Issue 152

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Issue 152

Thursday 21 April 2011 Peppers Coffee Shop & Restaurant 9.00am - 4.00pm Serving Breakfast, Pancakes. Steaks, Burgers, Fish, Paninis & Pasta

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US Ambassador Susman speaks to The Saint Elizabeth Hewitt

For more of The Saint’s interview with US Ambassador Louis Susman, go to www.thesaint-online.com.

American Ambassador to the United Kingdom Louis Susman came to St Andrews on Monday 18 April in conjunction with the University of St Andrew 600th Anniversary. The Ambassador addressed an audience of 350 University students and staff in the Buchanan Lecture Theatre. Over 1000 people applied for tickets to the event.

In an exclusive interview with The Saint and Bubble TV, Susman explained the reasons behind the topic of his talk, titled “US Foreign Policy and the Role of Young People in a Changing World.”

He has observed the critical role young people around the world are taking in initiating change, focusing particularly on the young leadership of the uprisings in the Middle East. The youth, Susman notes, is exercising a great amount of power in world politics today.

“It’s affecting our foreign policy, it’s affecting the United Kingdom’s foreign policy,” said Susman. “It’s really a stunning development.”

Susman observes a growing sense of discontent among the youth, not only in countries in the Middle East, but around the world.

The younger generation is frustrated that their parents and grandparents have become stagnant. “They didn’t have jobs, they saw no future, they saw corruption, they saw repression, and they said we

have to do something about it,” explained Susman.

Social media has played critical role in the political uprisings in the Middle East, Susman observed, creating a foundation for organization. From this platform, young people reached out to the middle class and older generations.

In part, Susman decided to address the role of youth in the Middle East uprisings because of the recent activism of British young people regarding increase in tuition fees. The recession has placed a great deal of pressure on the younger generation.

“My observation as a private citizen is that both here and in America there is great anxiety on young people’s part in the future about being able to get a quality job, get healthcare, buy a home, get a reasonable mortgage, be treated fairly, environment is on their minds, as well,” said Susman. “It’s a troubling period.”

He notes that the young people today face a new set of challenges than older generations. “You always thought you’d do better, and your children thought they’d do better than you. And I’m not sure that still won’t happen, but there’s still anxiety.”

Despite the challenges facing today’s global youth, Sussman is optimistic. “I think its one of the most inspirational movements I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’m pretty old.”

Mermaids committee member quits amid controversy Hannah Rowand THE SOCIAL convenor of Mermaids has resigned in protest over recent decisions made by the committee.

Kate Andrews, who resigned her position on 17 March, stated, “I no longer wanted my name associated

with the committee or the decisions it was making, allegedly on behalf of the students who elected them.”

The St Andrews Students’ Association drama sub-committee, more readily known as Mermaids, was established to provide funding, resources and advice for students or societies wishing to put on a drama

production.

Student production proposals are granted funding based on financial merit only, but Andrews’ resignation was based on her allegations that this procedure was not being carried out and that students were being granted or denied funding based on personal

connections.

Andrews pointed to two productions premiered in the On The Rocks Festival this week – King Lear and Peter Pan – both produced by two senior committee members and both granted unusually large amounts of funding, and in the form of grants rather than loans.

In contrast, Andrews highlighted an incident on 13 March in which she believed the committee unjustly denied funding to an applicant who was not so well connected with the committee – a proposal for a selfwritten piece to go to the Edinburgh Continued on page 3

Would you like a walk-on part in the St Andrews University 600th Anniversary Film?

We are filming the pier walk on Sunday May 1st and would welcome a great red gowned turn-out. Please don’t look up at our camera as it whizzes around on a small helicopter.

2 News

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

INSIDE St Andrews streets welcome new businesses

Student persues Seven Summits goal Page 7

Viewpoint Cryptic Crossword Page 8 Bob Dylan: Revolutionary?

Page 10

Features 10 reasons not to be a lawyer Page 16 On the bravery of women Page 18 In Pictures: Kate Kennedy Procession Page 19

Arts & Culture Style reviews ‘Upstyler’, the lastest online fashion store Pages 21 Film reviews 3D cinema Page 23

Sport Rugby 7s coverage Page 28 Interview with AU President Andrew Hall Page 29

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The last few weeks have seen a series of new business ventures opening in St Andrews.

Three new restaurants, Little Italy Pizzeria on Logies Lane, Dervish Mediterranean Restaurant on Bell Street and Mitchell Delicatessen & Restaurant on Market Street have all opened in recent weeks, while Bell Street has also seen the arrival of Darling, a clothing boutique.

The arrival of these new businesses has provided a welcome injection of fresh enterprise to the streets of St Andrews, which have witnessed the unfortunate closing down of several established businesses in recent years.

Long running establishments such as The Christmas Shop on Market Street and fancy-dress purveyor Anyone for Tennis have been forced to close in the wake of the recession.

Those behind these new business ventures seemed confident of the success of their prospects. Tracy Kinnaird, director of Love La Boutique, the company behind Darling, feels that an outlet focusing on occasion wear is perfectly suited to St Andrews.

“What with the seemingly constant stream of special events,

proms, graduations, galas, weddings, etc we felt that we would be doing customers a disservice if we didn’t fill the gap,” Kinnaird said.

Kinnaird acknowledged that tougher economic times had made life more difficult for small shops such as Darling, but argued that “retail is not for the faint-hearted.”

“I’d be lying if I said I was without concern, but I believe that with strong focus, hard work and perseverance it is possible to weather the storm and come out the other end a fitter, stronger business

for it,” she added.

Aydan Dag, the manager of Dervish, also has an optimistic outlook. The plot that his restaurant now occupies has changed hands several times in the last couple of years and has seen the closing down of two cafés, Couch and the short-lived Café 13.

However, Dag laughed off concerns that the plot was ‘cursed,’ confident in his assertion that Dervish provided an experience one could not find elsewhere in St Andrews. “I’m not worried,” he said. “This is different, there are

no other Turkish restaurants in St Andrews.” Dag aims to totally refurbish the restaurant over time.

Students have welcomed the addition of new businesses to the town, though many mourn the loss of old favourites. Ranald Gordon, a third year Theology student from Edinburgh, typified this response. “While the entry of new businesses into the town highlights the competitiveness of this marketplace, it is a travesty to see the steady decline of local businesses - not least the Christmas Shop,” said Gordon.

Photos: Celeste SLoman

The Other Guys: a YouTube hit Page 5

Henry Turnbull

Transition St Andrews receives £9,000 grant Rachel Kay A group of students and staff at St Andrews working to reduce CO2 consumption have recently been awarded a £9,000 government grant in support of their efforts.

Transition University of St Andrews, or TUSA, describes itself as a grassroots campaign which aims to take practical and imaginative steps to enable St Andrews - both as a town and as a University - to transition to a lowcarbon economy. It is a subgroup of One World Society, St Andrews’ branch of People & Planet, and one of several similar initiatives set up at universities throughout Scotland.

The grant was awarded by the Climate Challenge Fund, which was established by the Scottish Government to support community-led action to reduce carbon emissions. With the grant, TUSA aims to cut back local CO2 emissions by 400 tonnes over the 10-month duration of the project, which will span from June 2011 until April 2012.

The money will be used to hire three interns to oversee a variety of initiatives within the categories of waste, energy, transportation, food, and outreach. Proposed activities include skill-sharing workshops, cookery classes, bike-share schemes, film nights, and guest speakers. A

The Saint Student Newspaper Ltd C/O St Andrews Students’ Association St Mary’s Place St Andrews, Fife KY16 9UX

series of ‘Carbon Conversations’ is also planned, following its success at Oxford University, which strives to help participants reduce CO2 usage by one tonne per person.

Although it is primarily aimed towards the students and staff of St Andrews, TUSA also hopes to involve the local community, as the role of greenhouse gasses in climate change receives ever-increasing attention.

Professor Jan Bebbington, Vice Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, says, “People in communities across Scotland are beginning to understand that climate change is a serious problem and that tackling it is an economic necessity - the longer we leave things, the more it will cost us.”

Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, TUSA Co-ordinator, says the group is delighted to have the opportunity to find creative ways to lower St Andrews’ carbon footprint. The project proposes to do this in a variety of ways, including reducing waste, cutting back on energy and water usage and eating more locally-sourced foods.

As part of an international student community, there is also a particular focus on shifting to lower-carbon modes of travel, or offering students who do not wish to travel during holidays the option

Phone: (01334) (42) 2737 Editor: 07986156766 Fax: (01334) 462716 Email: editor@thesaint-online.com

of temporary accommodation.

“Our University community is in a unique position to not only initiate significant local carbon reductions, but through our diverse international student body we also hope to spread and encourage sustainable behaviours worldwide that will create a global legacy,” Ellsworth-Krebs added.

As the first university to win

the Times Higher Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development and the Green Gown Award in 2009, St Andrews has a recognised track record for environmental awareness.

It was one of three universities, including Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh and the University of the West of Scotland, to receive funding through the CCF this year.

Photos: Sean Campbell

News

Useful Numbers: Nightline: (46) 2266 IT Services: (46) 3333 Police: (41) 8900 Health Centre (47) 6740

Association General Office: (46) 2700 Rector: Kevin Dunion: rector@st-andrews.ac.uk Rector’s Assessor: Amanda Litherland: al382@st-andrews.ac.uk

News 3

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Union officials discuss Mermaids controversy Fringe Festival in August.

