although on that occasion nothing was stolen.

The safe in the Activities Centre was targeted but not successfully opened, and several locked desk drawers had been forced open with the use of tools from the office toolbox.

In August last year a Mac computer was stolen from the Activities centre. In the most recent incident last week, it is believed the burglar, or burglars, entered through the neighbouring photocopying room, pushed through the dividing panel at the top of the wall and kicked open the door into the main office.

The burglary was discovered at 5.30am by one of the cleaners who then notified security. A university spokesman stated: “Security staff

attended immediately and contacted the police.The security staff then liaised with staff based in the building when they turned up for work, and kept the office locked for the police. Security staff also retained property which they believed had been interfered with.”

Sussex police arrived on site the following day, on the morning of Thursday 3 March.

An Assistant Director of the Union Mike Riley said: “It must have been done by someone who knows the office space well, to know how to get in that way… They must have been looking for cash.”

He added that this is the fourth break-in since he started his job seven years ago.

Each desk in the office also contains a USB camera worth £100 apiece. While none was taken, one had been removed from its casing, which the police will use to scan for fingerprints.

Michaela Rossmann, the union Volunteering Development Coordinator, was one of two staff members who had a laptop stolen from her workspace. Like her colleagues, she was not allowed to enter her office until 2pm that day.

She said: “It definitely set my work back. Our work for Project V is only on my computer and [another colleague’s], so we lost a few hours which was annoying.”

She added: “I think it would be really useful to have cameras outside the office. It should definitely have more security”. Currently the only area in Falmer House which operates a CCTV system is Falmer Bar on the ground floor.

The Head of Security at the university, Roger Morgan, said: “I am already in discussion with managers in the Students’ Union about a review of security arrangements for the whole of Falmer House.

“I fully understand that these sorts of incidents can be upsetting but they are very rare. The building, and the university as a whole, is generally very safe and secure.”

During week days Falmer House is open until 11pm, including access to the photocopying room which is used by societies for free.

However due to the break-in for the next few weeks the photocopying room will be closed from 5pm.

Union Activities Officer, Scott Sheridan, said: “It is going to cause

a huge inconvenience for students and it’s such a shame that we’re going to have to reduce accessibility [for people who use the photocopier].”

Jess Duxbury, SUDS Publicity Officer, said: “To not be able to use the photocopy room is a serious disadvantage, particularly when our plays for this term are mid-way through their runs. The effect on the Activities Office itself is more concerning. The office, and everyone in it, are our go-to problem solvers and help us with pretty much everything in our society.

Having a break-in such as this is very damaging and I only hope that it is able to get back to its usual society life-line very soon.”

Mike Riley estimated that the photocopying room will remain closed for at least two weeks, while it could take up to a month for “everything to return to normal”.

If anybody has any information regarding the theft – or any criminal activity on campus – they should contact the security office in York House or call (67)8234 (3333 in an emergency). Alternatively they can contact Sussex Police directly on 0845 60 70 999.

Sussex medical student charged with murder Raziye Akkoc News editor A medical student from Brighton has been charged with murder alongside another teenager, Harvinder Singh Shoker.

Mundill Kaur Mahil, of Maidstone Road, Chatham, Kent and Shoker, from Charlton Park Lane, Charlton, both 19 years old, appeared in Greenwich Magistrates’ Court on Monday 28 February for the murder of Gagandip Singh, 21, from Bexleyheath, south London.

Mr Singh’s body was found in a burning vehicle in south east London on Saturday 26 February.

The Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “At around 2am on Saturday officers on patrol came across a vehicle on fire in Angerstein Lane, Blackheath.

“The fire brigade attended and extinguished the fire and subsequently the body of a man was found in the boot of the car.”

Mr Singh had sustained severe head injuries. Police believe that Singh may have been battered to death in Brighton, and his body taken by car to London afterwards.

A third person, Darren Peters, 19, from Shooters Hill Road, south east London was also in custody, arrested on suspicion of murder at a south London police station on Tuesday 1 March.

The 19-year old male was charged and appeared in custody at Greenwich Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday 2 March.

District Judge Fiona Barrie remanded Mahil and Shoker in custody. They will appear for a plea and case management hearing (PCMH) on 6 June at the Old Bailey.

A spokesperson for the University of Brighton confirmed that Mundill Kaur Mahil is a medical student at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) at Falmer, Brighton: “She is a Year 2 student on the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery programme, which spans five years.”

The chief executive of Sikh TV, a new satellite television station, Mr Singh was also managing director of a recruitment firm and president of the British Sikh Student Federation.

A family friend, who wished to remain unnamed, spoke of Mr Singh as “a leader of the community and a politician in the making. He was an incredibly influential young man.

“The company employed more than 200 people and he would always say to me when he was recruiting about how happy that made him.”

Scotland Yard Police are asking for anyone with any information to call the incident room on 020 8721 4805 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Gagandip Singh’s body was found in a vehicle in London. Photo: metro.co.uk

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Lib Dem MP egged by students after giving speech on campus Charlie Haywood

Norman Baker MP for Lewes Photo: Polina Belehhova

Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, Norman Baker was egged after giving a talk on the University of Sussex campus on Friday 25 February.

Two students present at the talk, chased Mr Baker and hurled eggs which struck him on the back. A confrontation between the MP and the students followed whilst other students shouted obscenities at him from afar.

The transport minister threatened to quit the coalition in December last year in protest of the increased tuition fees. He later decided to remain in his job and voted for the increase despite signing a National Union of Students (NUS) pledge saying he wouldn’t.

Mr Baker nervously laughed off the event asking somebody who was with him whether he needed to get his coat dry-cleaned or not.

The scenes were in contrast to what happened inside the debate where by and large, the clearly angry students managed to keep the debate on point and polite.

After a brief introduction in which Mr Baker said he would not be like other politicians and give straight answers to any questions posed to

him, angry attacks were launched asking about his reasons for turning his back on the NUS pledge.

One student who was questioning Mr Baker said that he should have indeed quit his job and his u-turn

Commons. As some of his colleagues voted against the rise in fees, he had no option but to vote for it in order to balance out the numbers.

He said that being the smaller majority in a coalition government

Mr Baker insisted that the Liberal Democrats were not being bullied by the Conservatives showed he had no backbone.

The student carried on to say: “This is about principles, this is about integrity and you, my friend, have neither”, a remark that Mr Baker shrugged off by blaming the difficulty of working within a coalition government.

Mr Baker argued that the reason he voted for the increase in tuition fees was due to a clause in the coalition agreement which said that Liberal Democrat MPs had the right to abstain from the vote in the House of

makes it hard to have your manifesto policies enforced but insisted that the Liberal Democrats were not being bullied by the Conservatives on the big issues.

Mr Baker insisted that 65% of Liberal Democrat policies were being put into action as justification for his party being in the coalition. Mr. Baker said that Liberal Democrat pledges of increased civil liberties and increased funding for the NHS were still part of the coalition’s plans.

North Laine with a roof on top: open market gets a new look Tom Ellwood Plans for a reported £17m redevelopment of the historic Brighton Open Market have been approved.

Ideas for a new market were first conceived in April 2006, when the Council’s Policy and Resource Committee commissioned a detailed study to look into the feasibility and possible designs of such a venture.

Now, five years on, the market can look forward to a complete revamp, linked to a project currently in place to regenerate the wider area around London road. The general concept is reported to be ‘North Laine with a roof on top’.

The blueprints for the new face of the market have been drafted by LCE Architects, the group behind the Jubilee Library, a facility that has won numerous design awards since its opening in 2005. They are said to have taken inspiration from Old Spitalfields and Borough Market in London.

A completely covered market will provide 44 permanent stalls, as well as 12 workshops for arts and crafts, all facing inwards around a central square layout.

The Council has been promoting the venture as a “social enterprise for the benefit of the community”, that will place an emphasis on providing fresh, healthy and, importantly, locally sourced produce.

When not being used by the visiting retailers, the square will become a recreational space, with an entertainment programme featuring street art and performers.

As part of the project, 87 new affordable and energy-efficient homes will also be built, with Francis Street converted to residential mews and plans for improvements to be made to the public areas around there and Marshalls Rows.

Some have raised concerns about these new proposals. CorporateWatch, a group dedicated to challenging corporatisation and gentrification in Brighton, fear that the result will be “a glitzy new market with higher rents”.

They are strong supporters of the current market, praising it for its affordable produce and diverse retailers, “from organic food cooperatives to peddlers of legal psychedelic products”, and would hate to see the new market offer shoppers higher prices for homogenous and unoriginal goods.

However, Tom Shaw of the project developer Hyde Housing, has stressed that an emphasis has been placed upon prices not becoming an issue, and has described the target as “to create an exciting mixed use development combining an outstanding modern day market with affordable housing.”

In fact, it is hoped that Brighton enterprises who cannot afford

The Open Market by London Road will soon look very different. Photo: Polina Belehhova North Laine rents will be attracted to the site.

Hyde has commented on their close working relationship with the Open Market Traders Association from the project’s birth, and the scheme has received positive feedback from many of the current Open market retailers. Amongst them, Paul Reynolds has said “We have been working towards a development for seven years. Every single aspect of the development has been taken into account “The plans put emphasis on local producers and independent busi-

ness, formed for the benefit of the community”.

The recent approval will come as a relief to supporters of the redevelopment, as many saw it as under threat following the Council meeting on 15 February, in which the decision to approve funding for the project was deferred.

However, funding from the Housing and Communities Agency is conditional upon meeting a deadline of 15 March for both planning consent to be obtained and a building contract signed, and so this posed risk of running out of time.

Without the £4.5 million funding, Hyde would likely deem the scheme unfeasible.

However, with this decision, the plans are back on schedule. The next step requires Hyde and the Open Market Traders Association to seek landowners consent from the Council, in which there will be a further study into the new designs’ financial viability and future sustainability.

Once construction begins, completion should take up to 2 years, during which time temporary stalls will set up for the traders.

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Tories sell internships at Environment gold top firms to supporters award for Union Grant Byrne At a recent Conservative Party event, wealthy Tory funders were given the opportunity to auction for lucrative internships for their children.

Five lucrative internships were auctioned off at £14,000 one of which, a two-week internship at CMC Markets, claimed an ‘incredible opportunity for a potential young trader to get an inside look at the world of international finance and online trading.’

The ‘Black and White’ dinner cost £400 a head and raised £500,000 for Conservatives coffers.

These were sold alongside other ‘prizes’ such as a round of golf with England cricket captain Andrew Strauss and work as an extra on Julian Fellowe’s ITV hit Downton Abbey.

The internships were sold as highly respected brands to add to a CV. David Cameron, George Osborne and Lord Fink were among the guests at the soirée which came weeks after the Coalition government launched its Equality Strategy.

The initiative aims to diversify Whitehall through internships and to make recruitment more accessible to under-represented ethnic minorities and disabled people. Mr Cameron is said to have been extremely embarrassed as Labour have dubbed it ‘Cash for Internships’ with Labour leader Ed Miliband blasting the Prime Minister saying in the House of Commons: “Your view of social mobility is auctioning off a few City internships at the Conservative Party ball.”

With one in five young people unemployed, the internship market has developed into a somewhat half way house where invaluable experience can be gained in sectors where full time recruitment has significantly slowed. However, many schemes have come under recent scrutiny for exploiting of Britain’s youth, with employers even touting for the privilege of shadowing or working for them.

These internships will help a select few gain invaluable experience and CV credentials that many could only dream of. The system has also come under further scrutiny with many suggesting that it only helps those

who can afford to work for free.

Large businesses, art galleries and national museums have all fallen under government watchdog LowPay’s watchful eye in recent years with suggestions that they may be in breach of minimum wage laws.

Recent investigations have found that unpaid interns work a staggering 18,000 hours a week inside parliament, a saving of more than £5million a year and some unpaid internships such as those at the National Gallery could last up to 9 months.

The National Minimum Wage

Act states that ‘interns who work rather than observe should be paid.’

However, with these recent figures on internships it appears that employers are taking advantage of a legally opaque area and with the current jobs market, young people are being preyed upon for cheap, or in many instances, free labour.

While the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has levelled off since the financial crash of 2008, the youth unemployment figures have steadily risen and should soon reach 1,000,000 recorded as out of work.

The sport societies’ nude calenar proposal was approved last week by a working group, established by the Students’ Union Council.

Guidelines put in place by the working group aim to ensure that there will be no moves to block the calendar and that publication will not infringe on Union policy.

The issue was originally raised at a Union Council meeting in January where Jo Stovell, Activities Committee sports representative, proposed that the Union change

The Students’ Union has won a gold award for environmental achievements from the NUS Green Impact Award scheme.