The meeting held by the Mermaids committee to discuss proposals for Fringe Festival shows was carried out under “suspicious circumstances,” taking place in secret without the required presence of a sabbatical officer, said Andrews.

She claimed that the committee faked the presence of the Director of Events and Services, Phil Pass, and falsely accounted for his attendance in the minutes of the meeting.

With regards to this allegation, Phil Pass said, “the Association and I are convinced that there is no evidence to support this claim.”

Commenting on the situation more generally, he added, “I have complete faith in the integrity of the Mermaids Committee in all their decisions and am saddened to hear of the allegations made against them.

The hard work and commitment undertaken by the Committee over the past 12 months has been exemplary and is a credit to the former President and all the outgoing Committee Members.”

Ally Holmes, who, as the Director of Student Development and Activities is also involved in overseeing the work of the Mermaids, echoed Pass in his thoughts on the situation, claiming he “was very disappointed to see the comments made.”

He added, “As the line manager of the Mermaids committee, I remain convinced that their decision-making in this instance has been both correct and well-informed, and that they satisfactorily met all constitutional and procedural requirements.

Moreover, I would like to add that throughout the year, the conduct and work of the Mermaids Committee has been exemplary and has never strayed from the highest standards of professionalism and fairness.”

As Pass commented, the committee these allegations were aimed at was, at the time, out-going and has since been replaced by a new body of committee members, elected at the annual AGM held on 14 April.

Kate Andrews was of course aware of the upcoming change in committee, and expressed hope that her resignation would encourage more people to run for committee positions and get involved. She stated, “My greatest concern is that this attitude will be carried into next year’s committee, and I wanted to prevent unfair and unequal decisions from being made again.

I wanted to get the wider student body thinking about Mermaids, or any student society they are connected to, to decide for themselves whether or not they are being properly represented.

She added, “The response from the student body has been very

positive; most people are excited simply by the fact that something of an ‘exposing’ nature has come out in St Andrews; and many students involved in Mermaids’ theatre have expressed to me that I have addressed many of their problems and fears regarding Mermaids, and they hope this can be a ‘first step’ to making Mermaids more accessible.”

The out-going president of Mermaids, Catherine Slater commented, “This year, the committee has worked tirelessly to facilitate over 30 productions, with funding of around £12,000 incorporating over 300 people.”

She added, “The outgoing committee is confident to hand over the reins to the new 2011 2012 committee and we trust that the performing arts community in St Andrews will continue to flourish, and that all those involved will continue to benefit from the hard work, dedication and financial assistance of Mermaids.

We encourage all St Andrews students to take up the opportunity to be a part of this community.”

The newly elected president of the committee, Charlotte Baker, reiterated Slater’s comments and had nothing further to say on the matter. Other members of Mermaids who were contacted by The Saint also declined to comment.

Photos: Celeste Sloman

continued from page 1

Protesters against ongoing American military engagement in Afghanistan gathered otuside the Buchanan Lecture Theatre during US Ambassador Susman’s talk on Monday. “It’s time to end the war,” said Oliver Kearns, one of the organisers of the protest. “It’s ridiculous that this guy should be allowed to come here and talk about US foreign policy and the role of young people in the Middle East in changing the world when the US has for decades supported dictators in the region, and continues to do so. This guy can’t pretend that he’s for democracy.”

For more coverage of Monday’s protest, visit www.thesaint-online.com

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4 News

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Prelude to the 600th Beyond the concert takes place tonight Bubble

Kirsty Paton

Tonight sees the worldpremiere of three new compositions as part of the University of St Andrews Music Society’s concert, “Prelude to the 600th.”

The concert, in which the University of StAndrews Symphony Orchestra will perform, is the final of a nationwide competition in orchestral composition, which was open to composers under the age of thirty or in full-time education.

The winner will receive £1,000 prize money and the honour of their piece being the anthem of the University’s 600th Anniversary celebrations.

The judging panel includes renowned Scottish composer Sally Beamish, the University Director of Music, Michael Downes and Richard Ingham, the University’s Composer in Residence. Also judging is Thomas Butler, the conductor of the St Andrews Symphony Orchestra.

The final judge is Professor Louise Richardson, the University Principal, who is “delighted” that the University is providing a platform for new talent.

The three shortlisted composers who make up that talent were chosen by judges from thirty-six entrants, all of whom submitted compositions of between nine and twelve minutes in length. The shortlist consists of Simon Smith, Simon Williams and Mark Boden.

Smith, a pianist who holds an MA in Music from the University of Cambridge, has been described

as “a composer determined to go places.”

A member of NYOS Futures, his work has previously been performed by the New Bristol Sinfonia. His submission is “Against All Things Ending,” which shares its title with the third book of the series of novels, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The composer has described it as being in part, “a personal reflection on themes of ending, loss, refusal or acceptance and resignation.”

The piece submitted by Simon Wilkins was inspired by a poem, ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne, and by journeys he made as a student, both physical and personal. It is “an attempt to depict the experience of passing through diverse landscapes.”

Wilkins took his Masters in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London and was a member of the Intercollegiate University of London Symphony Orchestra. His piece “Sextet” was performed by the Contemporary Consort in March 2010.

Mark Boden, currently studying for his MMus in Advanced Composition at the Royal College of Music, has had other compositions broadcast on BBC Radio Three and published by Staunch music.

He will soon also be published by ABRSM. The concert will take place this evening at Younger Hall from 7.30 pm.

Do you value...

FREE EDUCATION? Photos: Axel Wallin

So does the SNP!

The annual Kate Kennedy Procession took place on Saturday, 16 April.

The procession is an annual celebration of more than 100 figures related to the history of St Andrews. Students wear costumes depicting characters such as Robert the Bruce, Mary, Queen of Scots, Rudyard Kipling and John Cleese. It is in honour of Lady Katherine Kennedy, the niece of Bishop Kennedy, the founder of St Salvator’s College.

AN.

A 75-year-old woman singlehandedly brought down internet connections in Georgia and Armenia whilst scavenging for scrap metal.

Unaware that it belonged to internet service provider Georgian Railway Telecom, the woman cut away at a cable, causing 90% of users in Armenia and many in Georgia to lose access for nearly 12 hours.

The woman has been charged with damaging property and could face three years in prison if convicted.

RK.

Museum exhibits penis

The Phallological Museum in the Icelandic town of Husavik is about to receive its first human member.

Pall Arason has posthumously donated his penis to be pickled and exhibited amongst 276 specimens from whales, seals, bears and other mammals.

The museum, run by Sigurdur Hjartarson, 69, is important to the town’s tourist industry, drawing thousands of visitors each year.

The specimen was removed under medical supervision and officially installed in a ceremony last week.

RK.

Show-jumping cow

Woman brings down internet

The SNP Scottish Government abolished the graduate endowment fee in 2008, saving you £2000.

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A German teenager whose parents said they could not afford to buy her a horse has come up with a resourceful solution.

Regina Mayer has instead trained her cow Luna to carry a rider and jump over hurdles. The 15-year-old spent two years getting the heifer accustomed to human contact and riding equipment, as well as training her to respond to commands such as “go”, “stand”, and “gallop”.

Mayer said Luna is “often very headstrong but can also be really adorable.”

RK.

Team clean Everest

In Kathmandu, Nepal, a Sherpa is leading a team of mountaineers on an expedition to clear away tonnes of rubbish left on Mount Everest.

Thousands have climbed the world’s highest peak since 1953, resulting in over 5,000 kg of empty oxygen bottles, tents, ropes, and other detritus being left behind.

Apa, who is leading the effort, has climbed the mountain 20 times. “I want to do this for my country, my people and for Everest,” he said.

RK.

News 5

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Campus The Other Guys become YouTube sensation Cardiff University

Cardiff’s Law School Centre for Human Rights and Public Law organised a conference which brought together some of the UK’s leading lawyers and professionals to consider whether excluding same-sex couples from marriage is fair.

The conference was held on Friday 15th April and also heard from leading human rights campaigners and members of the gay rights group Outrage.

Professors Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, a samesex British couple who legally married in Canada in 2003, gave their personal experiences of UK law after having their claim to have their marriage recognised in the UK rejected by the High Court in 2006.

The conference also explored whether having two separate systems- marriage and civil partnershipsviolates the European Convention on Human Rights.

KN.

Oxford University Oxford University has established what is thought to be the world’s first academic fellowship to capture the link between sport and art.

The Legacy Fellowship will install an artist in Oxford to reflect on the build-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games and is supported by the National Lottery.

It will comprise of a twelve month residency at the University’s Iffley Road sports complex, which is an officially recognised pre-games training camp.

The artist will work alongside student sportsmen and women and competitors bound for 2012 alike to produce a piece of art in time for the start of the Olympics.

KN.

University of Aberdeen

Research at the university into bone and joint diseases has officially been recognised with ‘Centre of Excellence’ status by the European League against Rheumatism.

Aberdeen is one of only a few centres in the UK to have been awarded such status which deems the quality of the research to be of international importance.

To celebrate, the University is holding a special day for the public to learn more about the research. Prof Miep Helfrich, head of the research said: “The day is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to hear more about the research happening right on their doorstep.”

KN.

Student male a capella group The Other Guys has created a music video that is poised to become a new YouTube viral sensation.

The video, entitled Royal Romance, incorporates a parody of Lady Gaga’s hit song “Bad Romance” with Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” and follows The Other Guys as they perform their best GaGa-esque moves around popular St Andrews locations.

For many students at university, it’s all too easy to relate to the dilemma of falling for someone slightly out of your reach, but when that person just so happens to be the fiancée of the future king of England, things become just a little bit trickier.

The story line of the video follows loved-up lead vocalist, Ollie Boesen, and his Other Guys companions, as he attempts to win a lookalike Kate Middleton’s heart around the St Andrews Campus.

First year student Francesca Heartfield was chosen to play Kate for the video, in which highlights include a nod to “Chariots of Fire” and a mention of the Don’t Walk fashion show in which Kate is famed to have participated.

As The Saint went to print the video had received 143, 190 hits on YouTube in the week since it was

posted. It has also been featured on the BBC, STV and Channel 5 News.

The Other Guys formed in 2004 with the self-proclaimed aim of bringing “the American tradition of collegiate a cappella to the Auld Grey Toon of St Andrews.”

Billing themselves as “Scotland’s premier all male a cappella ensemble,” the boys can be found

University announces support of RAF Leuchars Hannah Rowand The University of St Andrews has joined the growing number of organisations and individuals campaigning against the closure of the RAF base in Leuchars.

As a neighbour of the base, the University is concerned that its closure would have a profound and damaging effect on local communities, local economy and the wider Scottish and UK national interests.

In a message of support for the Task Force leading the campaign to keep the RAF in Leuchars, University of St Andrews Quaestor and Factor Derek Watson said: “Leuchars is a unique and indelible part of the fabric and history of North East Fife. The economic and social benefits it has brought to generations of people in Fife and further afield are inarguable.”

He continued to say, “In addition to being a generator of wealth

performing different song styles and musical mash ups at University fashion shows, balls and other events.

Successes for the group to date include the release of various studio and live albums, such as 2009’s popular “Well Sung.”

When asked about the runaway popularity of the Royal Romance video, The Other Guys singer and

video director Ollie Boesen says the group “never envisioned such a widespread and positive response” adding, “we just hope Kate likes it too!”

Whether Kate takes The Other Guys’ lyrical advice and does in fact “Get rid of the prince” remains to be seen, but in St Andrews the video has proven to be hugely popular among students.

Photo: The Other Guys

Campus

Katrina Statham

and employment in the local community, Leuchars has for many years shared a bond of common interest with the University. Each of us has come to rely on the other for mutual benefit. In many cases, our staff who work in St Andrews have partners or family members who work at Leuchars.”

Among those who have already pledged their support are writers Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, actor Dougray Scott, and popular singers The Proclaimers.

Watson added, “The University believes that the strategic defence, economic and social arguments in favour of the retention and continued investment in RAF Leuchars are overwhelming and we add our voice to the thousands of individuals and organisations who have already declared their support.”

A decision regarding the fate of the RAF base is to be announced following the Scottish elections on 5 May.

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6 News

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

National and International News Asia:

North America:

Europe:

In the US a new census shows that Hispanics now outnumber African Americans in most metropolitan areas for the first time.

Japan has ordered Tepco, the company which owns the nuclear plant at Fukushima to pay compensation to the 48,000 people who were evacuated from their homes after the plant was damaged by the recent earthquake.

Tepco are estimated to have to pay out up to 2 trillion yen (£15billion) before the end of the year as a result of the disaster.

In Britain, the differences within the coalition government have been in the spotlight as Business Secretary Vince Cable criticised David Cameron’s immigrations plans. These differences are perhaps to be expected but the government has usually worked hard to promote an idea of unity.

TW.

US Congress has agreed to a new budget which cuts spending by $38.5bn (£23.6bn) for the rest of the fiscal year.

TW.

In Indonesia a suicide bomber targeted a mosque and wounded at least 28 people. With half of the victims being police it is presumed that they were the targets in the first suicide bombing since 2008.

TW.

South America: Brazil’s ability to be ready for the 2014 Football World Cup has been thrown into question as 13 of their airports undergoing improvements will not be ready. The footballing nation may not be too concerned however, after the success of South Africa’s hosting of the competition when many had criticised it for similar reasons.

In Mexico more mass graves, presumably linked to gangs and the illegal drug trade, have been found. The latest contained 13 bodies which brings the total found to 126 over just the last week.

Cuba is facing its worst drought for 50 years as tens of thousands are relying on water trucks.

TW.

North Africa and the Middle East: Africa: In Africa’s last absolutist monarchy, Swaziland, demonstrations calling for democracy have been suppressed by the police and army in the country’s largest town, Manzini, with many being rounded up and arrested.

Ivory Coast’s new President, Alassane Ouattara, has demanded that both sides in the country’s civil conflict, including his own, must face justice after the conflict to overthrow the former President Gbagbo ended on Monday. The conflict saw crimes by both sides, such as a massacre at the hands of Ouattara’s supporters which reportedly killed around 800 people.

TW.

Following the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak in February, Egypt’s prosecutor general has order the detention of Mubarak for allegations of corruption and abuse.

David Cameron, Nicholas Sarkozy and Barack Obama have all announced that Libyan President Colonel Gaddafi has to step down. This line of policy has changed from their previous one of intervening in Libya to prevent human rights abuses and not specifically demanding Gaddafi to end his 42 year long rule. This announcement has come at a time where many have criticised NATO for not being able to topple Gaddafi’s regime and question the effectiveness of the rebel forces.

TW.

Spotlight on Fife’s candidates for Scottish Parliament Rachel Hanretty Students eligible to vote in the forthcoming elections for the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 5 May will have now received their polling cards through the post. St Andrews falls within the boundaries of the North East Fife region.

Following the decision in 2010 to change voting boundaries in Scotland, political academics calculated that one in six electors in Scotland will be in a different seat. Professor David Denver from Lancaster University conducted research on behalf of The Associated Press and BBC Scotland and found that the changes could favour the Scottish Conservative party. However, the North East Fife region has been represented by Liberal Democrat MSP, Iain Smith, since the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Tavish Scott MSP, has spoken of his intense frustration at the effect that the Liberal Democrat coalition in London is having on his campaign in Scotland. Unlike the Westminster government, the Scottish Liberal Democrats vow to keep higher education free in Scotland.

There are four candidates standing for the 2011 election. The Saint asked each one to address the student voters within the University.

Miles Briggs

Colin Davidson

Iain Smith

Rod Campbell

Scottish Conservatives want to maintain our internationally renowned reputation for excellence in teaching and research that Scottish Universities have enjoyed for a very long time.

The status quo is simply not tenable and the introduction of upfront tuition fees is unacceptable.

Scottish Conservative therefore believe we should introduce a fair and affordable graduate contribution facilitated through income-contingent loans. Our proposed graduate contribution will be based on a University cost of £3,600 and would be capped at £4,000. The contribution would only be paid after graduation at a rate affordable to the graduate.

Regardless of what the other parties are trying to make students believe, the funding gap facing higher education in Scotland is not bridgeable unless a graduate contribution is introduced.

I was born, lived and worked all my life here in this part of Fife and graduated from St Andrews University in 1994.

Community and voluntary work are important to me and I believe we should provide more opportunities for young people to get involved in voluntary work in their communities. I have served on Fife’s Children’s Panel for twenty years and volunteer on a regular basis to support the local churches charity that does outreach work in the local community.

The voters in North East Fife deserve a candidate who is knowledgeable about the local area, works here on a daily basis and feels the anger and frustrations hard working people, the elderly and more recently, our higher education students, have with politicians who break their word, abuse expenses and rarely deliver on election promises once elected.

This election is an important opportunity to influence the future.

Your future. I know many of you are concerned about the cost of University. I want to keep higher education free with no fees and no graduate contribution.

Liberal Democrats want to see 100,000 new jobs by creating the right conditions for economic growth by supporting business, investing heavily in the offshore renewable industry and implementing super-fast broadband to make us the most digitally connected region in Europe. Imagine what opportunities that could lead to.

I want to support Universities, like St Andrews, invest in the future and make Scotland a world leader in science and research. Liberal Democrats will create a “Science Nation Fund” of £250 million to help achieve this.

I want everyone to achieve their potential.

Rod Campbell is an Advocate. Born in Edinburgh, he was educated at Reading School, Exeter University and the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde.

He has a degree in politics and qualified as a solicitor in both England and Scotland. For a number of years he was a partner in an international law firm based in London. He qualified as an Advocate in 2008.

He is Convener of the Perth South branch of the party and a member of the party’s Appeals Committee. He has fought four previous elections for both the Westminster and the Scottish Parliaments.

News 7

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

In Focus

Student pursues Seven Summits goal The Saint’s Andreea Nemes sits down with Geordie Stewart, a St Andrews student currently attempting to climb Mt Everest in his quest to become the youngest Briton to scale the Seven Summits.

Andreea Nemes: Tell me about your climbing project and what inspired you to pursue it?

AN: How did you start out?

GS: After I left school I spent seven, eight months working seven days a week and then I raised sufficient funds to go on my first expedition to Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in South America, in January 2008. I managed to successfully climb that and then had two more expeditions before I started at St Andrews, so I’d raise money and then go on a trip.

I went to Kiliminjaro in May and summitted on my 19th birthday and then went to Russia in August

Photo: Supplied by Geordie Stewart

Geordie Stewart: I was revising for A-level exams when I was 17 and my dad gave me a book by Bear Grylls who at the time was the youngest Briton to climb Everest and I read it and decided that I wanted to climb Everest. So I had a bit of a search on Wikipedia and found out about the Seven Summits. So I thought

that the Seven Summits would be a fantastic way not just to explore the world but also to challenge myself in preparation for Everest.

to summit Elbrus before starting at St Andrews.