The purpose of the scheme is to encourage and reward good environmental practice within students’ unions.Those signed up to the scheme must work through a list of 215 criteria for an environmental audit.

This includes data from energy consumption to demonstrating environmental campaigns. Unions are awarded bronze, silver and gold awards according to their score.

Last year only five universities achieved this gold standard.

This year the gold criteria included a ban on domestic flights and a supported pro-environmental behaviour project.The Students’ Union has been working with the ‘Student Switch Off’ campaign, an initiative that promotes energy saving in the halls of residences.

In September to October 2010 energy consumption was reduced by two percent compared to previous years, equivalent to eight tonnes of carbon dioxide.

This award celebrates all the environmental initiatives that have been carried out in the union over the years.

Biz Bliss, Operations Officer said:

“The standard has been set for the Union, and now it must work hard to keep its gold status. This will mean conducting another environmental audit before December 2011 and working on reducing its energy consumption by another five percent at least by the same time next year.”

Becca Melhuish, current Environmental and Ethical officer and next year’s Operations Officer, added “I’m really pleased that all the hard work that has been put into reducing the ecological impact of the Students’ Union over the last few years is being recognised - the Gold award is a fantastic achievement.

“There’s definitely a lot of room for improvement, and I’m really looking forward to building on Biz’s great work next year and aim for top of the Green Impact league tables!

“However we need to make sure we don’t fall into the trap of just ‘ticking boxes’, but focus on embedding sustainability in the long-term, helping students to lead more sustainable lifestyles in their own homes, and raising awareness of the links between sustainability and wider political and economic issues.”

Green Week is on 5 – 11 March 2011 across campus, which aims to inspire positive action for a sustainable future. Details are on the union website, as well as tips and advice on ‘Sustainable Living at Sussex’.

The union must now work hard to keep gold status Union Operations Officer, Biz Bliss

The Camerons attend a Conservative fundraiser ball Photo: dailymail.co.uk

Sport societies get green light for nude calendar Sam Brodbeck News editor

Rebecca Scott

its ‘Objectification of Women Students’ policy to allow the societies to produce the calendar.

The working group that was established at the meeting included the Activities, Communications and Welfare officers, the Women’s Officer and members of the planning group for the calendar.

After the meeting the group said: “We are happy that sufficient guidelines have been produced which take into account the Union’s current policy while enabling students to produce the calendar they want.”

Several sport societies will be

involved in the all-female calendar which is set to be produced in the summer term in time for release at the Dissertation Dash on 23 May. People will have to ‘opt-in’ to be featured, rather than ‘opt-out’, as part of the approved working group guidelines to prevent people from being pressured into taking part.

In 2009 Oxford University’s Christ Church college has to re-shot a similar nude charity calendar after three pictures were judged “too erotic” by college censors.

Police arrest man in former Taj site Jamie Askew News editor Fifty officers stormed the former site of Taj greengrocers on Wednesday 2 March at 10am to find only one man, whom they arrested.

Campaigners were told that they had until 10am on Thursday 24 February to vacate the building in Old Steine after they were issued with an ‘Interim Possession Order’ on the 23 February. A security guard will now patrol the building denying campaigners a chance to gain re-entry.

Chief Inspector Simon Nelson said: “The officers had protective equipment with them due to the uncertainties surrounding what they might face inside.

“After entering the building, officers called out to any occupants asking them to safely make their way to the ground floor, and a thorough search was made of each floor before one man was located inside and arrested.

“There was no violence and no injury.” The group, named SaboTAJ, were protesting against plans by Sainsbury’s to build a supermarket on the site of the empty building.

SaboTAJ are asking people to voice their concerns to their local councillors and object to the proposasl.

They are targeting Sainsbury’s intentions to sell alcohol at the site.

They argue that the area already has severe problems with alcohol-related incidents .

A member of SaboTAJ said: “The occupation certainly brought the issue of Sainsbury’s moving into Kemptown into focus.”

The SaboTAJ open meeting is on Monday 7 March at 6.30pm at Community Base, Queen’s Road.

They will discuss tactics and ways to keep the campaign moving forward.

Sainsbury’s have recently opened a local store in Hollingbury and have long-established premises on Lewes Road, London Road and Western Road.

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Please don’t close our nursery With campus’ nursery potentially facing closure, the mothers affected speak out against the university’s decision to withdraw essential funding which has ultimately led to this crisis

soon disappear. A university without children and without student-parents is not a diverse university: where is the wider participation in this?” asks Aurora’s mother.

Jo Goodman, the Students’ Union Welfare Officer, states that if the university aims to encourage and support diversity, it must find a way to secure the future of childcare as a vital service to ensure it. As such, the union is currently working with the Student Parent Association (SPA) to ensure that the university remains a supportive space for students and staff with children. “The closure of these facilities would represent a huge loss not only for those who use them, but for the campus community as a whole,” she says. “You only have to talk to a student or staff member whose children are at the nursery to find out how integral it is to their daily life and the removal of childcare would jeopardise many students’ degrees and many staff members’ ability to work at the university. This cannot be allowed to happen.”

What’s next?

Many parents, both staff and students, rely on the nursery to provide childcare during the university week. Photo: Anna Evans Sandra Pointel The potential closure of the University of Sussex childcare facilities is putting student-parents under considerable stress and is raising key questions about the institution’s vision of diversity. If the university goes ahead with the closure, it will put an end to an invaluable service which has been available to both student and staff parents for more than 40 years.

It would also result in job losses for dedicated employees, some of whom have been employed by Sussex since the beginning. Such a move would seriously damage the university’s reputation as a child-friendly education provider and employer.

The university announced in 2009 that campus services must soon cover their own costs, meaning the nursery was forced to seek funding from an external provider. In late 2010, Bright Horizon was set to takeover the service; however, the recent news that the bid has fallen through came as a shock to both parents and staff. The university is now in talks with potential alternative providers but should no “realistic prospect of success” emerge by 1 April, the Residential, Sport & Trading Services (RSTS) division “would propose for the university’s operation of the facilities to end”.

A Media and Cultural Studies DPhil student and mother of fouryear old Aurora says the nursery is an essential part of the University of Sussex’s identity: “Closing it might signify the starting of the dilapidation of the history that made Sussex what it is today: a leading university in the UK and an historical and international reference in the higher education commitment to social justice and public life.”

An impact on study life

Many parent-students came from outside of Brighton. They chose to move here to attend the University of Sussex instead of alternative institutions due to the benefits of campus-based childcare.

These facilities include the nursery, which welcomes children aged four months to three years, and the pre-school, designed for three- to five-year-olds.

These services cater for the needs of children from diverse social and cultural backgrounds while providing a great environment for all children to learn. They are open from 8:30am until 5:30pm; a key benefit to students already facing the major challenge of juggling family life with academic studies.

Hiroko moved all the way from Japan with her four-year-old daughter to study an MSc in Science and Technology Policy. With her husband still working in Japan, she has to cope with lectures throughout the day and maximise her study time until 5:30pm when it is time to pick her daughter up.

“For us, having the nursery on campus is significantly important and if it were not for its existence, I would not have come to study here.”

With no alternative childcare facilities in the Falmer area, a closure of the nursery and pre-school would have serious impacts on the abilities of students to balance their study/ family life balance. Indeed, the only option would be to commute to Brighton or Lewes in search of other childcare providers. This would deprive parents of precious study hours, placing them at a huge disadvantage to other students.

The threat of closure is now

pressurising parents to consider drastic options, including sending their children away and dropping out of university altogether. “It would be too difficult for me to take my daughter to another place outside campus,” says Hiroko. “If the nursery were to close, I would have to send my daughter back to Japan.”

An undergraduate studying Computing and Artificial Intelligence moved to the UK from Cyprus with her one-year-old son specifically because the University of Sussex marketed itself as being familyfriendly, advertised family flats and on-campus childcare facilities.

“I am a single parent and if

Deterring future parent students

A decision to close the nursery would also deter potential students from coming to Sussex. “If one of the overall goals of the ‘Strategic Plan 20092015’ is to attract more international students,” comments Aurora’s mother, “you have to wonder to what extent this goal is compatible with the closure of the nursery, given that having it on campus is a key factor in attracting those students.”

Indeed, a potential student-parent from Taiwan, who was considering applying to Sussex, recently enquired about the nursery. She was told that it is an outstanding facility but because it

If the nursery were to close, I would have to send my daughter back to Japan these facilities are removed midway through my degree I may not be able to complete my studies,” she says. “Now I have to suffer all this uncertainty while trying to complete a very demanding degree - this is not the learning experience I expected!”

As a result, she strongly believes the management has a responsibility to see things through until her and her fellow students’ graduation; “otherwise, they have misled us with their marketing material. If I had known the nursery would be closing I would have chosen a different uni.”

is at risk of closing, she is understood to be considering opting for an alternative institution.

The proposed closure is also at odds with the university’s aim of “widening participation” and raises questions regarding its stance toward diversity and equal opportunities. Clearly, the presence of the crèche on campus facilitates wider participation for parents, particularly mothers. This means that the nursery’s closure would disproportionately affect women.

“Children and student-parents are minority groups within the university community and it seems that they could

So far, the university has disclosed minimal details regarding the steps it is taking to avoid the nursery’s closure.

While the statement released on 11 February following Bright Horizon’s withdrawal said it had renewed talks with potential external providers, the details were vague and it remains unclear whether the university is willing to consider alternatives like the “parents model” proposed last year should negotiations fall through.

There is also little available information concerning the reasoning behind the nursery’s closure. Following a 2009 decision by the university’s governing body asserting that all trading services, including campus childcare facilities, must cover their own costs, it can only be assumed that that the childcare facilities “cost more to run than they bring in”. It is unclear why the nursery is now considered a trading service alongside shops, for instance, and nothing has been said about the appropriateness of this. The general lack of transparency throughout this entire process is another area of concern for students. Another mystery is how the university would use the childcare premises should it proceed with their closure.

“If the reasons to close the nursery are related to the future profitable use of the nursery premises, we - students have the right to be informed about the kind of use that is being planned for that space and why it is regarded as more valuable than a nursery in campus,” offers Aurora’s mother.

Students are to meet with Charles Dudley, RSTS director, in the near future with the hope of clarifying the situation and gathering more information on steps being taken to avoid closure.

As well as planning more discussions with student-parents, SPA is keen to engage further with other parents, the union, the student and academic communities at large to ensure a clear and transparent account of the issues at stake and the potential scope for action, and to ensure that the university maintains childcare on campus in the future.

response

Student Media Office Falmer House University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QF

07.03.11

badger | badger-letters@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Telephone: 01273 678875 Email: badger@ussu.sussex.ac.uk Advertising: BAM Agency vb@bamuk.com

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7

Views expressed in the Badger are not representative of the views of the USSU, the University of Sussex, or the Badger. Every effort has been made to contact the holders of copyright for any material used in this issue, and to ensure the accuracy of this week’s stories.

Please contact the Communications Officer if you are aware of any omissions or errors.

letters and emails

Library issues

plugs or a blanket. Then I’ll hopefully get some peace and quiet.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Sincerely,

Like most students, I cannot work from home. I get distracted by the kitchen that has to be cleaned immediately, the phone, the internet and my guitar that I have not played in half a day, which of course has to be remedied. With deadlines fast approaching, I therefore force myself out of the house and into the university library.

The typical library is a quiet place, a place of knowledge that provides hard-working students and scholars with the materials they need. As for the latter part, the library of the University of Sussex largely fulfils its purpose, even though I should mention that the refurbishment left certain parts like the journals section vanished for a certain period of time before Christmas.

But I am willing to accept that for the greater good of having a nicelooking, hopefully well-structured and resourceful library once the refurbishment is completed. I don’t even mind the noise disruptions caused by drilling and hammering that much.

The only noise I despise and which in my eyes actually deprives the library of its status as a good library, is the constant noise of the students. How can it be that inside the main part you constantly hear people talking and laughing, mobiles ringing and sometimes even music playing – yes, the other day someone played reggae tunes on his laptop and nobody seemed to be bothered by it.

I know there are designated quiet areas, which, however, are mostly freezing cold as opposed to the “loud zones”. But with our campus and even the library itself offering enough cafés and communal places to chat with your mates, why isn’t the library one big quiet area?

Tell me if I’m wrong but isn’t that how a library is supposed to be? Isn’t that one of its purposes, to provide quietness for the people who want to work and concentrate?

For my part, I will either bring ear-

A. F. Dear Sir/Madam, As the end of term approaches, deadlines are starting to build up and the library seems to become my home away from home.

The library, undergoing a 6 million pound refurbishment, is rather loud.