Beyond that, I did my first year here, and then in June, July 2009 I successfully climbed the highest mountain in North America, Mt McKinley. I then decided I wanted to go to Everest the next year so I worked to get sponsorship, which I managed to get ahold of, and then tried to climb Everest last year.

I got 120 metres from the summit, but I was short on time and I had three teammates I had to help who were suffering from altitude sickness. So out of choice I turned around. But having not gotten to the top I decided I wanted to come back so I came up with a new plan, which was to make Everest the final mountain.

So over Christmas in 2010 I summitted Mt Vincent in Antarctica and then in February I was in Indonesia climbing Carstensz Pyramid. And then I’m off to Everest on 2 April for round 2!

AN: How does this work with University?

GS: It’s not ideal, but I’ve had to take two years out. Last year I tried to balance the two, but in terms of training and trying to raise money

Digging up the past The Saint delves back through the archives to see what was making news in and around St Andrews in years gone by

1975

A group of St Andrews students were the heroes in a fire in the centre of Glasgow. The students discovered the fire in the basement between a family planning centre and what was thought to be a hospital in Glasgow’s Park Circus District. Arming themselves with hand extinguishers they kept the flames under control until the Fire Brigade arrived.

1985

More than fifty St Andrews students attended the NUS rally in Glasgow.

Although many could not attend due to the pressure of revision for upcoming exams, St Andrews University was well represented by the band of marchers. Official estimates placed the total number present at about 5,000.

1993

The University awarded an honorary doctorate to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, who was visiting the University as part of his tour of the UK. The ceremony took place in a packed Younger Hall and included guests such as Frank Muir and members of ‘Free Tibet.’ The ceremony also included the induction of fourteen new professors to the University.

2004

Graduate students of the University’s Museum and Gallery Studies course in the School of Art History, organised an exhibition to give the community a unique insight into the lives of graverobbers Burke and Hare. The exhibition displayed to the public a range of gruesome artifacts from medieval scientific practices.

as well it just wasn’t feasible. For me it’s important to do this now though, as if achieve this I’ll be the youngest Brit to do it. And I’m also stubborn enough that I want to finish what I had set out to do.

AN: How does the sponsorship aspect work?

GS: Well the climbs themselves have huge fees so the sponsorship covers that. But everything else I raise is going towards the RNLI, which is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It’s a fantastic charity and one that my family has always supported. Most of the people who work for the RNLI are volunteers and I think that the courage they show is something to be admired and supported.

AN: Had you climbed before this?

GS: Well I took a slightly illogical approach and decided I wanted to

climb the Seven Summits and then learn to climb. But I’ve taken all the right steps in preparing and I think I’ve gotten to the right physical and mental states.

AN: Which has been favourite climb so far?

your

GS: The last two have certainly been the most memorable. In Antarctica I was lucky enough to see one of the most pristine and unspoiled regions in the world and then in Indonesia I was in the jungle, trudging through the mud and rain. So I think the contrast between the two make them the most memorable.

AN: How are you feeling about Everest now?

GS: There is trepidation definitely, but I also feel very prepared. I’ve taken all the right steps and it’s a big challenge, but having been so close last time I know I can get to the top!

8 Editorial

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

THE SAINT St Andrews’ Independent Student Newspaper

Editorial Board

Editor Rachel Hanretty editor@thesaint-online.com

Deputy Editor Elizabeth Hewitt

editor@thesaint-online.com

Production Manager Libby Perry

production@thesaint-online.com

Business Manager Anna Wollman

Polemics As a student of French, I gleam most vocabulary from articles read and discussed in class that are taken from Le Monde, Le Figaro or Libération. There is one word that recurs frequently in the headlines that is ‘polemique’. Following the implementation of the banning of the veil in public places throughout France last week, it is not surprising that this word is not being hidden from public view.

Back in Blighty, the idea of blasting the direct translation of the word, polemic, in headlines seems something too daring for the readers of this newspaper who will, at best, only turn out a handful of protestors to sound opposing views on a person or an event.

13 April 2011

However, as we slowly tease facts and undisclosed actions out from behind closed doors, we might soon be tempted to add in ‘controversy’ to a headline or two.

Recent academic trials of students involved in protests during Gordon Brown’s visit to the university in February reveal that the Senatus Academicus is introducing more controversy to student life than the student protestors themselves first imagined.

The unfurling of a banner at the top of the Buchanan Lecture Theatre during the former Prime Minister’s visit was not an illegal move because the participants were not charged by the police. The university claims the trial of this

student was not carried out because the university wants to censor the right to peaceful protest or to freedom of speech. On the contrary, the university is clear to state that it has a duty of care to students (a remnant of the generally outdated higher education policy of in loco parentis). The student in question, the university claims, was placing himself in physical danger by standing on the roof of a building.

With the shocking track record of students falling to their death from great heights in and around St Andrews, it is understandable that the university wants to go to considerable lengths in order for it to be prevented, thus seeking to establish this trial as an alert to

Letter to the Editor

We, the undersigned, are submitting this letter to The Saint in order to express our vehement opposition to the unfair and disproportionate level of punishment that has been brought against a student at the University for engaging in peaceful protest on University premises.

During a visit to St Andrews by Gordon Brown on 10th February this year, a first year pre-medical student – along with a friend who was formerly a student of this University – lowered a banner from the roof of the Buchanan Lecture Theatre where Brown was speaking.

The banner criticised Brown’s response to the 2008 banking crisis and role in creating the national debt, whose subsequent effects the country faces today. Leaflets condemning Brown’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were also scattered from the roof during the protest.

For voicing his opposition to the presence of a controversial political figure in St Andrews – and having been found by the police not to have committed a crime – this student faced a Level 3 Disciplinary Procedure. This is the most serious grade of procedure, carrying punishments ranging from payment of a fine at best to

expulsion from the University at worst. The outcome of this process was that he was fined £300 – a substantial fine which he will find it very difficult to pay without significant help – but had been facing the prospect of expulsion from the University for over two months.

In previous instances of lawful, non-violent protest, University management has often reiterated the right of students to peacefully express their views. In light of this we find it alarming that with no warning such severe sanctions may be imposed upon a student engaging in a purely symbolic action which does not substantially differ

business@thesaint-online.com other students of the dangers of this type of activity.

But insofar as ‘duty of care’ is concerned, is it not frankly negligent to fine a student hundreds of pounds which they cannot afford to pay just because the university ‘cares’ for them? When this university, and almost every other further education establishment in the country, is assuring young people that they are committed to putting more and more money aside for bursaries and grants, it is far from reassuring to know the university is happy to take money off of a student because they climbed to the top of a building.

Business Secretary Julia Whitman Marketing Manager Tamara Raoufi

marketing@thesaint-online.com

Web Manager Lauren Wilson

web@thesaint-online.com

Web Designer Michael Luckeneder News Editor Andreea Nemes news@thesaint-online.com

News Subeditors

Kerry Nesbitt, Hannah Rowand, Henry Turnbull from other demonstrations which the University has recognised as legitimate. We are concerned that disciplinary action is being used in a heavy-handed, disproportionate and unjust way towards a hardworking student acting on his conscience.

Helen Bohan, Jonny Wild , Patrick O’Hare, Chloe Hill, Alex Bennet, Daniel Fisher, James Hopkins, Emily Sheppard, Clara Low, Tamara Stupalova, Lyndall Nicoll, Amanda Murray, Benjamin Bridgman, Gregory Heaton, Merlin Seller, Oliver Kearns

Cryptic Crossword

Across Down 1. Test from the morning (4) 4. Setter not in castile but a strong 7D (6) 1. Country famed for promiscuity lacks sex, says brief reports (6) 8. Returning rats are heroes sometimes 9. Start-up tasteful rebels in bright emblems2. We hear myrrh girls are marine seducers (8) rival clan? (5) 3. Tasty threat Roger uses to walk on water 10. Audience made available (6) 12. Nobleman, a lord after two hearing aids (4) 5. We are often found in home for dead trees (4) (7) 13. Waterhole just reopened! (7) 15. Heart hides skill for a matter of taste (3) 6. Eve’s home? (4) 16. My star becomes a famous virgin (2,6) 7.Type of house owned by a monarch (6,7) 19. The King’s game hidden a few sand- 11. Disorderley state is felt on the tongue (4) 14. Crazy residence assistant heads south wiches short (5) for a curry (6) 22. See 29D (5) 15. Foreign first principle leads arch end (5) 23. Headline maker (4) 17. See 28A (7) 24. Attractive Swiss feline (5) 18. Head south for a centre of apples (a great 25. Old writing implement is currently many!) unresolved (4) 20. See 30A (5) 26. Dizzy cut or woo (5) 28. Rocker’ enemy, we hear, earns the past 21. Teacher takes trout out of water (5) 27. See 29D (3) (6,7) 29. Feelin miserable with ice (2,3,5) 30. Sunrise over deserts? (4,5)

The Saint’s cryptic crossword designer, Daniel Fisher, is offering £15 of Blackwell vouchers to the first person who solves this issue’s crossword.

Please contact Daniel on: df83@st-andrews.ac.uk The Saint is an entirely independent newspaper, run by students of the University of St Andrews. It is published fortnightly during term time and is free of charge. The Saint is not affiliated with the University or the Student Association. The text, graphics and photographs are under copyright of The Saint and its individual contributors. No parts of this newspaper may be reproduced without prior permission of the editor. Any views expressed in the newspaper’s viewpoint section are those of the writer’s individual opinion, and not of The Saint. The Saint is printed by Cumbrian Newsprint - Newspaper House, Dalston Road, Carlisle, Cumbria CA2 5UA.

Viewpoint Editor Hillevi Gustafson

viewpoint@thesaint-online.com

Viewpoint Subeditor J.H. Ramsay Features Editor Nina Zietman

features@thesaint-online.com

Features Subeditors

Samantha Gordine, Susann Landefeld, Melissa Steel

Arts & Culture Editor Al Bell arts@thesaint-online.com

Arts& Culture Subeditors

Ross Dickie, Rosalie Jones, Ruby Munson-Hurst, Emma O’Brien

Sport Editor Richard Browne

sport@thesaint-online com

Sport Subeditors Alastair Ferrans Ruraigh Thornton

Photography Chief Celeste Sloman

photography@thesaint-online.com

Copy Editors

Abigail Lovell, Sarah Whittam

Advertising Team

Lucy McLaren, Gordon McFadzean, Harriet Phimister, Heather Rowan

Viewpoint Editor: Hillevi Gustafson

Email: viewpoint@thesaint-online.com

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE: Should single-sex clubs be a thing of the past?

Yes

or

Charley Tharnet

Emma Hinds

he name you see printed is dubious insofar as the sex is not revealed directly. Am I a Charles or a Charlotte?

Does it matter what gender I am? Well, it shouldn’t. I believe everyone should be taken seriously and be respected for their beliefs and opinions. Gender shouldn’t be an obstacle.

Single-sex clubs need to be abolished so that all gentlemen learn to respect women’s opinions as well as men’s. Many London private clubs only recently opened up their bar areas to women after the gender equality bill was passed in Parliament last December.

If we close off a bar to women, then we are just as equally closing off conversation to women. Why a bar? It could be strongly argued that the best conversations take place in areas where alcohol is available. Why else would Whitehall be reported to have as many as 50 bars?

Women need to be seen as equals. If they are not allowed in certain buildings or certain rooms, then they are not seen at all.

The hardest task comes after the time when all traditional single-sex clubs allow women in. Once in, men and staff of the club have to treat women fairly and apply the rules to everyone.

I was in a club in St James’ Square recently when a male friend took off his suit jacket in the bar. The secretary of the club came over and asked him, in hushed tones, to kindly put his jacket back on as it was against the club rules.

There were no bad feelings about this. My friend was very happy to respect the rules put in place. He had just not read up on them

before crossing the threshold. Our conversation was about to resume when I caught a surprising sight out of the corner of my eye. A young lady wearing jeans and a shirt. No one, male or female, is allowed to wear jeans in private clubs. Yet no one was saying anything to her because she was a young woman.

Single sex-clubs should be a thing of the past, but the mindset and an unwillingness to treat everyone equally once inside is still debatable.

I

Photo: Tam McTavish

Photo: Supplied

T

t is hard to begin a discussion on this topic without cowering under the fear of being labelled ‘sexist’.

In our incredibly pluralist society, it may seem ridiculous that someone could still believe that there is a genuine precedent for excluding a person from a society based upon their gender.

However, what I am compelled to ask is that while we may desire to banish sexism from our workplaces and universities, does this mean that all single-sex clubs are neces-

No

sarily an archaic, sexist invention?

Can we concede that there are situations where naturally single-sex clubs are not sexist, and that by implying that they are and forcing them to alter, we actually inhibit their ability to serve their purpose?

Specifically, one could mention Alcoholics Anonymous, a club that has advocated single–sex meetings for years. This is a group that doesn’t refuse to help any gender, but studies have shown that single-sex meetings are more effective for women.

Women who suffer from alcohol abuse are more likely than men to have experienced sexual and physical abuse as children. This doesn’t mean that Alcoholics Anonymous believe that men can’t understand and identify with a woman’s experience because of a default in their gender, it simply means that this is an organisation dedicated to helping people in the best way they can, and part of that is making people comfortable.

I remember a sex education class in Year 9, and the palatable awkwardness in the air.

If the school had hoped to elicit discussion between staff and students, maybe they would have benefited from realising that a group of 13 year-old girls would never talk about that kind of thing in front of boys.

Perhaps we as a society need to hold back the accusation of sexism, and accept that sometimes single-sex groups provide people with a unique environment to address their problems, and that sometimes it is what we need.

Are we too afraid of being called ‘sexist’ that we throw away the opportunity to make positive changes?

Word on the street

David Scott

Daisy Zeijlon

Harold Burr

Louisa-Anne Sanderson

“I have no issue with a bunch of guys who want to hang out.”

“British same-sex clubs are better because there is an allure of tradition and history that American fraternities and sororities don’t have.”

“These clubs hold an important cultural heritage, but there should be a compromise. I believe a mixed-sex club can be just as successful as a single-sex club.”

“I have no problem with singlesex clubs as long as there is one for each gender.”

10 Viewpoint

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Things have changed Nick Cassella comments on Bob Dylan’s lack of social activism on his tour of China

S

ince the middle of February, Chinese rights activists have been illegally abducted by the Chinese government. Activists have been unable to contact family members, or lawyers for that matter, and have been subjected to torture and abuse.

This current increase of China’s ‘crack-down’ on their society is the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to avoid the fate of Arab authoritarian rules, such as Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali. This spring of uprisings throughout authoritarian governments coupled with an impending leadership change in 2012 has meant that the Chinese government is not tolerating uprisings of any sort. One of Hu Jintao’s foreign policy goals during his time as Paramount Leader has been to keep a ‘harmonious world’ (hexie shijie). So much for maintaining a harmonious nation.

So it irks me, indeed it depresses me, that Bob Dylan is currently touring China and keeping quiet on the recent human rights abuses. Moreover, he’s agreed to a set playlist where seditious songs like ‘Times They Are a-Changing’ cannot be played. A man who has been the voice of rebelling generations is now going silent when others are straining their ears for such inspiration.

And please, do not give me this nonsense that Bob Dylan is, or ever was ‘a reluctant figurehead of

social unrest’. I don’t buy it.

No one who writes lyrics like ‘How many times can a man turn his head/And pretend that he just doesn’t see’ is someone who hesitates into making their voice heard. He has been a voice of change from the Civil Rights movement up until the present day, and whether he intended to or not, he is a beacon for poetic revolution.

He has the ability to make an honest stance that no politician could without people questioning their incentives. He has the opportunity to become a figure of understanding and liberty and not betray the very ideals he laid out with his guitar throughout his life.

I understand that this burden has suddenly fallen upon his feet.

Why aren’t politicians calling China out? Where are Washington and London’s concerned voices?

The honest answer is that these individuals and institutions could not realistically condemn the Chinese government without looking hypocritical, as they are financially indebted to China and they themselves are also not free of human rights abuses.

If the U.S. government raised concerns, Hu Jintao would probably cough under his breath ‘Guantanamo Bay’. If 10 Downing Street did similarly, the Chinese would raise the issue over the recent reports from Kenya during Britain’s imperial past.

This is where an artist, like Bob Dylan, has the ability to make a statement without being mired in hypocrisy.

While I understand that he is just one artist, a potential stance against the Chinese government

by Dylan could provide the Chinese people with something that very few individuals can: inspiration.

It may fall on deaf ears. It could appear as if an old man is trying to get back into the limelight. But surely, it has to be better than the current option he has taken: indifference.

As political commentator Maureen Dowd so astutely pointed out, perhaps Dylan should reflect on his lyrics: ‘I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul.’

It hurts me, and many others, to see an influential artist of so many generations sit back complacently in his old age and ignore those social injustices that he has articulated so beautifully over the years.

It is times like this that I think about fallen songwriters who questioned similar injustices.

I think of artists like John Lennon and Jim Morrison, and conclude that maybe, just maybe, it’s a good thing when we don’t have to see our heroes become apathetic with age.

Photo: Supplied

“People are crazy and times are strange, I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range, I used to care, but things have changed” - Things Have Changed, by Bob Dylan

Please cheat J.H. Ramsay encourages infidelity to save the University’s reputation

I

was hot on the St Andrews dinner party circuit the other night when a close friend of mine, one Reginald Sirius Brackwell II, brought my attention to a particularly interesting BBC News video titled “St Andrews Matchmaking Record.” Perhaps you’ve seen it.

The video, which utilizes both a level of cinematography and script of the utmost professionalism, follows students at this university to a dinner party, presumably in a cheap home on the Scores, or in St Salvator’s Hall.

Here, viewers encounter some of this school’s most tweeddecked and corduroy-ed students, seated comfortably in a humble home at a humble table eating humble smoked salmon, risotto, and sticky toffee pudding. It is all quite humble, and I must confess my personal standards for a St Andrews dinner party are far higher. I expect penguin butlers and prostitutes.

Daniela Relph, one of the BBC’s Royal Correspondents, admittedly stirred my loins when she

claimed in the voice-over, “It seems students here just can’t stop themselves from marrying one another.”

My arousal, of course, became exceedingly awkward, due to the notorious homophobia of Reginald Sirius Brackwell II. The video then continues to chase students about St Salvador’s Quad, zooming in on any male student walking too close to a female student. We are meant to assume these are not only couples, but pending marriages.

This is nothing short of preposterous. I did not come to this university to acquire a reputation as a forthcoming husband. I came to St Andrews to study pretentious subjects that would improve my conversations at dinner parties.

Finding a wife would keep me from going to these dinner parties.