Complaints in previous letters of the Badger have stated the issues surrounding the library, resulting in the library bringing in the use of notice boards, directing users to ‘Quiet Zones’ etc.

However, for me, the deterrent which is stopping me from using the library as frequently as possible is the state of the toilets. The smell which emanates from the toilets in the basement is almost unbearable.

Nonetheless, if one were to brave the smell, the state that the bathrooms are in is also very poor.

Not to say that they are unclean (perhaps only the smell gives an allusion to this), rather the panelling is broken, toilet roll dispensers either missing or graffitied on, and the floor is both stained and scratched.

Surely, seeing the library is undergoing such a vast transformation, the university should have the funds to improve these incredibly poor, and frankly vile toilet facilities.

as constructive criticism, but I don’t think it will be taken as such and fear it will only give the university management ammunition to shoot down as many people as it can and slash the department’s funding because it’s not one of those that makes economic sense to them.

This puts me in a difficult position.

So what I’m going to do is rate my department 5/5 for everything and give only positive feedback on the NSS. I will be posting a letter with my other feedback to my head of department.

I encourage others to do the same.

Kind Regards, Bananarama

Cost of education Dear Sir/Madam Noting Kieran Burn’s letter [‘Cost of Education’ 21.02.11], I apologise to Harry Yeates for my flippant response to his feature article in the previous week’s edition.

It was not constructive. As Kieran’s letter rightly points out, the question is partly about how the costs of higher education should be distributed between the public and the private spheres, and between graduates and non-graduates, in order to maximize accessibility and quality for everyone. I do not believe that raising fees in order to subsidise grants is the best way to do this.

Yours sincerely,

Yours sincerely,

A disgruntled library user

Sam Waterman

Student surveys

Referendum

Dear Sir/Madam,

Dear Sir/Madam,

As a third year I am being asked to fill in the NSS. I have been told that it will inform much of the Vice-Chancellor’s decision making on my department.There are lots of things I would like to say

In response to the letter on AV last week: If we switched to AV one of two things would happen.

When one party wins government they would do so with a bigger major-

ity than they have already, that means bigger majorities would have occurred for Blair and Thatcher – clearly less representative and less accountable.

The other alternative is more hung parliaments. AV would benefit the Liberal Democrats more than any other party. We would have a three party system. It is true this may be more representative, but would it really result in a better deal for us?

The Liberal Democrats would always hold the balance of power, as Labour and the Conservatives are never going to work together. If two consecutive hung parliaments occurred, how would we get rid of the Liberal Democrats? How would we be able to punish them for saying they wouldn’t vote for a rise in tuition fees and then doing it anyway? Answer: we wouldn’t, they would be the King makers.

AV leads to bigger majorities for single parties (giving them an increased elective dictatorship) or more hung parliaments and more broken promises in the name of the coalition.For the sake of our democracy, do not vote for AV. Thank you, James Butcher

The Big Lemon Dear Sir/Madam, It was good to read the two letters from Emily Pilkington and Chris Bacon in the Badger [21.02.11] about competition on the buses, and nice to hear support for our service as well as ideas about how the two services can thrive side-by-side.

Emily hits the nail on the head when she says that, unfortunately, the only reason fares have come down on the 25 is to put The Big Lemon out of business, or at least stop us from running a competitive service.

The Big Lemon started the 42 service to the University in 2007 in response to a big student campaign in 2006 against bus fare increases on the 25.

At that time there were limited student

deals available, and prices were rising much faster than inflation, unchecked because there was no competition.

Since The Big Lemon has been operating, frequencies and fares on the 25 have all improved significantly and as a result students are much better off regardless of who they travel with. So for people in any doubt as to the raison d’être ofThe Big Lemon’s service 42, it is not simply to give a friendly service at a good price but also to ensure that passengers on the 25 get a good deal too. Why do we care about that?

Because the better the deal available on all public transport, the more people will use it and the lower the impact of car use on the environment and on people’s health and wellbeing.

Chris’s ideas on what should happen now are interesting, and I quite like his preferred solution, to allow The Big Lemon to take the student market, and Brighton and Hove Buses to take everyone else. However, there are rules that stop us making those kind of arrangements, and even if there were not, what would we say to a non-student who wanted to use our bus?

We could not (and wouldn’t want to!) refuse to take them, and likewise, if students wanted to use the 25, they should be allowed to. What was most interesting, though, about Chris’s suggestion is that he choseThe Big Lemon as the ‘student bus’ and Brighton and Hove Buses as the ‘everyone else’ bus.

Running a bus service is a very difficult job, but we all thoroughly enjoy serving such a vibrant community with such lovely people, and we’re glad that competition on the route has brought big benefits to everyone regardless of which bus they use.

The irony is that if people withdraw their support and patronage ofThe Big Lemon as a result of getting a better deal on the 25 we will not be able to run our service, and inevitably price rises on the 25 will soon follow and there will be no alternative, just like 2006. We wouldn’t want that, would we?

Yours faithfully, Tom Druitt FRSA Managing Director

YES, YOU SHOULD o WRITE FOR US.

Weekly open writers’ meetings: Friday, 1.30pm, Falmer House, room 126.

Or email one of our editors.

07.03.11

8

comment and opinion

the

badger | badger-opinion@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Save our universities: education before commerce Cameron Tait President of the Students’ Union On 9 December, students and lecturers stood beside each other on Parliament Square in the freezing cold. £9k. The cuts had been ratified and Higher Education had been pushed into the marketplace, no longer deemed a public benefit, now a private accessory. But something else began there, or at least, something that had started many months before began to gain momentum.

If we’re all in it together now, where will we be in two years time? What happens when we pay, in near entirety, for our education? The calculators are going to come out again, as they have done many times so far. “This lecture has cost me £143.76! It was surely only worth £75 at most! I demand redemption!” A degree will be an investment and a step on a career ladder that will have very definitive monetary value attached to it. Demands will increase, and the supply of a service of education will need to match it. This is the marketplace after all. Lecturers will become service providers. Suddenly the collegiality is replaced with this business-relationship. The future of higher education has been described as ‘student-led’, but what does this mean?

What does this mean for these collegial relationships, for the campus ‘bubble’, for academic freedom?

I’ve debated this with myself many times over. I took an argument to a committee I sit on called the Council Review Group, which reviews the format of the highest governing body

of the university. It said, “Look, postBrowne, we’re now in an environment where students are the biggest stakeholders, and thus students deserve a much bigger role in governance”. The result was a move to include a postgraduate student representative on Council.

Previously, the Union President had been the sole student. More student representation and specific representation for a group that have previously found difficulty in getting their voice heard at Sussex - surely a great thing right? But it came at a cost.

Thenewstudentplacewastakenfrom the pool of academic and professional services staff representatives. Suddenly I remembered a brief argument between Sally Hunt, UCU General Secretary, and Ed Marsh, NUS Vice President, that had happened across me as I chaired a discussion on the future of higher education in October.

Ed had started complaining of falling contact hours and front-line service, concerns I’ve heard from many here at Sussex. Sally replied instantly and vehemently: “Don’t go down that road”. You could see the vulnerability in the national relationship between the staff and student unions.

There will be increasing complaints about contact hours and direct service.

Staff will have far more demand on them to mark work more quickly, to spend more time with students and all of this as they are now set to do far more administrative and pastoral work as widespread cutbacks are being made to student support and administration.

Furthermore, here at Sussex, Senators managed to fight off a proposal from university management which tried to push through a paper that would have meant tutors unable to hit consistently high research targets would go to disciplinary and would eventually be sacked.

The demands are growing both for teaching and for research, and of course, if tutors were to spend many more hours trying to save their jobs by hitting research targets, then how long do they have to prepare their teaching? How much time will they have to share a coffee and discuss the trepidations of their students? After all, they’re going to be timed and calculated upon by their students now, and performance-managed by their heads of schools. Is this the right atmosphere for studying, learning, teaching and researching? This world of targets and ‘Key-Performance Indicators’ is the infrastructure for a privatised training programme, not a university. So is student-led learning better for us as students?

Well, it will certainly lead to greater levels of bureaucracy and administration that will in turn lead to standardisation and regulation of the contact time and levels of service that we wanted in the first place. It is my belief that we need to take each step together, instead of beginning an institutional battle between students and lecturers in which the middle and senior managers that have previously stood back in the face of cutbacks end up stepping in to mediate.

We need to remain focused on

Protesting students fear for their future Photo: Life.com our idea of education, of a collegial, publicly and socially beneficial education. I believe that another student on Council is the right thing and that students do need to be given a louder voice. But we need to be careful where we draw the line.

Recent months have been a perfect time for the application of philosophical thought on to ‘real life’ (whatever that is). Surely everyone in the country must have spent, at the very least, a few seconds asking themselves, “What is education?” How does it relate to society? How does it relate to the individual? So, let’s have no ‘leaders’ of learning, lets avoid going down the road to individualism and bureaucracy and remember what education is and why it is a social, collegial activity. If we never forget that, then we can start to rebuild our university, rather than

simply exacerbate what can only be described as ‘market trends’.

We need to take the next step in this student-staff partnership by supporting our lecturers and academic staff in strike action, standing by our colleagues that are taking action to save education.

We recognise industrial action might affect courses and classes in the short term, but the goal is much greater than an extra lecture or seminar; the goal is a higher education system that values education before commerce, that values students and lecturers as free academic agents, not customers and service providers. If industrial action, as part of a wider anti-cuts strategy, is not taken now, we risk losing even more lecturers, courses and even departments.

We are all in it together, after all.

Graduate with no future: a new sociological type?

Tom Gittoe Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight’s economics editor has suggested of the unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, France, London and elsewhere that “at the heart of it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future”. All manner of lefties have been standing in Library Square, entreating us to ‘defend education’ with petitions, placards and processions. Few of us have taken up the request.

What is there to defend? The current education cuts will no doubt make things worse, but it’s not education we need to defend but our conditions of life, both at university and more importantly for the rest of our lives.

We need to turn our critical faculties both on our education and on the society it is preparing us for. Do we have a future? Is it worth the sacrifices it demands?

“A university degree today is not a sign of becoming middle-class. It’s a way for the working class to make themselves suitable for the postindustrial workplace. This must be the basis of any class analysis of the current argument.”

The skills, habits, discipline and modes of thought imparted via a university education are those appropriate to the modern flexible labour market: self-directed labour with minimal supervision, strong communication skills, the ability to digest and present complex information and the ability to produce work on-demand to more or less arbitrary criteria (marking is essentially a

tick-box exercise against a scheme with which we are provided). In the 1970s Sussex students boycotted assessments, rejecting such production-line education.

Within the year, we’ll all be scrambling over one another to compete for scarce, or non-existent, jobs. Since the specific content of a masters degree is only relevant to a narrow range of specialist employers, it is the

lucky you get to write on your CV ‘I'm willing to bend over backwards and work for nothing’. Employers like that skill-set.The kind of jobs related to our degree subjects are the dangling carrot for many of the more idealistic amongst us, who dream of being able to make a living ‘making a difference’, perhaps in international development or NGO work. Even for the successful, this is mainly a

At the heart of it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future aforementioned qualities implied by ‘having a degree’ which are most pertinent – ‘transferable skills’.

In fact, even if you want to work in a related area, the degree itself is not enough.

The careers advice in our course handbook points out that “while a good postgraduate degree in a relevant subject from a good university (like Sussex) is vital, all your competitors will have one too”. Instead we’re expected to scour and beg for internships, usually unpaid or at best, poorly paid. If you are willing to provide months of labour for free, “if you can get a foot in the door this way, work as hard as you can, make yourself indispensible and you might – might – get paid work later on”.

In other words, if you’re really, really

mirage. Overwhelmingly those institutions with the resources to employ graduates have a stake in the status quo and are part of the problem they notionally oppose.

There's no space to flesh that thesis-length claim out much here, but do you think NGOs and notfor-profits somehow operate outside the amoral world of geopolitics that we’ve studied so much?

A former development worker offered this cautionary advice to students on a similar programme at Cornell University (his full speech is well-worth a read): “As you prepare for and look forward to careers in international development, I am compelled to issue a warning. With the hindsight of someone who spent five years in the development busi-

ness, I'm going to tell you that the development industry hurts people in the developing world. Its greatest success has been to provide good jobs for Westerners with graduate degrees from institutions like this one”.

And that's for the tiny minority of us who manage to jump through enough hoops and work enough unpaid internships to get such ‘rewarding’ work. In terms of actually using the content of our MAs, that leaves academia. That means finding the cash to finance a PhD, which normally means self-financing and/or working. Typically, PhD students work as Associate Tutors (ATs) to help cover the costs of their education. The university is happy with this, it helps casualise and fragment the workforce with highly skilled but low paid casual workers.