What Daniela Relph, BBC Royal Correspondent, has presented is completely counterintuitive to my aims.

Everyone knows that dinner parties are the be-all and end-

all, and if you can’t attend one, you might as well not have been invited, and should subsequently resign yourself from appearing in public. And maybe even just die.

If you are in a relationship right now, you are part of the problem.

This is especially true if you’ve been in a relationship for more than two years.

If this is the case, you are the reason that I will constantly be harassed at dinner parties with such quips as, “Hey Ramsay, find a wife yet?” or “Will you be a stay at home dad?” or “I heard you respect women!”

If you have been in a relationship for more than two years, I hate you. Not because of jealousy for your found love, or because I scorn the idea of a couple being happy.

Nay. I hate you because you have encouraged a stereotype of this university as a matchmaking utopia.

My solution to this stereotype is simple. Cheat. Have an affair.

Have sex with someone you’ve never had sex with, or someone you just haven’t had sex with in a while. Just do it. You’ll be saving your school from the dregs of

‘I expect penguin butlers and prostitutes’ Daniela Relph and her insistence on presenting our school as anything but academic. And you’ll be having sex. This should not be a hard thing to sell.

I want to show the BBC that St Andrews isn’t just a place that hooks up princes and princesses.

I want to present the truth about this school. We’re just like any other university. We’re a bunch of 20-somethings who screw each other randomly, and don’t think about the bank accounts of the

people with their tongues in our mouths.

We don’t actually have a “dinner party circuit.” That’s a myth.

People have dinner parties, it’s true. But to call it a ‘circuit’ is comical.

Who’s winning? That’s what I want to ask Daniela Relph, and her Royal-phile cronies. If there is a St Andrews dinner party circuit, who is currently in the lead? And what place am I in? But I digress.

This is a great school, but our reputation is being stripped away.

It has nothing to do with the Royal couple, and their pending marriage. I couldn’t be more proud or happy for them.

The people at fault for the loss of St Andrews’ academic reputation are those students who refuse to cheat on each other, and the Daniela Relph’s of this world who choose to interpret that as eternal monogamy.

Please have more sex with more people. Please break this stereotype of our school as a matchmaking university. Please cheat.

The views expressed in Viewpoint do not represent the views of The Saint, but are individual opinions.

Viewpoint 11

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Where the money comes from Oliver Kearns assesses our University’s assets

A

shok Kumar, education officer at London School of Economics’ students union, summed up the feeling towards LSE’s dealings with Libya with this statmement: “It should be a place of learning, not at the centre of unscrupulous dealings.”

As civil war was breaking out between Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and anti-Gaddafi rebels, the British press got word of LSE’s various links with the Libyan regime. This included a £1.5m donation from a foundation run by Gaddafi’s son Saif which was used to set up a north Africa research programme. The revelations led to the resignation of the university’s director Sir Howard Davies. Much dismay was expressed at the “poor decision-making” of university management in making these funding deals.

It’s interesting that all this has become an issue at a time when higher education funding is being slashed across Britain. These cuts, while publicly linked to the usual ‘tackle the deficit’ mantra, are part of a long history of reduced state funding for universities. Both Thatcher and Blair encouraged universities to “raise their own funding, independent of government,” to quote 2003’s white paper on education. As a result, universities have offered their services to the corporate world, effectively commercialising academic teaching and research.

What’s been uncovered at LSE, then, should not strike us as either surprising or unique. In universities across Britain, funding decisions regarding questionable organisations are a frequent occurrence. The University of St

Andrews is no exception.

If we are to be concerned about academia being connected to violence elsewhere in the world, we’d do well to consider our own funding sources. Freedom Of Information requests reveal that from 2000 to 2008, St Andrews received more than £10m from public and private military organisations, many of whom have deep and long-standing links to despotic regimes that repress their own populations.

‘St Andrews has actively assisted in the occupation of Iraq’ Take BAE Systems, from whom we received nearly a million pounds split between different research projects on, among other things, improved sensor systems and ‘target detection’. BAE is, of course, well known for its corrupt dealings with Saudi Arabia, one of the most brutal and authoritarian states in the Middle East; but the company has also supplied Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Israel – never mind its heavy involvement, through the United States military, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coincidentally our own university has developed substantial links with the ongoing ‘war on terror’. In 1994 ‘terrorism expert’ Bruce Hoffman left the RAND Corporation – basically the Pentagon’s think-tank – to found the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence here at St Andrews. The CSTPV has acted

as an intellectual base for the US and UK governments, effectively shaping the discourse around terrorism, via peer-review journal dominance and its database of terrorist incidents, to suit our own foreign policy aims. It has also provided training for the military and companies operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has played host to a series of conferences sponsored by arms companies.

It’s fair to say that through the CSTPV, St Andrews has actively assisted in the occupation of Iraq.

Janusian Security Risk Management, which boasts of being the first private military contractor to have an independent office in Iraq, has collaborated with the CSTPV in order to get “shared access to research, intelligence sources and databases, and the expertise of the [CSTPV’s] staff.”

Janusian’s managing director, David Claridge, is a co-founder of the CSTPV. Bruce Hoffman himself was for a time a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Hoffman recommended that the occupation follow the British counter-insurgency model, a strategy perhaps best known for its promotion of dirty war tactics including covert infiltration of local populations and violent targeting of opposition sympathisers.

What makes St Andrews’ “unscrupulous dealings” different from LSE’s is that theirs are now seen as clashing with the policy aims of our elites.

The lesson of Libya, then, is that when it comes to academia, being linked to violence is frowned upon – unless it’s our kind of violence.

Troubled water: Mermaids fight scene

The Shibboleth

By Hillevi Gustafson

A Mermaids tale

M

ermaids, the student theatre funding society, has found itself in the middle of some off-stage drama, just in time for the lead up to On The Rocks.

The Saint recently received an article written by a disgruntled former member of the Mermaids committee containing several allegations regarding their funding practices and conduct of the committee. These are severe allegations against one of the most prominent sub-committees of our Students Association.

Kate Andrews, the author of the article, writes that she resigned from her post as social convener this past March. She cites the reasons as follows: “I no longer wanted my name associated with the committee or the decisions it was making, allegedly on behalf of the students who elected them. The abuse and manipulation of power, and the hypocrisy of some committee members in failing to aid and assist productions was becoming all too clear.“ Andrews continues the article with listing the various infractions that the outgoing committee committed over the past year.

These violations range from misappropriation of funding to misuse of positions of responsibility. The breaking point came, she writes, when the committee rejected a proposal seemingly out of hand.

One of the most serious allegations is about the supposed falsification of the presence of Phil Pass, Director of Events and Services, at a meeting that was held in secret. This is a severe breach in protocol, since a sabbatical officer is required at meetings where funding over £1000 is decided upon. Meetings

are also required to be public. If this is true, this act itself calls the judgement of the whole committee into question.

These accusations have not gone by uncontested though.

Pass told The Saint that: “I have complete faith in the integrity of the Mermaids Committee in all their decisions and am saddened to hear of the allegations made against them.”

He goes on to say: “On a more specific note with regards to the ‘falsification’ of my attendance at the meeting, the Association and I are convinced that there is no evidence to support this claim.”

This whole debacle does highlight one of the main flaws of the Students Association as a whole; their lack of transparency. On the union website you cannot find the minutes of the meetings of any of the subcommittees or their constitutions. Well that’s not entirely true; the Charities campaign at least has a page for records, but so far only one set of minutes are posted.

Keeping and publishing accurate minutes should be standard operating procedure for both the association and its subcommittees since every student at St Andrews is technically a member of these groups. They are spending our money on our behalf, which means that we should have easy access to their records.

The opinion piece written by Andrews is obviously blatantly biased, and her former position on the committee means that personal politics can’t be ruled out.

The problems brought to light are no less important because of this.

It would be a shame if the real issues here get lost among the theatrics of student drama.

The Saint Awards for Journalism will celebrate the achievements of our 20102011 student journalists. The awards will be held with the support of the University of St Andrews 600th Anniversary Fund.

We invite all contributors to The Saint to submit their work in the following categories: News; Viewpoint; Features; Arts & Culture; Sport.

Articles published in print in The Saint and/or online on our website during the 2010-2011 academic year are eligible. Each writer may submit up to three pieces. The deadline to enter The Saint Awards is Thursday 28 April at noon.

Submit your entries by email to awards@thesaint-online.com. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on Friday 6 May.

12 Viewpoint

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Reactionary Discourse: Why the Fukushima Crisis Shouldn’t Affect Nuclear Development Nicolas Carter argues against tighter regulation of nuclear power plants following events in Japan As the nuclear crisis in Fukushima winds down and the stricken reactors come under control, questions have begun to emerge about the overall safety about the nuclear industry.

Public opinion in the west has been drifting away from nuclear power as a viable energy source ever since the near-disaster at Three Mile Island.

This latest accident only reinforces such skepticism. The perceived danger, however, is much higher than the true risks of nuclear power.

As a new global middle class emerges, demand for energy will skyrocket, and meeting these needs is contingent on the perpetuation of nuclear power. Largely emissionsfree, and unlikely to run out in the near future, nuclear power remains the safest conventional and available means of generation.

Michael Golay, professor of Nuclear Energy at MIT, warned that “the greatest nuclear-related harm of the Japanese earthquake may be the lost opportunities for nuclear power in reducing climate change.” The public perception of nuclear energy, worsened by this crisis, is due for a serious readjustment.