There is a well-worn path from critical student to comfortable academic, with some honourable exceptions. But every critical academic should well know that “not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history” (that one’s from our core reading)! Academia is no place to make a difference; for a handful it may be a place to make a living.

Even the space for critical academics is being further eroded by massive cuts to humanities funding in the cause of making education yet more functional to capital.

But in truth, the vast majority of us will not become NGO staff or academics. We will be thrust back into the stagnant labour market to look for jobs with no direct relation to our degrees. Take a glance at any jobs website for an image of the future:

telesales… temp finance assistant… customer service agent.

This is what we've paid thousands of pounds for: ‘transferable skills’ to better market ourselves for interchangeable drudgery (assuming of course we find work, with record numbers out of work and big layoffs still to come). Student debt will help keep us locked on the treadmill, moving from one low-paid cul-de-sac to another.

Current estimates are that 420,000 Britons are challenged with work-related stress at a level that is making them ill with conditions such as depression and anxiety. Surveys have suggested that approximately 1 in 6 working adults believe their job is highly stressful. Austerity isn’t going to improve the situation. How long will you last? 40 years of this shit?

The current education cuts are not an attack on some ideal education for educations sake which we can ‘defend’, they are simply an acceleration of the neoliberal reforms already in motion under Labour. If the university is a factory; we are its product.

But we are a unique commodity in that we possess the capacity to think: let's do so.

The critique of education demands a critique of society and our place in it.

To be disillusioned is not a malady.

Ridding ourselves of illusions in an uncertain future, it is a necessary step in disputing the precarious fate of the vagaries of market forces and neoliberal reforms have assigned to us. If events in Tunisia and Egypt teach us anything it’s that a different future is always impossible – until it happens.

07.03.11

9

misc.

badger

the

| badger@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

Where to go site-seeing Here in the Badger office we’ve scoured the internet for the best websites to visit in times of procrastination...

BYOB

As in, Baking Your Own Bread.

Everyone’s doing it.

Wikileaks film

Directed by Spielberg.

We’re all wondering who will play Assange.

Union nude calendar An ongoing collection of anonymous secrets - some lighthearted, some darker - displayed on a series of postcards. If you like what you see, you’ll be pleased to hear that the project’s creator, Frank Warren, has also published many of the confessions in books.

The “awesomest” things on the internet, everyday, be it videos, pictures, cute animals, music, technology or entertainment.

Basically, Today’s Big Thing scours the internet for the most hilarious things out there so you don’t have to. Perfect.

Going up...

http://www.todaysbigthing.com

Going down...

http://www.postsecret.com

The sports society calendar will be out in May.

Ashley Cole You thought he couldn’t get any lower.

Then he shoots a student with an air rifle.

http://www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

A tongue-in-cheek reference point for those ever in doubt of the Tories’ unswerving commitment to the working class, complete with photographic evidence and humourous captions. “David Cameron casually crosses the underground gap without the aid of his servant.

So common. It’s almost as if he went to a comprehensive.”

Stuff White People Like adopts a scientific approach to highlight and explain, errr, stuff white people like. Ranked eighth in the list is Barack Obama... “because white people are afraid that if they don’t like him they will be called racist”. It’s all pretty predictable, apparently, but it’s hilarious all the same.

General Knowledge

Who am I?

1.What’s the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit?

2.What is the shape of the university’s campus from birds’ eye view?

3.What is the world most popular non alcoholic drink?

4.Which number president of the USA is George W Bush?

5.In what year was the Berlin Wall built?

6.What is the most common Element on Earth?

Virgin Media

They overcharge for internet which is too slow.

Deceptive weather

The sun is shining, but the wind is freezing.

cool wall

http://davidcameronpretendingtobecommon.tumblr.com

the badger

One of the grafittis on the Berlin Wall Photo: quarknet.de

Pick up the Badger next week (out Monday 14 March) to find out the answers to our General Knowledge quiz as well as ‘Who am I?’. While you’re waiting for next week, visit us online at www.thebadgeronline.co.uk

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07.03.11

badger | communications@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

the

students’ union

NUS conference Sussex delegation elections

Vote online 8-10 March sussexstudent.com/elections The NUS (National Union of Students) annual conference takes place this year fromTuesday 12th -Thursday 14th April at The Sage in Newcastle.

Every year over 1,500 delegates arrive at the conference from institutions across the United Kingdom.

National Conference is the sover-

eign body of the NUS, it sets policy for the year ahead in each of the 5 zones (Society & Citizienship, Higher Education, Further Education, Welfare and Union Development) and elects NUS President, Vice Presidents and Block of 15 representatives on the NUS National Executive Council. It

is also where the budget for the year ahead is decided through the Annual General Meeting (AGM).We at Sussex are entitled to send four delegates to vote on behalf of our Students’ Union.

We have received 6 nominations for our four places so will be holding an election. Here are your candidates.

Simon Englert PGT HAHP

Marcelle Jennings Yr 3 UG LPS

Cameron Tait Students’ Union President

“Reclaim NUS and Fight Back”

“Marcelle Jennings, Representing You”

“Cameron Tait for NUS delegate”

This year saw the greatest student revolt in a generation shake the country and redefine the political field across Britain.

This needs to be reflected in our union.

If elected as a delegate, I will: - Campaign for the candidates that have supported the recent revolt.

- Work with the NUS LGBT campaign, NUS Black campaign, EAN and NCAFC to ensure NUS conference reflects the new mood in the student movement.

- Propose and defend motions that can strengthen anti-cuts and antiracist campaigns on our campuses.

- Argue for a NUS that gives active leadership to the anti-austerity movement.

NUS Conference is a vital way to ensure the national movement that represents us knows exactly what we at Sussex want.

NUS hosts an annual conference for this exact reason.

As an elected delegate I will take on the role of ensuring our voices are heard and our needs are met.

That NUS remain accountable to students, that funding remains in place for extra curricular activities and that NUS does everything to ensures students continue to fight for students rights.

Vote for someone who will represent the interest of Sussex Students!

I am proud of my record of both challenging and working with NUS this year. I will use my contacts and experience to build on my work at Sussex: 1) Anti-cuts: - Step up the campaign against education cuts.

- Unite with other groups against public service cuts.

- No fees: a publicly funded Higher Education system.

2) Widening Access: - More grants, bigger scholarships.

- Localised support to urge Universities to do more to attract students from lower-socio-economic backgrounds.

3) International Students: - Oppose the government’s plans to cut international student numbers.

- Oppose limitations to international student rights.

English Society restarts Elin Jones and Samia Begum English Society Sussex without its clubs and societies would not be Sussex. With a network of students at their heart, they offer the perfect opportunity to meet and socialise with like-minded individuals, organising events and providing support in the process.

Yet whilst most academic subjects can claim such an advantage to their name, the English Society has never entirely been able to take off and thrive in the same way, a problem which Literature and Language students from across all years believe put them at a great disadvantage.

Seeing the obvious gap in the Union, a few students have decided to take the initiative. This term sees the much anticipated re-launch of the English Society, a move which will undoubtedly be welcomed by students across years at Sussex.

Run by President Danielle Whitehead, the society is not only open to those who take English as a subject, welcoming anyone who wishes to indulge in their passion for reading and writing.

We met up with Vice President Juliette Cule, a first year English Rep, to find out about the re-launch.“We were created by students and want it to be run by students”, she told us.

“By next year we are hoping to be a fully-fledged society that Sussex can be proud of, just in time for the new influx of freshers”.

There have been many attempts to revive the society in recent years, yet maintaining interest and participation has always been a struggle. “It’s a great department”, she says, “but

The new English Society’s logo

there needs to be a lot more cohesion and communication between staff and students.”

By bridging the gap, many students are hoping that this re-launch will strengthen the community feeling within the department and raise enthusiasm for English as a whole.

Second year student Shauna agrees; “Participation with other societies would be a great way to meet other students with similar interests” she says.

Fresh proposals include the ‘Writer’s Forum’, a platform where

the society is open to anyone who wishes to indulge in their passion for reading and writing students will be able to share their writing abilities within a supportive environment, a plan which will undoubtedly lead towards a working relationship with similar societies.

There are also plans on holding a wide range of other exciting events, encouraging students to get more involved in its launch. “We’re looking to organise theatre trips and film showings to fancy dress nights and possibly a summer garden party at the end of the year” says Juliette.

“But none of this will be possible without help and participation from students.

“Taking part in this society can be as enjoyable and rewarding as anyone makes it to be. Anyone with any ideas are more than welcome to join, so we need to spread the word”.

To find out more about the re-launch of the English society, search ‘Sussex English Society’ on Facebook, or email the student representatives with your thoughts and suggestions at english_studentreps@ sussex.ac.uk

International Women’s Day at Sussex Ciara Conlon Women’s Group Judith Flacks Yr 4 UG HAHP

Kelly McBride Year 2 UG Global Studies

Tom Wills Yr 3 UG Global Studies

I have previously attended two annual conferences and have been involved in the student union throughout my time at Sussex. I want to carry these experiences to NUS conference this year to represent Sussex students.

We need to: Fight cuts and rising fees: - It’s still important that we continue to fight cuts to education for both further and higher education students.

Commit to equality and diversity: - Ensure NUS retains its commitment to equality and diversity policies, ethical investments and affiliations.

Ensure accountability: - Make sure we are holding those who represent us nationally to account.

“Kelly for Conference!”

“For a campaigning NUS”

As an active member of the Students’ Union and elected representative of the NUS LGBT committee, I have worked both locally and nationally on a variety of campaigns, representing the student voice and fighting for equality, liberation and against fees and cuts.

I believe that the NUS and its Executive have not actively been doing enough to protect our education.

I will use my vote to support a stronger, united and mobilised NUS which really fights for our education, works in solidarity with our lecturers and staff, and restores faith in the students it exists to represent.

The student demonstrations in November, which I helped organise, were a brilliant example of the action we need to stop fees and cuts.

But the NUS failed to support the protests.

We need NUS to join up with workers in opposition to the government’s austerity programme.

We need to kick out the budding New Labour politicians who have dominated NUS for too long, and replace them with people who reflect the vibrancy of the student movement.

As your delegate I will use my campaigning experience to support the united left slate in the NUS elections and make your voice heard.

Join in and celebrate 100 years of women’s achievements. International Women’s Day (8th March) is an annual celebration of the social, political and economic achievements of women worldwide.

As this year is the centenary, it’s time to take a step back, recognise and celebrate the past successes of the women’s movement, while looking forward to the future and what there is still to achieve in the name of true equality.

To celebrate Women’s day 2011, there will be a series of events on campus, and some organised by Brighton’s Women’s Centre: Monday 7 March, 6:00pm, Fulton 213: Film screening of ‘Budras’ directed and written by Julia Bacha, this documentary focuses on women’s involvement in the Palestinian struggle.

Tuesday 8 March: 12-2:00pm Library Square: We will have a display for

everyone to contribute to. There will also be interactive sessions including readings of your favourite female artist/writer, a chance to craft a tree out of creative drawings of vaginas and discuss inspirational women of your choice. Please come along, bring your extracts and get involved!

Tuesday 8 March 6:00pm, Fulton 107: ‘Women’s struggle: Then and Now’ Panel discussion and Q&A session with various speakers drawing on topics such as the history of women’s movement and the disproportionate effect of the imminent cuts on women across the U.K. Wednesday 9 March, doors open 7:00pm, The Green Door Store: Gig organised by Brighton Women’s Centre with artists such as Bleech, Nimmo and the Gauntlettes, Lianne Hall and Bunty Looping performing.

Tickets £3 (for students) Check out International Women’s Day at Sussex event on Facebook and the flyer opposite for more information on all the events.

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students’ union Union Computers is two terms old: What’s new?

Union Computers Team Almost two terms after launch, Union Computers has become an established presence on campus.

Customers come through our doors throughout all opening hours: we’ve been seeing everyone from first-year students to members of staff.

Union Computers is a computer repair and sales service that serves the students of the University of Sussex.

The service is run completely by students for students and does not aim to make a profit.The service is also open to University and the wider campus community, but staff are charged a higher rate. So what have we been up to?

In January we set up two cabinets that allow us to store laptops and chargers neatly and safely. This means laptop bags are no longer required, so you don’t need to bring them along to the shop!

We maintain constant contact with our customers through our email system. However, we appreciate that you don’t always have access to a computer. So we’re setting up Skype on all our machines and we can send out a text to your mobile to let you know when your machine is ready for pick-up. This means that if you’re on campus, you can come and collect it instantly.

An exciting new element to the shop is just getting up and running.

We are now offering various items for sale, including USB bars and headphones. We’ve got the price list up on the website - scroll down and peruse at leisure. And speaking of the website – we’ve just given it an overhaul to make it clearer and more informative for all prospective customers. Take a look at sussexstu-

Prices for repairing and diagnostics are far cheaper than any other alternative in the area dent.com/unioncomputers You’ll know by now that Union Computers is run entirely by volunteers. We currently have a dedicated team of students who work on repairs – and we’re looking for more! If you can offer 4 hours per week, can diagnose and repair issues and can work with a variety of operating systems and machines, we want you to join us. Our brand new Volunteers page will tell you more.

Keep checking back – we’re constantly updating our pages.

Union Computers is open 12-4:00pm Tuesday to Friday on the first floor of Falmer House

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY TUESDAY 8th MARCH CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF WOMEN’S ACHIEVEMENTS

This year will see the 100 years anniversary of the Declaration of Women’s Day. It is important that we all celebrate the political, social and economic achievements of women and the campaign for women’s rights.

International Women’s Day is part of the tradition of standing up for women’s rights around the world.

Check out what’s going on at Sussex University!

Mon 07/0 3 @ 6pm Film Scre ening: ‘B udrus (A

ward-win ’ ning film about Palestin ian wom en in struggle ) Fulton 2 13

Tue 08/03 @ 6pm Meeting- Women’s lic Pub struggle: then and now Fulton 107

Wed 09/03 from 7pm: International Women’s Day gig @ Green Door Store; £3 for students!

Creativ ity wo rkshop be hap s will pening in Libr Squar ary e arou nd 12-2 Tuesd pm ay. Ge t involv ed!

Facebook: International Women’s Day at

Sussex

Benjamin Frances Leftwich Surfer Blood plus Young Prisms & No Joy Greenpeace Fashion Show The Naked & Famous Flats Anti-Nowhere League University of Sussex Hockey Ball Guilty Pleasures Album Launch Death Vessel Chris Difford Arbouretun Raekwon (Wu Tang Clan) Shaolin Dreadzone Craig Charles Funk and Soul Club Supercharged: Plump DJ's Ill Nino & Breed 77 Jesca Hoop Crystal Fighters Polar Bear Electric Soft Parade Crystal Stilts The Virginmarys Carl Barat Thousands Carbon 7th Birthday Dum Dum Girls Jose Gonzalez Jim Jones Revue Underoath Dizraeli & The Small Gods Asobi Seksu Uffie Mount Kimbe Skindred Electric Soft Parade My Passion Emmure Best Coast The Leisure Society The High Llamas Rolo Tomassi

Prince Albert Digital The Meeting House Digital Jam The Hydrant The Old Ship Hotel Concorde 2 The Prince Albert Komedia Jam Coalition Komedia Coalition Digital Concorde 2 Brighton Ballroom Audio Komedia The Prince Albert Audio The Prince Albert Concorde 2 The Green Door Store

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Concorde 2 Komedia De La Warr Pavillion Concorde2 Concorde2 Komedia Audio Concorde2 Audio Concorde2 The Prince Albert Coalition Concorde 2 Coalition Komedia Komedia The Green Door Store

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badger | badger-artspages@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

The main event

The 83rd Academy Awards The Badger reviews this year’s Oscars

ON THE SMALL SCREEN CENTRE STAGE UNIVERSITY APPAREL Page 14 MUSIC ROOM GIG REVIEWS FOOD FOR THOUGHT Page 15

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Oscar winners Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Melissa Leo and Colin Firth Photo: Daily Mail David Burtonwood In one of the most unsurprising awards-related turn of events in recent years, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech reigned supreme at the 83rd Academy Awards.

This year’s Oscars presented few shocks, as the film continued on from its BAFTA success to predictably win Best Picture and Best Actor for the excellent Colin Firth. Slightly more surprisingly, Tom Hooper was named Best Director for the film, and its script (by David Seidler) won Best Original Screenplay, completing its four-award haul for the night.

Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi Inception also won four awards, but in the more technical categories: Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Well deserved awards, certainly, though many Inception fans will still bemoan Nolan’s absence amongst the Best Director nominees. Natalie Portman was an entirely unsurprising Best Actress for Black Swan (if I was being picky, I’d have given it to Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine, but Portman was superb). In the Supporting categories, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo triumphed, as expected, for their roles in boxing drama The Fighter.

Not to be in any way a Scrooge or criticise the undoubtedly terrific King’s Speech, which flew the flag for the British, finally gave Firth the recognition he deserves, and acted as another strong criticism of Jeremy Hunt and his decision to scrap the UK Film Council, but I can’t help feel that both BAFTA

and the Academy went somewhat overboard on it. For me, David Fincher was more deserving of the Best Director trophy, while Inception was robbed of Best Original Screenplay.

Melissa Leo spiced proceedings up by ‘dropping the F-bomb’ in her slightly unsettling acceptance speech, while British stars Firth and Bale did themselves proud with understated and self-deprecating speeches.

The ceremony was as celebrity-filled as ever, with the consistently starry list of award presenters which included, amongst others, Tom Hanks, Kirk Douglas (if you get a chance to watch his on-stage antics on YouTube, do it), Jeff Bridges and Steven Spielberg. The red carpet as always featured a fiercely competitive fashion showdown.

This year’s hosts were James Franco

and Anne Hathaway, surely an effort on the Academy’s part to appeal to a younger audience. Despite their sterling efforts, their hosting duties came in forsome stick across the internet.

Franco lacked the charm of his interviews and acting performances, Hathaway, while stunningly beautiful, was a little overly keen, and as a pair they sometimes struggled to find the spark and chemistry necessary for such an occasion.

Credit to them, though, some parts worked terrifically, particularly an auto-tuned musical number featuring lines of dialogue from some of the nominated films and others. All in all, one of the more predictable Oscar ceremonies of recent years, but a great night for the British and one with a few gems dotted about.

of being sent across the internet, saved on memory sticks, and manifested at a moment’s notice.

The second concept was inspired by a discovery onWhite Night in Brighton.

Members of the public were able to draw on large interactive whiteboards, using their hands as spray cans. After a few minutes the marks would begin to fade, making room for the next person to draw. I thought this was a brilliant idea, as not only was the art a reflection of Brighton’s collective conscience, but the art was interactive. It therefore seems that art has gone through a massive metamorphosis, from the

passive to the active.

The final medium is video. At art galleries, whole rooms are dedicated to the screening of videos. This in itself is not so revolutionary, but if you consider it combined with the two forms mentioned, you get an interactive video, on a computer. A computer game.

I totally believe that computer games are a unique and powerful form of art.

After asking a senior lecturer in computer games, he mentioned how crucial it is for concept art to have a strong foundation. Games like ‘Myst’ can be seen as a very expressive form of computer gaming art.The creators’ imagination is

rendered in vivid colours and stunning architecture, allowing the player to solve puzzles and explore new worlds. Even games like ‘Black & White’ can be seen as an art form, as they involve creating new communities in god-like worlds, in which case the player becomes the artist, with countless unique possibilities at their fingertips.

There’s no denying the artistic complexities involved in game design, and even Tate Britain has recognised gaming’s artistic worth after a ‘Game Play’ event. So next time you play a computer game, think of it as embracing a unique interactive art form.

Computer gaming Joe Eyles In a world where art is constantly demonstrated as a highly flexible notion, three concepts in particular have got me thinking about some of the new and exciting forms art can take.

The first is computer art. More than just a medium, computer art has allowed designers to create intricate details and sweeping vistas. Dominated by science fiction, this form of art has brought life to fantastical worlds and unearthly creations. This showed me that art need not be a physical creation, but a much more ethereal thing, capable

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On the big screen

Film matters Lily Rae Arts editor

Felicity Jones stars as protagonist Kim Matthews in Phil Traill’s Chalet Girl Photo: thefilmpilgrim.com Camilla Hunsley Chalet Girl Phil Traill UK, 96 mins, 12A, 2011 One hallmark of a good British comedy is dry wit written into fast-paced dialogue - which makes Chalet Girl such an item. It is a film that sticks to that reliable, winning formula, and although its good strong cast may not get the buzz of awards season with all the glory focusing on the likes ofTrue Grit,The King’s Speech or Black Swan, the film is excellent value for money and good fun.

A quick-witted rom-com with extreme sports and an enticing cast, Chalet Girl follows the protagonist Kim Matthews (Felicity Jones) as a rising skateboard prodigy turned soleprovider of her depressed but comical father (Bill Bailey). Having resigned her skateboard aspirations Kim trades in her dreams for the dreary, underpaid, lack-lustre life of employment at a fast

food chain. However the desperation to earn more money drives the Essex girl to register with an upmarket catering agency which offers her the dubious chance to experience the glam life of working as hired help for the affluent as a Chalet slave. Ultimately the opportunity enables Kim to let down her hair, slush about and get drunk in the snow whilst allowing her to discover and develop her natural talent on the slopes. There’s a build-up of training montages as Kim swaps skateboards for snowboards in preparation for a snowboard competition that will win back her confidence and a nice pile of prize money. However the distractions of keeping her job and falling for a hottie out of her social league (Ed Westwick, better known as Gossip Girls’ Chuck Bass) are some of the obstacles Kim must face along the way.

The film keeps to popular comingof-age themes such as confronting fears, finding friendship and restoring faith in love. However, Chalet Girl

fights against being dismissed as an empowering chick-flick by successfully appealing to a broader family audience.

While the girl meets boy concept is one of the driving forces of the film, it is not your typical chick-flick - it evokes the premise that you don’t necessarily need a man to be happy because if you’re a positive person then good things will happen to you. That said, if a guy appears and it’s Ed Westwick, it’s definitely an added bonus.

Westwick’s character will allure established fans of the heart-throb, whilst the pay-off of Chalet Girl’s quick-witted script, strong story, wellshot snow-board stunts and beautiful mountain scenery takes the film one step further than a predictable chickflick and creates a story which both guys and girls can enjoy. The brief cameos by British funnymen Bill Bailey and Bill Nighy also raise the stakes of the film - Chalet Girl offers a wry glimpse into the battle of the haves vs. the have-nots.

Felicity Jones (whom you may have seen in Cemetery Junction and The Tempest), is definitely one to watch out for. As Kim she is endearing, feisty and fun to follow - her sarcastic quips about the antics of her posh employers rousing plenty of laughs. Although Westwick and Jones never quite seem to click as a screen couple, it doesn’t really matter given that the rom-com element is a relatively minor factor of this film.

Although not big or bold enough to compete with the blockbusters this spring, Chalet Girl is fun, captivating and appealing. Plus, if you’ve ever spent any time in the mountains you will find it hard to ignore the call of the slopes once you see this film. It’s great to see a funny British film on the screen, mixing comedy, drama and sport without the cinematic pretensions of Hollywood.

With its good strong cast and fastpaced script you won’t be disappointed with Chalet Girl this March.

into his inspiration and writing philosophy, but it is overshadowed by Franco’s beautiful and moving performance of the poem’s footnote in the final scenes.

For those new to the work there is much here to delight in. The sharp attention to period detail rivals that of Mad Men (Jon Ham appears as the publisher’s defence lawyer in the trial scenes), and the intercut animation scenes evoke the poem’s sense of time, place and erratic bebop style.

The closing moments of the trial are quietly riveting; John Ham’s closing speech as defence attorney Jake Ehrilch is delivered with the kind of serious grandeur that could make him an ideal fictional president.

For paid up members of the Ginsberg fan club though, the film may feel a little light on the ground. While eschewing the more conventional biopic formalities is commendable, in places the film’s more experimental tendencies fall flat.The animated segments look pretty but they ultimately fail to get under the skin of this dense and rewarding poem, and at times feel a bit like filler. But it would be contrary to pick at the film as a reading or interpretation of the poem; Epstein and Friedman have made a film in adulation of the work and its author, an excited and impassioned ode, which though far from flawless will make you want to up a copy of Howl and see what all the fuss was about.

James Franco plays Ginsberg Photo: telegraph.co.uk Tom Day Howl Rob Epstein USA, 84 mins, 15, 2011 Allen Ginsberg’s iconic Howl is considered one of the magnum opuses of the beat generation - a loosely defined group of poets and authors, who in the late 1950s and ‘60s defined a generation of young despondent, angst ridden outsiders, bohemians and intellectuals. Through their rejection of material culture, and embrace of drugs and open sexual experimentation, the beats were idealised as the ultimate subversives in American culture.