A recent study by the Lifeboat Foundation concluded that nuclear power is the safest major form of

energy generation in use today. “For every one person killed because of nuclear energy production, 900 die to produce the equivalent amount of energy from oil.” The figure skyrockets to an astounding 4000 equivalent deaths for coal production.

Living next to a nuclear power plant, long considered dangerous to one’s health, has a negligible impact on radiation exposure. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that the average person is exposed to a radiation level of 620 millirems per year, while living near a plant will typically only increase the radiation level by 1 millirem. The risks of conventional nuclear power, it would appear, are dwarfed by those encountered in extracting fossil fuels. Surely nuclear accidents make up for this difference, justifying the public’s distrust of nuclear energy? Not exactly.

While the long-term effects of the Japanese nuclear meltdown will not be immediately evident, the Dai-ichi plant explosion has claimed a grand total of 0 confirmed victims. Even the most destructive nuclear explosion in history, the meltdown at Chernobyl, only resulted in 43 directly attributable deaths; to compare, 48 coal miners died on the job in the US alone last year.

Predictably, the nuclear effects of the

catastrophe in Japan, while undeniably tragic, have been overblown by those with a vested interest in the matter.

Anti-nuclear activists for years have been looking for an excuse to limit the spread of nuclear power, and have seized upon this disaster as vital to their cause. Efforts to contain nuclear power have been suffering from a lack of public support recently, the last major accident having come over two decades ago. In the wake of disaster, it has become all the rage for politicians to institute drastic and impractical measures that ostensibly lessen risks of future accidents, but they often are poorly thought out and unrealistic in their goals.

A prime example is Obama’s hasty deepwater drilling moratorium instituted in May after the BP oil spill: it quickly became clear that the measure hampered the Gulf region’s recovery by cutting a vital source of income and shedding as many as 12,000 jobs, according to a report by the Department of the Interior.

The moratorium was suspended a month early, as it emerged that the move was a political one, designed to cash in on public anxieties. Turmoil in the Middle East, a reminder of the fragility of American oil, has more or less restored the discussion on oil to its

pre-spill state.

The nuclear crisis has spawned its very own share of reactionary policies, even in the most nuclear-friendly countries. Newly ambitious China, pursuing an expansionary nuclear policy, has announced recently that it is lowering its target of 80 Giga Watts of nuclear capacity by 2020, partially offsetting this change by an increased wind initiative. The sheer expected energy requirements will simply not be met by wind and solar, likely resulting in a higher dependence on coal and gas reserves.

Seven nuclear reactors in Germany that were deemed safe before the Dai-ichi meltdown have seen their status reevaluated, not to open again.

In the UK the energy secretary has launched an official investigation into the susceptibility of nuclear plants to earthquakes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the tremor in Japan was over 100,000 times more powerful than Britain’s strongest ever earthquake.

While the Huhne inquiry and similar initiatives abroad will in all probability yield only tighter regulation, this will impact the nuclear industry.

Already saddled by high costs, harsher regulations vastly increase the expense of building a nuclear power plant.

Thus pandering to public opinion

takes a dangerous turn as inflated discourse and exaggerated fears claim a very real victim.

This matter is not one of merely academic interest either. Nuclear power currently accounts for 14% of the world’s energy usage, providing a proven, dependable, and clean alternative to the fossil fuels that absolutely must be phased out in the long term if the planet is to remain habitable.

The UN Environment Programme found in 2010 that nuclear energy reduced CO2 emissions in 2009 by 2 billion tonnes out of a total of 11 billion for worldwide electricity generation, a figure that absolutely must be expanded if we are to stop the world warming beyond an irreversible threshold. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy currently account for 0.9% of current global supply, and even the most ambitious programs cannot elevate them to the status of feasible substitutes in a timely manner.

While the Economist may call nuclear power “dangerous, unpopular, expensive and risky,” it must be included in a long-term solution for the perpetuation of life on this planet.

Now more than ever, we cannot afford to forget that reality.

What’s your viewpoint?

Comment on any of this week’s articles at www.thesaint-online.com

Features Editor: Nina Zietman

features@thesaint-online.com

Photo: Axel Wallin

Kate Kennedy Speaks

Hillevi Gustafson interviews the Kate Kennedy Club about their traditions, processions and secrets

T

he Kate Kennedy Procession marched through town last Saturday; complete with men dressed in drag and ponies on parade. This procession is the crown jewel of the Kate Kennedy Club, the infamous all-male organization at the University of St Andrews.

The prominent club is also one of the most secretive and exclusive societies in town, spawning several rumours.

Leopold Thun Hoenstein, this year’s Marshal of the Procession, sees the event as a fundamental part of the club’s purpose. The springtime celebration dates back to the 15th century, and honours Katherine Kennedy, the niece of Bishop Kennedy, founder of St Salvator’s College. The festival was a celebration of youth and vitality, but eventually fell into disrepute with the university and was banned.

James Doak and Donald Kennedy, a descendent of Bishop Kennedy, reinstated the Kate Kennedy Club in its current form in 1926, with the aim to revive the Kate Kennedy Procession.

The Kate Kennedy Club is about

more than just the pageantry of the procession. The Saint sat down with a few members of the club to cut through the mystery. After spending over an hour with the members, discussing their views on the club, it is easy to understand its appeal. The six members present; Christopher Murphy, David M Borowsky, William Dawson, Digby Don, Jamie Perriam, and Casey Larsen, all spoke at length on what attracted them to the club in the first place, and what it means to be a member.

Both Perriam and Larsen are first years and part of the newest batch of freshly minted Kate Kennedy boys. A large part of the application process, they say, is learning about the history of the town and the university. The process itself consists of two separate interviews. The first one is more casual, whereas the second one is in front of the whole club and more standoffish, according to Murphy. After this, the current members make the decision on who gets to go past the velvet rope and wear the club tie.

While the details of the admis-

sion criteria or how the final decision is reached are not something they want to discuss, they do say that they look for evidence of a commitment to charitable work, as well as knowledge of the history of the university and the town. Each year only nine men are admitted, and the membership of the club can never exceed sixty. They argue that this is for a functional reason, rather than to be elitist.

Regardless of what the members said, an internet survey conducted

by The Saint indicated that their image is not charitable. Out of the 100 students who answered the question ‘How do you mainly perceive the Kate Kennedy Club?’, 48 percent answered ‘as a student group that is an elitist and traditionalist organisation’, and only 26 percent answered ‘as a student group that is mainly focused on charitable work and maintaining traditions’.

While this is a relatively small part of the student body, it still indicates how others perceive the club.

Murphy recalls this stigma from back when he first joined the club.

He says that when he met new

people after becoming a member they would often be surprised.

“I would meet new people, and hopefully come across reasonably well to them,” Murphy said. “Then they’d be phenomenally surprised when I told them I was in the Kate Kennedy Club and they said well, you are a nice guy, this doesn’t correlate.”

Riddled throughout our correspondence and interviews is the constant reminder that there are still certain things that Kate Kennedy will not speak of in public. The one thing that they are seemingly most upfront about is the fact that they keep secrets. The inner workings of the Club, what happens at committee meetings and the constitution of the club are all kept on the down low. Speaking to Murphy about the choice to keep so many things private, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it.

“You can think what you like of it, as can anyone else,” Murphy said. “I know that there is nothing to hide, and I’m quite happy with that.”

This emphasis on exclusivity

and secrecy no doubt helps inspire the stories that surround the club.

A frequently circulated story is the idea that applicants have to disclose their bank statements before admission. Others relate to their supposedly outlandish initiation practices.

The members are well aware of the rumours, but are quick to dispel them. Several members testified to at first being hesitant about even joining the club after hearing some of them, but were won over as they got more involved.

“Being a member now, none of that is true, at all, but you hear a lot,” Borowsky said.

The mood gets distinctly muted when we discuss the club’s disaffiliation from the University.

Murphy, Dawson and Borowsky were all members back in 2009 when Principal Richardson took the decision to distance herself and the University from the club.

They agree that the decision, especially the e-mail, came as a complete shock to them. According to the club, there was little fore-

Continued on page14

14 Features

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

My turn to spill the tea...

T

he tension in the air this week is practically palpable.

Intermingled in all those polite conversations about the weather and impending deadlines, will be the inevitable question of summer internships.

Like a dreaded albatross hung round our neck as soon as we say goodbye to Christmas, the pressure to find and secure that twoweek spot in the City weighs on us from the first day back.

As frustrating as it may seem, there is no formula for success.

For the lucky few, securing a coveted internship will lead to a job offer after graduation. However, in reality, how many interns doing a two-week stint in their summer holidays are guaranteed employment with that company in a year’s time?

It was announced in the press a few weeks ago that Nick Clegg secured a banking internship in his youth through a family connection; a slightly embarrassing blow for the Deputy PM, who’d spent the past week arguing against the unfair allocation of internships to those with the money and connections.

It’s easy for us impoverished students to jump on Clegg’s bandwagon, particularly as we are all facing that vulnerable position of being, dare I say it, unemployed in the near future.

It’s hard not to become skeptical, when you are surrounded by students who think it’s perfectly normal to party on Pol Roger.

Yet, as I see it, the words of that old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” have never rung more false.

We’re all jealous of that acquaintance who has managed to wangle a month’s work experience at KPMG through “a friend of a friend” (read: daddy’s tennis partner) and then have the nerve to brag about it all over Facebook.

Be it with the editorial team of a top newspaper or amongst the biggest financial consultants in the country, the likelihood is that

they will be photocopying and making tea, just like the rest of us. The glamour of the title rarely matches up to the reality.