Howl, Rob Epstein and Jerry Friedman’s well-crafted, if brief, experimental film takes the revolutionary poem and its writer and fragments them into three non-linear story arcs: Ginsberg’s early life and first public reading of Howl shot in sharp monochrome; whirling and spontaneous animations narrated by another reading of the poem; and, in colour, the obscenity trial the work faced in 1957. James Franco plays Ginsberg, a writer himself having recently published a book of his own short stories, and he pulls off an engaging, subtle impersonation of the man himself. The quasi-confessional interview with an unseen journalist is the film’s most compelling insight

You remember Spider-Man coming out. Sleazy, creepyWillem Defoe as the Green Goblin; James Franco (currently the film world’s darling for his performance in 127 Hours by Danny Boyle) as Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin’s son; Kirsten Dunst as the beautiful but unhappy Mary-Jane Watson; and of course, Tobey Maguire as dear old Peter Parker/Spidey: dorky, lovelorn, and fighting crime in lycra. However, after two sequels, the franchise sank without a trace – only to be snapped up and given a complete doing-over in time for 2012.

The new film, directed by Marc Webb (500 Days Of Summer) features Andrew Garfield – hailed as the latest Bright Young Thing for his performances in The Social Network and Never Let Me Go – as Peter Parker and Emma Stone (previously seen in Superbad, The House Bunny and Zombieland) as Gwen Stacy. It’s also not called “Spider-Man” – it’s called “The Amazing Spider-Man”. It’s a nice little tie-in with the comic books and bound to have many unashamedly salivating outside Dave’s Comics.

Plus, you’ve got to hand it to Webb – any director bold enough to preface his second feature film with “The Amazing _____” has got to have some pretty big balls.

The first pictures of the feature have emerged and three things are apparent about our new hero: he’s sexy, he’s wounded, and he looks like an angry young man. He’s certainly no Tobey Maguire, whose public schoolboy haircut, pudgy face and expression of constant bafflement made him believable as the kind of lovable lab-dwelling spod you’d never in a million years expect to save your life from the likes of the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus.

In fact, Andrew Garfield is what some would call ‘hot stuff’. Not that this is a bad thing – I don’t want to denounce Peter Parker 2.0 before he’s even hit our screens – but part of the lovely thing about Maguire’s character was that he was so utterly hopeless outside of his lycra spidersuit, a walking target for ‘kick-me’ Post-It notes and testosterone-happy jocks looking for a face to smash.When he did harness his powers, he had a plethora of new problems to face, forever being put in damned-ifyou-do situations – for example, having to choose whether to save his girlfriend or a bus full of children. Peter Parker is as average and as human as they come, and can be relied on to face his problems as such. For grunty, brooding angst, we’ve got Batman.

It also seems a little soon to be rehashing the franchise, considering Spider-Man 3 (terrible though it was) only came out four years ago. The Amazing Spider-Man will document Parker’s teenage years,Webb says – but is he really breaking any new ground?

Countless Spider-Man incarnations have covered the back story already.

Webb is in danger of recreating highschool Parker with a different face (and a slightly different costume). However, he assures us it will be “darker and grittier” – so perhaps instead of a superhero thatspottyteenagersacrosstheglobecan empathise with, Webb will give Spidey the Batman treatment and we’ll have music by James Newton Howard and subplots about, like, troubled baddies who you think are crazy but MAYBE THEY AREN’T, MAAAAN. Let’s just hope that this time round, Spidey won’t get TRAPPED in a WEB of... of... oh, I give up.

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Human Planet

University apparel

Photo: brightonfashionweek.co.uk

On the small screen

Making us proud to be human

Harry Yeates Arts editor The BBC doesn’t do unspectacular nature documentaries and in recent years has brought us some of the genres most defining imagery. In 2005 ‘The Blue Planet’ took us to the depths of the ocean and in the same year ‘Human Planet’ took us everywhere else. Then of course, in 2009, there was ‘Life’, the aptly titled epic, widely recognised as being the finest example of documentary film making to date.

On all three occasions, the aweinspiring footage was set to the profundity of Sir David Attenborough’s knowing voice, though it is not simply the absence of Dave that distinguishes Human Planet from its predecessors. No, while the BBC’s previous endeavours have shown us some of the world’s most exotic creatures and how they adapt to their landscapes, this time its personal.

Over the course of seven programmes, ‘Human Planet’ shows us how we as human beings have forged a life in some of the world’s harshest climates.

We are taken into the ocean; deserts; arctic; jungles; mountains; grasslands and rivers, with a ten minute ‘through the lens’ section talking us through how the film was shot.

To suggest there are highlights is to imply that there are some moments more inspiring than others, which is questionable, such is the sense of experience felt throughout and yet there are times where you are just left speechless. However, if we are to describe anything as a highlight then it comes in the ‘Grasslands’ episode,

Niger Photo: Timothy Allen

when three hunters walk up to a pack of fifteen lions, scaring them away with nothing but confidence, leaving the lions catch, an antelope, open for consumption.

Of course no programme is perfect and for all its beautiful photography and heart warming tales, ‘Human Planet’ is not without its flaws.

David Attenborough is missed and his replacement, John Hurt, (who viewers may have heard commentate on ‘The World’s Deadliest Warrior’ a show that pits histories warriors against each other) adds a kind of blockbuster tone to proceedings as does the occasionally over the top music. Also, The Badger has it on good authority that the speech preempting every show declaring that ‘only one creature has carved a life for itself in every habitat on earth – that creature is us’, is factually incorrect.

Fans of liken, a mossy green organism that can survive literally everywhere, including the moon, take note.

But if there are flaws in ‘Human Plane’t, they almost don’t warrant a mention. One can’t help but sound like a wide eyed ‘gap yah’ student when commenting on this programme and though this reviewer has not alluded to the awesome power of nature and man once, he has been sorely tempted. Ultimately and without meaning to give way to sensationalism this programme shows you the extraordinary lengths some people go to, to obtain what we take for granted. It makes you feel so many things, but none more than a really profound sense of pride -- being human is an incredible thing.

Centre stage Eleanor Chambers When she stepped into a role written

by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black, and previously held by Denise van Outen, Claire Sweeney must have known she had a lot to live up to.

When ‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ was first staged in 1979, it represented a huge reduction in scale for Lloyd Webber. His collaborations with Tim Rice had featured vast casts and epic, sometimes biblical, narratives, whilst this one-woman show follows the romantic misadventures of an English girl swept off her feet by the pace of life in New York.

Set in the unnamed girl’s New York apartment, the production handles a theme we are all familiar with – disappointment in love – but places it centre stage, elevating the everyday.

Despite the fact that this a longrunning and much-revisited show it has stood the test of time – the themes don’t get old, and although more songs have been added and certain aspects have been updated (I suspect that in the first version, 30 years ago, the girl was writing rather than emailing home), the production has remained successful whilst much unchanged.

Although, I have to say that this is not the most dynamic show I have ever seen. Whilst Claire Sweeney must be commended for her stalwart performance in such a difficult role (it can’t be easy to sing solo for an hour with hardly a break!), content-wise this musical did not quite manage to be riveting for every moment of its duration.

While we can all relate to the girl’s experiences, I’m not sure we all needed to sit through her relating the failure of four subsequent relationships, especially when the same, or very similar songs, were used to do so.

It isn’t easy to take the mundane and the everyday and pull off making a musical of it. While the lighting was used evocatively, the orchestra lent grandeur and their placement above the apartment provided visual spectacle.

Sweeney performed admirably and while the collective talents of Lloyd Webber, Don Black and many others shone through, I’m not sure if ‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ managed to pull it off quite as seamlessly as I had hoped. Lloyd Webber has always referred to this show as an ‘experiment’, and while successful, it feels experimental and somewhat pales in comparison to much of his work.

Claire Sweeney in ‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ Photo: ambassadortickets.com

Wanjiru Kariuki Arts editor In the intimate setting that is Madame Geisha, a host of very well-dressed students, a stream of paparazzi and a film crew all bore witness to a successful fashion show organised by The University of Brighton Fashion Society.

The show made up for its late start with a wide variety of styles, textures and fabrics showcasing the talent of local Brighton designers right after a very enthusiastic DJ set the tone for the evening with his rather exceptional blend of oldschool hip hop and soul music.

The first collection named ‘Vintage’ displayed an array of outfits, ranging from a 60’s inspired flipped out dress (think modern Betty Draper) to a very dapper suit for the gents. The collection stuck to the basics when it came to colour, exhibiting predominantly blue, black and grey outfits, but with subtle hints of a nautical feel.

In contrast the second collection, appropriately named ‘Fruity’ had a bohemian, summery feel. Cropped tops, rompers, harem trousers and tie die were all on show, as the Designer experimented with different textures and lengths.

Safari-inspired, earth-toned light material was what the next collection consisted of. In a direct interpretation of its name-Tribal, a shirtless male model emerged in cargo trousers sporting tribal paint.

The penultimate collection, ‘Rage’ seem to pay homage to the standard club night-inspired attire; tight mini dresses, leather and heels, while the last collection – ‘New Look’ was very varied, lacking in coherence perhaps with its unique combination of a black lady-gaga esque leotard, work boots, long beach shorts and casual t-shirts.

One of the highlights of the show was the beautiful beaded jewellery that a couple of the collections exhibited.The pieces were all made

by Sussex’s own SIFE a charity based society that was selling the jewellery at the venue, and all the proceeds go towards one of their projects. SIFE collected pieces from various shops in Brighton, dismantled them and created their own distinctive brand of jewellery.

Speaking of a good cause, as part of the Green week series (7th - 11th March) the Greenpeace fashion show will come to life on the 9th of March at the Meeting house. The event will showcase eco-friendly and recycled outfits in an effort to raise money for Rainbow Warrior III. Fair trade clothes shops such as Fair and Gringo will make an appearance, and there will also be an opportunity to learn how to make clothes and accessories out of recycled materials. Tickets are £2.50 and are available from the box office, don’t miss out on it!

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badger badger-artspages@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

The music room

Food for thought: Pancakes Sus Cairns

Louise Ronnestad Arts editor Jamie Woon has got a new sound: he carries intimate emotions of his early sound into a whole new sublime dimension if you wish: a bigger, badder and heavier room. You might not be familiar with him yet, but be sure that you will be this year. In the past he has supported Amy Winehouse, played in a full band with dubstep DJ and producer Reso on drums and taken stage at Sonar. Woon is ‘one of the BBC Sound of 2011 acts’, with the anticipated album Mirrorwriting available from 4th April.You have been able to see Jamie perform at One Taste, an acoustic night that took over festival stages at Secret Garden and Glaston-

bury in the late 2000s.

The guitar wielding, singer/songwriter and self-taught producer Jamie’s aim is to make good songs, even if that takes a long time, effort and perseverance. He performs with a tranquillity that moves you and leaves you with that somewhat mysterious velvet feeling, especially the track ‘Night Air’. Jamie Woon is currently touring the UK and supported Ghostpoet at Audio, Brighton in February where The Badger met him after the sound check.

How was it supporting Amy Winehouse? That was cool, just one show, yeah. I did that in 2007, in New York.

It was one of the writers for British Music that needed one man to open up the show. So, I think they’ve heard

of me: I was quite cheap…hahaha.

What do you prefer, intimate gigs or bigger stages? I can see elements of both that I really like, you know. I feel more comfortable in intimate stages because you can get something going with the crowd, get some interaction which is really nice. And usually, I like the sound. The bigger the venue, the more challenging the sound would be.

But it’s also an area to move around in.

Would you like to comment on ‘the real hybrid’: blues and bass?You know – the blues is the root of pop music and I’m quite interested in the bass at the moment. I’ve played some bass lines, programmed on the record.

Is music in your blood? Certainly, in my family: I was exposed to it at a

young age. On my mum’s (Mae McKenna’s) side, she’s a singer and both her parents sang to the truce in the war and her brothers were in quite a big rock band in the 70’s. I’ve definitely been around it: encouraged to do music, since I was a kid.

How do you always manage to do things your way? I just don’t want to do anything that could be crap, you know.

So I don’t put pressure on myself to do things that I feel that I don’t like. The aim is to make good songs. I have had offers in the past which would have meant a lot of money and fame, when I didn’t have enough good songs or didn’t have my sound locked down. So I have just kind of, sat my time.There’s nothing worse than to probably end up hate your records.

certainly hypnotised. Maybe I still am, I haven’t stopped listening to the debut album ‘Ring’ since.

Glasser’s music is ethereal and otherworldly, or at the very least worldly. If she didn’t transport you out of it, she certainly took you around it: From Australasia and the didgeridoo to the Caribbean and the steel drum, from the chime bell of the orient to the rhythm of the Middle East, world music references abounded. Glasser’s is an intelligent music. Intelligent, that is, without being difficult. I’m not sure, however, that I can say the same about getting tickets for her shows in the future, I have a inkling that that could very well soon be rather difficult indeed.

Although parallels to Bjork are obvious and the opening track ‘Apply’ features yelps and squeals reminiscent of Kate Bush she definitely holds her own amongst the best of the artists she references.

In fact, her voice says it all: humble and witty in her spoken audience participation, and mesmerizing in song. Particularly striking was her closing piece, a hauntingly beautiful acapella version of English folk ballad ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ talent like that speaks for itself.

Harry Yeates Arts editor

‘Never Had a Dream Come True’, few of their adorning fans cared about Pauls new paunch and erratic facial hair.

To their great credit S-club three can legitimately claim to have stage presence, Bradley seemed to positively love his night out at Oceana, basking in the bright lights and disjointed sing alongs.

He was high-fiving people in the front row and waving his hands in the air like he just didn’t care, a true showman.

Asking the questions that mattered,The Badger heard from Joe, that Rachel Stevens really is as fit in real life. The humblest of the three, Paul’s response to the question, do you miss the ‘glory days’ prompted the nights most telling answer. With a grave look on his face and a shake of his head, the reply was simple; no. And then to Bradley...After a friend had informed him that she had seen his bottom on an urban hunks calendar, I asked on a personal level, how do I be more like Bradley? His answer, though destroying the innocence to which I associated him with as a child says it all. ‘First put on some black shoe polish and my life’s philosophy is ‘just f**k it man’. Not only is Bradley perhaps the greatest artist, but one of the greatest thinkers too. Amazing. S-club 3 we salute you.

Gig reviews Helen Grace Glasser The Hope 23 February Sporting a head dress and an outfit that co-coordinated with her accompanying band, Glasser’s performance was a performance in every sense of the word a visual spectacle and a sonic experience so much so that it almost out did the capability of the modest upstairs venue.

Rather than the backing of The Hope logo on a curtain, it felt like there should be surreal visuals, a lightshow, smoke and perhaps even dry ice. For Glasser - not that they need it - deserve a full scale stage production, to compliment the epic quality of the sound.

A sound that is primal and raw without being uncomfortably jarring, instead there is a fluidity to it that envelops the audience. Well blended layering of percussive loops, instrumental improvisation and meandering vocal melodies, create a dream like ambience. This synthesised with her movements, which like her music are at times jerky and awkward and at others sublime, was hypnotic. I was

S Club Oceana 28 February Wow! They just don’t make music like this anymore...whether that’s an entirely bad thing is debateable, yet even the staunchest of non-believers would have struggled to leave Oceana last Monday, without that warm fuzzy feeling.

Only three of the original seven S-clubbers are still partying like it’s 1999 but my, what a party. Bradley is still swinging, Joe has still got the flow and Paul... well he’s still getting down on the floor, just finding it increasingly difficult to get up again as age and celebrity have looked less kindly on him. Yes, sadly while Joe and Bradley bare resemblance to the fresh faced frolickers that we used to know and love, baby faced Paul, arguably the groups prettiest poster boy has, well, let himself go somewhat.

Of course no band is defined by their looks; it’s the music that matters and as they got Oceana bouncing to anthems like ‘Don’t Stop Moving’ and ‘Ain’t No Party Like An S-Club Party’ and swaying (and crying a little bit) to

The three magic ingredients - all you need: - 100g plain flour - 1 egg - 300ml milk Method: Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the egg and beat well. Gradually add the milk, beating to make a smooth batter.

Tantalising Toppings: • The classic lemon and sugar an old school favourite for a good reason • Pecan Pie - create this American favourite with pecan nuts and maple syrup • Millionaire’s shortbread - a layer of Nutella, topped with toffee sauce and crumbled biscuits • Fresh fruit - for a guilt-free treat; top with yoghurt • Banoffee - some pies are better as pancakes; drizzle toffee sauce over sliced banana • Cheesecake - combine cream cheese and strawberry jam for this tasty treat • Sundae pancake - go out all with mini marshmallows, a scoop (or two!) of ice cream, lashings of rich sauces and a mountain of cream

Photo: bbcgoodfood.com

Jamie Woon performing at Audio, Brighton Photo: Anna Evans

As Tuesday 8 March is Shrove Tuesday or ‘Pancake Day’, we thought you might like a simple student recipe and some ideas for novel toppings. In the UK, the day is most often known as Pancake Day. The making and eating of pancakes with ingredients such as sugar, fat and eggs, was considered a last feast before the ritual fasting and restrictions associated with Lent.

Shrove Tuesday is a term used in English-speaking countries, particularly the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of the United States for the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

The word shrove is the past tense of shrive, which means to obtain absolution for sins through confession and penance. During the week before Lent (Shrovetide), Christians were expected to go to confession in preparation this period of penitence. Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, and has long been associated with the release of high spirits before the season of Lent. It is traditional on this day to eat pancakes. It shares this motivation with the Carnival traditions associated with Mardi Gras or literally - ‘Fat Tuesday’.

07.03.11

16

arts

the

badger

What’s On...?

| badger-artspages@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

If you want to see your event on these pages, contact Olivia James with the venue, date and time of your event, a short description, and any relevant images. Send your request to badger-listings@ussu. sussex.ac.uk by the Tuesday of the week before your event is happening at the very latest. * Tickets available from the Union Box Office in Falmer House

Monday film

environment

pub

club night

Budrus

Green Week

Son Of Movie Bar

Jailbait

Acclaimed film which highlights the role of women in the Palestinian struggle screened to celebrate International Women’s Day.

The launch of ‘Free-Wheelers’, with an obstacle course, drinks, quiz and a talk from former Students’ Union president Dan Glass.

Rub shoulders with movie makers and actors at the Son of Movie Bar. Includes film screenings, Q&A with directors and a movie-themed quiz.

With ‘90s R&B, garage and cheese. Everything you want from a club night on a Monday!

on campus, location tbc

check http://www.ussu.info

cornerstone

life

6pm, free

all week

8pm, £free

11pm, £3/2

Tuesday film

celebrate

club night

pub

The King’s Speech

Shrove Tuesday

Sound As A Pound

Media Matters Pub Quiz

If you’ve not yet seen this Oscar-winning film, don’t miss your chance to see it today.

Get creative in the kitchen and make sweet or savoury pancakes. If you’re stuck for ideas, check out our recipe guide on page 14.

Your number one destination for late night Tuesday Bring a team and get your thinking caps on! revelry strikes again with a fantastic line-up of tunes, Prizes for the winners. Followed by SKINT, £2 drinks and cash prize giveaway. with music and drinks deals.

the duke of york

in your kitchen

revenge

east slope bar

1.30pm

when you feel hungry!

11pm, £1 (with prize entry)

6pm

Wednesday lecture

/ debate

/ spoken word

charity

poetry

Smoking Debate

Greenpeace Fashion Show

Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

Floetics - with a Comic twist!

Sussex Salon series

Journalist Josie Appleton will be at Sussex to argue for the repeal of the smoking ban.

Followed by a Q&A session.

Eco-friendly fashion catwalk and a dance performance from Voom Ka. Buy clothes from eco-brands and learn how to recycle your phone.

Come test your frisbee skills and help raise money for Red Nose Day. Check out the Facebook page for more information.

The monthly get-together of music, poetry, drama, spoken word will be comedy-themed, in aid of this year’s Red Nose Day.

Discussing the role of law in international affairs. With University of Sussex academics.

Ask a question or register your views!

arts a5

the meeting house

russell’s clump

red roaster coffee house

pavillion theatre

5pm, free

6pm, £2.50

1pm

8pm, £3

8pm, £6/4

Thursday

brighton university, grand parade, room

lecture

/ debate

charity

204

7pm

pub

comedy

music

club night

Cocktail Night

Shazia Mirza

John Crampton

Fish-Fry

Head down to Falmer Bar between 6-8pm to make the most of their 2-4-1 cocktails!

Brand new show from the award winning comedian and columnist, who will explore what happens when you don’t follow the obvious path.

If you’ve ever wanted to travel to a tavern in deepest America then make sure you come along to The Bee’s Mouth to see John Crampton.

The same with Jamaican ska, R&B and rocksteady - just at a different venue! Come along to The Haunt for the re-launch of Fish-Fry.

komedia

the bee’s mouth

the haunt

8pm, £12/10

9pm, free

10pm, £1

falmer bar from

6pm

Friday

the

badger

/ pub

societies

fairtrade fortnight

music

The Badger writers’ meetings

Wine tasting

Shake Hands Let’s Party

Minimal Kids

Want to write for the Badger? Come down and meet our friendly editors every Friday to pick up a story or share your ideas.

Hosted by Sussex Wine Society. A night of tasting fair trade wines. There will also be fairtrade rum available in Falmer Bar all fortnight.

Lady’s DJ with music from all over the world.

Check out the Spotify playlist for a sample.

Get your regular dose of minimal, house and techno. This time with Sasha Bremer.

falmer house, room

falmer bar

fortune of war

audio

6.30pm

9pm, £Free

11pm, £8/5

126

1.30pm

club night

Saturday masterclass

/ performance

pub

music

Sussex Beer & Cider Festival

Submotion Orchestra

Beatbox Masterclass with Shlomo, followed by Shlomo Mouthronica

Get down for the Sussex Beer & Cider Festival to make sure you don’t miss out on live bands and more ales than you can imagine!

Submotion Orchestra have rapidly built up a reputation as one of the most interesting and original projects working in the UK today.

Do you ever wonder how pro-beatboxers do it? Shlomo takes you through the basics and shares the secrets of his skills, with everyone welcome. The Mouthronica will bear witness to British beatboxing sensation Shlomo’s soulful vocal gymnastics.

hove centre

jam

the corn exchange

12pm/6pm £4/7

7pm, £5/3

masterclass,

4.30pm / £8 Mouthronica, 7pm, £12.50/10 / £18 for both

Sunday food

/ pub

/ spoken word

charity

poetry

Swing My Roast

Soul Casserole Presents...

Short Fuse

Gypsy swing music to accompany your organic roast dinner - perfect!

A Comic Relief fundraiser. Afro beat Latin fusion, music from 1970s Nigeria, carnivals of Cuba, to the back streets of Brazil and beyond.

A night of exciting new short fiction from the best With the Rosehill Jazz sessions every Sunday. in local and national writing talent.

This week with Remembering April.

mesmerist

concorde

3pm, free

7pm £5

2

pub

Chill out...

komedia studio

rose hill tavern

7.30pm, £5

8pm, free

07.03.11

17

science

the

badger

| badger-science@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

The creation of new life forms Scientists discover new bacteria, sparking an evolution in DNA Natasha Agabalyan Science editor DNA, the founding thing of all living organisms, is a fascinating and complex molecule. Since the discovery of its structure by Watson and Crick in 1953, scientists have done their best to understand its ins and outs.

For example, how its multiplication and division gives us our children, how slight modifications in its pattern can change everything about its carrier, how its mutations can lead us down the path of evolution and how the damage it incurs can lead to cancer and other diseases.

Its structure is well known: a double strand of long molecules composed of 4 different nucleotides (A, T, C and G) which match up in pairs (A-T and C-G) creating a double helix shape. Each nucleotide is composed of a base (A, T, C or G) and a five-carbon sugar which are linked together by a phosphate group.

This creates what is known as a phosphate backbone. The only known alteration to this motif is RNA, a single stranded version of DNA. While it has some differences, the main atoms used in its structure are the same found in all other molecules of living things. These same

The new recipe for life: remove phosphate and add arsenic

Photo: inspirescience.wordpress.com

atoms (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphate) are the basis of all bio-molecules and hardly any others are found in their structure. Until now.

A group of scientists lead by evolutionary geochemist Felisa Wolfe-Simon have found a strain of bacteria that contradicts everything we know about the genetic make-up of living organisms.

The bacterium GFAJ-1 lives under very special conditions in the arsenic infested waters of Mono Lake in California. Now there are plenty of bacteria that survive under undeniably harsh conditions, like the archea bacteria who can live within acidic hot springs or the methanotrophic bacteria who are known for feeding of the poisonous gas methane.

But what makes GFAJ-1 so special is that it has started to integrate arsenic into its genetic make-up.

The findings of this group of scientists show that this bacterium is assimilating arsenic and using it as a phosphate substitute in the structure of their DNA and proteins, ultimately creating an arsenic backbone.

So how is this possible? Arsenic is similar in its structure to phosphorous, found in the form of phosphate (PO43-) in bio-molecules. Arsenic is so toxic because its biological

form (AsO43-) can be mistaken for phosphate under physiological conditions and lead to huge disruptions of molecular pathways essential to survival. This is mainly due to the fact that arsenic is very instable.

The scientists postulated that if a bacterium was able to overcome this instability, it might be capable of exchanging its phosphate for arsenic in biological pathways.

After a series of experiments, it seems that GFAJ-1 was not only able to deal with the harsh arsenic infested environment, but used it to change its genetic make-up and proteins, creating a whole new form of life.

These findings are extremely challenging to biology as we know it today, not only from a biochemistry aspect but also from an evolutionary point of view. It now seems possible that life forms can arise from different atoms than the ones that favoured our evolution.

If different conditions can allow the formation of a new life form, can life be found on planets that do not favour the same elements as on Earth? NASA seems to think so, announcing these results as extremely relevant to the search for extraterrestrial life.

Further research still needs to be undertaken, but already our horizons could be broadening.

Skeleton found to regulate male fertility Katarzyna Pietrzykowska There are many things without which we could not live. They vary from person to person but one of our ‘essentials’ that no one could live without is definitely the skeleton.

It enables movement, supports muscles, protects our vital organs and acts as ion storage, to name just a few of its functions. It should not be surprising that many scientists were and still are fascinated by the human ‘frame’. What can surprise us, however, is how many facts have been discovered very recently or are still yet to be discovered.

One of the very recent (and quite surprising) discoveries regarding bones is that osteocalcin, a hormone produced in bones which regulates bone regeneration, affects male fertility.

Experiments carried out on mice showed that osteocalcin increases testosterone production in testis and that this hormone is necessary for proper functioning of male reproductive system.

Until now scientists were aware of the effect of sex hormones (oestrogen in female and testosterone in male) on bone growth, regeneration and mass. They noticed that when oestrogen is not produced

anymore in menopausal women, their bone mass decreases and increased risk of osteoporosis is observed.

Having in mind that communication between two organs is rarely unilateral scientists asked themselves if the skeleton could also affect gonads.

Since the observed effect of oestrogen on bones was very significant, they hypothesised that the opposite dependence is much stronger in females than in males.

Experiments showed however, that bones in fact regulate fertility but only in males.

When osteocalcin was added to Leydig cells (cells in testis responsible for testosterone production) their testosterone production increased significantly.

Osteocalcin injection into male mice resulted in higher blood testosterone level. Adding osteocalcin did not affect however the production of oestrogen in ovaries.

Genetically modified male individuals that did not produce osteocalcin were less fertile than wild type.

Those mutants had much lower blood testosterone level, smaller testis and less sperm than normal individuals. Genetically modified females however had no changes in oestrogen level or gonad’s struc-

ture and morphology.

The key molecule providing clarification for the fact that osteocalcin regulates fertility in males but not in females is Gprc6a, a G Protein-Coupled Receptor.

It is found on the surface of Leydig cells and transduces signal emitted by osteocalcin leading to increased testosterone production. It is not present in follicular cells of ovaries what explains why female fertility is not affected by osteocalcin.

It seems like the mechanism in people can be similar to this observed in mice. Our bones also produce osteocalcin and most of the endocrine systems function almost identically in humans and in mice.

If osteocalcin-testosterone interaction is also the case it might explain many cases of unfertile men and could become a target for infertility treatment.

It was relatively recently that the bones were considered as a very rigid and inflexible structure, nothing more than accumulation of calcium and proteins.

Only past ten years revealed the dynamic nature of bones and very important role they play in controlling and regulating physiological processes. How are bones going to surprise us next time?

You’ll never think of your skeleton the same way again. Photo: dipity.com

Electric Einstein? Roving Rutherford? Fancy writing for the Badger science page? Write a 500-1000 word article on whatever excites and inspires you in the world of science and email it to badger-science@ussu.sussex.ac.uk.

18

07.03.11

SU sport with

badger | badger-sports@ussu.sussex.ac.uk

the

sport

What tickets should you buy for the 2012 Olympics?

Henry Parker With the Opening ceremony for the London 2012 games now a mere fifteen months away, the ticket application process is looming large.

With thirty three sports to choose from, spread out over seventeen days and across venues up and down the country, the choice is overwhelming.

This guide aims to guide you in your choices and inform you of the musthave tickets of the 2012 Games.

In terms for tickets, there are a couple of factors on your side.

First off, you’ve got time to plan; ticket applications open on March 15th (via www.tickets.london2012. com), and close on April 26th, and there will be no bias towards those applying early; giving you well over a month to decide what you want to see.

The tickets are distributed in a ballot, so you can’t be assured of seeing exactly what you want to see, but there are no limits to the amount you can apply for, you will be expected to pay for them though if they’re allocated to you, so don’t over-stretch yourself.

In terms of pricing, it obviously varies depending on the session you’re watching; a front-row seat for the men’s 100m is going to cost a fair whack more than the first session of the boxing!

Tickets range from £20 upwards, and you don’t want to rule out the early sessions as having less drama; you’ll be able to catch many of the star names for much cheaper than

if you attended the evening sessions, and whatever happens you’ll be guaranteed to see some top class sport.

So, with these factors strongly on our side, here are some suggestions for sports and sessions to keep an eye-out for.

If you are looking for fast-paced, frenetic, heart-in-your-mouth type sport, look no further than Badminton and Table-Tennis.

At some point most people have played these games casually, but witnessed live and at the highest level they are very different prospects.

Badminton is regarded as the world’s fastest ball sport (that a shuttlecock is not really a ball is a moot point), the record for the speed of a shuttlecock is 206mph, faster than Eurostar.

The pace at which international badminton is played would strike fear into the hearts of casual players.

In much the same way, TableTennis is a very different prospect to the game you know.

Until you have witnessed a Chinese-Swedish doubles match, with the Chinese ten metres back behind the table and the Swedish hammering the ball back at them faster than the eye can see, you have not experienced table tennis at its finest.

Either of these events will be fascinating, almost all the sessions barring the medal matches have seats for £20, and every point will justify the meagre investment.

I have two other recommendations for sports which you may miss,

Sport Challenge Day an ‘absolute success’ Matt Stroud Sport editor Sports Challenge day, organised

by ProjectV and kindly funded by Sussex Plus, brought 74 sport club members together for a day of volunteering last week at Devil’s Dyke.

The event was run by the National Trust at a site in Fulking, on the north side of the South Downs.

The volunteers undertook essential deforestation of elderflower trees and everyone was able to work in their own team. The volunteers then used five fires to burn the chopped trees.

Despite ominous overhead conditions the weather was ok and crucially there was no rain. Scott Sheridan,

Union ActivitiesOfficer, said “The Sports Challenge Day was an absolute success, and the largest Link Up project to date. All the feedback from the participants was extremely positive and everyone had a lot of fun. This was a great addition to our wider community engagement strategy and I look forward to similar events later in the year.”

The event was also well received by volunteers, with Lydia Stevens from Women’s Cricke, who said: “Sports Challenge Day was a productive, physical and enjoyable experience The members of Women’s Cricket that took up the opportunity definitely ended the day feeling totally knackered but very productive and more closely bonded as a team”.

Seventy four sport club members volunteered for the day Image: ProjectV

An artist’s impression of the 2012 Olympic site Image: Eikongraphia gymnastics and diving. These two sports are similar and yet different, different in that one takes place in a pool and jumping backwards off a 10m board, while the other takes place in what is effectively a giant school hall; and the same in that they are both about the pursuit of beauty and physical perfection.

Watching Daniel Keatings perform on the Pommel Horse is similar to watching Tom Daley execute a back two-and-a-half somersault. Both are striving for physical perfection, using muscles and athleticism which we can only imagine, and using all of these skills to (hopefully) become Olympic champions.

These kinds of sport are differ-

ent to the others; they are about beauty. In many of the other sports at the Olympics the goal is to defeat the other competitors through any method.

Yet in the aesthetic sports the only way to win is through being better than perfect, through being purely aesthetically better than your opponents, and this provides a very different kind of drama. It is not one of cut-throat, never-say-die attitude but overwhelming tension where one mistake will ruin an athlete’s career, and one routine can fulfil the athlete’s quest for perfection.

It is only possible to scratch the surface of the sport which will be on display at the 30th Olympiad.

There is also the sheer power and ferocity of cycling, the iron will and abs of steel needed for canoeing and kayaking, the physical strength and the willingness to give every last fibre of your being in rowing.

There is also the many varied sports of Athletics, where you will see a cross-section of great athletes ranging from Usain Bolt in the 100m to Jess Ennis in the Heptathlon.

This is Britain’s first Olympics since 1948, it may well be the only one in our lifetime. Even for those of you who don’t enjoy sport, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness sporting brilliance in our own backyard, don’t let that chance slip through your fingers.

Sussex proud despite defeat

Derby victory Richard Lynch

Football seconds crowned champions

Josh Pearson

Sussex 2-1 Brighton

Sussex 44-49 Bucks New Uni

Sussex Football Seconds went into this derby game knowing a victory against their arch-rivals Brighton would all but seal the league title for the second year in a row.

With Sussex able to field a fullstrength side, they went into the game full of confidence and early domination in the middle of the park from Calum Sager and James Doku saw any threat from Brighton snubbed out.

However, it was Brighton who took an early lead with a ball into the box causing confusion which left an easy tap-in for the on-rushing Brighton striker.

Sussex seemed certain to level it when they were awarded a penalty, only to see Doku miss the chance.

However, Sussex were quick to reply with intelligent wing play allowing Harris to deliver a ball in to Folkes who made no mistake with the finish.

The second half saw Sussex carve out the better chances, with Brighton’s only form of attack coming from long balls up to the striker, a threat which was dealt with easily by man of the match Carl Bourne.

The game seemed to be heading for a draw, until deep into stoppagetime, a ball in from the left landed at Bobby Allan’s feet, who finished emphatically with a volley into the bottom left-hand corner of the goal.

The on looking Brighton fans were silenced, and Sussex knew the title could now be clinched with a victory in the next game against Kent.

Sussex Men’s Rugby faced their toughest challenge of the season, playing against second in the league Bucks New Uni. From the off Sussex fronted up and the forwards worked well to turn the tables on a much larger Bucks pack Sussex responded rapidly to a Bucks score with a Will Brown penalty evening up the score.

Poor defending led to several Bucks tries before Sean Diplock earnt a pick and go try towards the end of the first half.

After half time Sussex let several tries slip past them, but some lovely backs play put Alex Bruce in for a try, lifting the team’s morale.

Another Will Brown try was followed by a flowing backs move. Alex Bruce ran at Bucks, offloading the ball to Shaun Diplock, allowing him to run half the lenghth of the pitch and score.

With Sussex mounting a comeback Mike Glover scored a brace of tried, the second of which was an excellent try that put Bucks within reach.

Within several minutes of scoring the team worked hard together and Mike Glover with a penetrating run scored a further try with the final play of the game. Will Brown converted 4 of Sussex’s tries, leaving the final score 49-44 to Bucks New Uni. Despite things not being in Sussex’s favour they showed tremendous heart in mounting a thrilling comeback, and even though they didn’t win Sussex should have been very proud with their performance.

Richard Lynch Sussex 6-1 Kent A victory against the visiting Kent side would seal the title for Sussex Football Seconds, and mean three promotions in four years under the management of Ian Brocken.

Off the back of terrorising Brighton the week before, Sussex quickly showed their class when a ball in from the left-hand side was smashed into the top corner from 25 yards by captain Ross Harris.

Sussex added a second and third before half-time, further adding to Kent’s woes.

The second half began as the first had finished with Sussex commanding the play. Fifteen minutes in, a corner from Sager with more curl than Dimal Luta’s mop, ended up sailing straight into the net.

Then, with Doku walking through the whole of the Kent’s defence and calmly slotting past the keeper, Sussex had their fifth. Substitute Payani had the chance to claim his first goal for Sussex when Aaron Benmore was chopped down inside the area. The penalty was missed horribly, and Sussex pressed on to try and net the elusive sixth goal.

With five minutes left, Lynch made no mistake with a cool finish, rounding off an outstanding performance from Sussex.

The final whistle marked a well-deserved victory, and topped-off what has been an incredible season for the second team. Congratulations to all the lads, and thanks to all the third years especially for their dedication.

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Sussex Environmental Society engaged in an interesting campaign as part of Green Week, attaching “fines” to cars around campus (see right) in a bid to draw attention to other ways of travelling to and from campus. Bea Oliver, the society Co-President, explains:

“

It’s the start of a campaign to get people to think about alternatives to driving. People leave uni, get a job and buy a car, because it symbolises independence, both financial and social. We’re hoping to challenge people to think about the social and environmental implications of that routine and to consider alternatives. I consider challenging people not to drive to uni as a first step for us in terms of making people conscious of the problems with it - and the many benefits of cycling or using public transport.

”

An example of the flyers the environmental society put on cars parked on campus