When push comes to shove, and a job offer is on the table, no one is going to hire the guy who rocks up late, rolls his eyes whenever he’s asked to do a bit of photocopying and then waltzes off at 2pm to have a haircut, even if he does have daddy’s meal ticket. It may get you a couple of week’s here or there, but to secure those permanent contracts takes a combination of ability, luck and personality.

There is no denying that connections will get you a foot in the door, but in the long run, it’s those with enthusiasm and the capabilities that will succeed. If you’re plonked straight into a multi-million pound corporation at the bottom of the career ladder, how much are you going to learn compared to those who start in a smaller, more modest company and learn the real skills of the trade? Like an ant lost in a vending machine, those in the top firms with the best connections end up selling their soul to late nights and no real working experience. Life in the deep end is no picnic.

When you think of all of those who have become supremely successful in their chosen career, most of them started off in the back end of nowhere, pushing their dreams with enthusiasm and no connections.

Take Alan Sugar, J.K. Rowling, Bill Gates and Anita Roddick for example, none of these figures knew the right people or secured themselves a summer internship.

Without turning this column into a nauseating inspirational “live your dreams” pep talk, don’t take crap from people who tell you money and connections is everything. Just remember this: Einstein never had an internship and he didn’t do too bad in the long run.

Photo: Tam McTavish

Nina Zietman

Above: A member of the Kate Kennedy Club dressed up for the procession last Saturday Continued from page13

warning, only a short meeting between the principal and the president at the time. Richardson told The Saint that she had given the Kate Kennedy Club six weeks to respond to her request about changing the admission policies before she acted.

The e-mail that was addressed to the members of the St Andrews community outlined clearly the new stance towards the Club.

Richardson wrote, “As Principal, I do not believe that a university can endorse a student club – even a club like the KK which is renowned for its charitable activities - from which so many of our students are excluded at birth.”

Murphy had been away on a military training exercise and the first he saw of it was on the cover of the newspapers in a service station. Dawson, who had been the Marshal of the Procession that year, was also just arriving back when the news broke.

“As the person responsible for organizing the procession I sort of wondered what on earth that would mean, and it did mean sort of a ten days of frantically running

‘48% of students perceive the club as an elitist and traditionalist organisation’ around trying to work out what the ramifications were,” Dawson said.

This was not the first time that the Club and its all-male membership policy attracted problems. Back in 2002, the University temporarily

distanced itself from the Club, as a result of a student petition handed over to the principal by the Student Association President at the time.

The controversy surrounding the club and the procession dates back even further than that. The spring rite was already controversial back in the 15th century when the university first condemned it. The procession and the club were completely banned in 1881, after the drunken students failed to come to the aid of two ships that collided in St Andrews Bay. The members of the Kate Kennedy Club disagree with what they see as the targeting of the procession, which they say has been the most effected by the decision.

The procession is a collaborative effort between the Club, the Kate Kennedy Procession Committee and the Kate Kennedy Trust.

Besides the club, the other two organizations consist of both men and women.

“So therefore to discriminate primarily against the procession is a frustration because actually, the procession technically isn’t organized by the club,” Murphy said.

Thun-Hoenstein said some of the difficulties that the new stance has created have largely a symbolic significance, such as the denial of the club to ring the bells in St Salvator’s chapel when the character of Kate Kennedy appears. The legend goes that the church bells would ring to mark the original Kate’s arrival.

“As you might know, one of the bells is cast with the name Kate Kennedy, and this denial hurts us even more in this case,” ThunHoenstein said.

The club was always private, so to call it a disaffiliation is a bit of a misnomer. The decision has therefore not had much of an effect on the day-to-day workings of the organization. Borwosky describes the relationship now as primarily commercial, when it was before more

Love Spotted

Above: Nick Clegg: lost for words?

To the sexy Persian at the Whey Pat. Can we join your harem?

- Anon

Want to send in your Love Spotted? Or did you spot yourself in last issue?

Then text LOVE SPOTTED to: 07823-771189

amiable as well as commercial.

Not everyone saw the relationship the same way. Richardson shares in an e-mail interview that several female students complained about the position the club had with the university, showing letters from

‘The club is unapologetic about the all-male membership the Kate Kennedy Club written on university letterhead and with College Gate as a return address.

“The students saw this as university sponsorship of the club and felt it suggested that the university valued its male students more and hoped that as female principal I might change that,” Richardson said. “I believe that the official endorsement of any club or society which excludes people because of their gender is completely at odds with the values of a forward looking university like St Andrews.”

The Kate Kennedy Club is unapologetic about the all-male membership, and unwavering in their commitment to keeping it that way. Murphy said that one of the things that attracted him to the club was the prospect of the all-male camaraderie. He argues that this camaraderie is one of the reasons that the club works so well.

It doesn’t look like the Club and the University will see eye-to-eye anytime soon, since the Club is unlikely to revise their membership policies and our principal’s steadfast commitment to not condoning what she clearly sees as a discriminatory policy.

To the boy bopping his head like a nutter at the Masquerade Ball. You can bop with me anytime!! - ZJ

Features 15

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Politics

There’s something in the air Elliot Reid gives the highlights on the upcoming Scottish Elections. Who will you vote for?

he rosettes are being proudly worn, the placards are attached to the lampposts, the leaflets are filling up our mailboxes. Yes, you guessed it, it’s time for Scotland to step up to the ballot box and decide the fate of the 129 Holyrood MSPs. In the Yellow corner, Alex Salmond; leader of the SNP, current first minister of Scotland.

In the red corner, Iain Gray; leader of Scottish Labour, the front runner to knock Salmond off his perch.

It looks like a fight that will go right down the final round. The most recent poll by Panelbase put them even on the constituency vote and gave the SNP a mere 5 points lead in the regional vote.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are licking their wounds; it seems their part in the Westminster coalition has left many Scots disillusioned with politics.

Perhaps you’re wondering about the relevance of these elections.

How will the re-election or failure to re-elect the local Lib Dem MSP, Iain Smith affect you?

This election is not any ordinary election. There have been no elaborate promises of 1,000 extra police officers or 250 ad-

ditional new schools, as was seen in the 2007 election campaign.

The Scottish Government’s block grant it receives from Westminster is to decline by £1.3 billion in the 2011-12 financial year, as the deficit reduction plans start to take hold.

This election will be won or lost on which party can effectively manage their costings on policies the best.

Firstly, education fees. Higher education is a devolved issue in Scotland and the choice you make at the ballot box will have a fundamental effect on the way St Andrews and other universities in Scotland are funded in the future.

Alex Salmond, on a recent visit to St Andrews, was hounded by a concerned Lucy Pawle regarding his stance on the solution to higher education funding. He unequivocally assured her in a “cast iron pledge” that English students would not have to pay anymore than £6,000 to keep tuition fees free for Scottish students.

If you don’t like it, then there doesn’t appear to be too much of a choice. Only the Conservatives back the reintroduction of fees for Scottish students with their leader, Annabel Goldie, promising annual caps of £4,000, arguing that the stance of the other main parties

“is not tenable.”

On the the issue of unemployment, Tavish Scott of the Scottish Liberal Democrats has promised 100,000 additional new positions, Labour has promised to “eradicate youth unemployment,” the Conservatives have guaranteed a new Minister for enterprise and jobs whilst the SNP have pledged

22,000 new placements in the green economy.

So if you’re from the UK, EU or a select commonwealth country, then get yourself down to a polling booth on May 5th to elect your local Fife North East Candidate. Even if none of the main candidates appeal to you, the Scottish Additional Member System gives you the op-

portunity to select a minority party, meaning you have no excuse not to go out and exercise your democratic right to vote!

Visit the Domestic Politics society website at: domesticpolitics.co.uk for full interviews with the constituency candidates.

Photo: Alex Segre

T

Food

Making the most of rhubarb season Katy Brill samples this season’s favourite fruit...or is it a vegetable?

F

rugal and delicious, with its strangely pink stems, rhubarb has long since caused confusion regarding its classification – fruit or vegetable?

Technically it is a vegetable, but its predominant use in sweet desserts evidently caused such confusion in the United States that a 1947 customers’ court ruling felt compelled to clear the matter up and deemed it a fruit. In the UK, people seem less concerned about classifying rhubarb and are more preoccupied with eating it – happy to simply enjoy its virtues in all its lovely quintessential British forms- crumbles, pies, turnovers and jams.

Like most things nowadays, the supermarkets ensure that rhubarb is available throughout much of the year, but it simply must be enjoyed only during its UK season when the home-grown varieties are fresh and plentiful. While forced British rhubarb has been around since February, field grown varieties are now very much abundant.

Everyone’s first rhubarb binge of the year simply has to take the form of a warming crumble on a cold February evening- tangy, crimson rhubarb laced with brown sugar and crowned with an oaty, crumbly topping infused with fresh ginger and accompanied by homemade crème anglaise or double cream. It may be a staple of country kitchens across the land but it is most definitely one seasonal treat not to be missed. As the season draws out into the sunnier days of April and into the summer, however, one can start to hanker over a slightly lighter vocation for the humble rhubarb. Here are a few ideas...

***

Rhubarb fool An old-fashioned English dessert, creamy vanilla streaked with blush pink rhubarb is a beautiful summer dish.

Method: (Serves 8) 1kg rhubarb, 300g vanilla sugar, 500ml double cream. Mix the rhubarb and vanilla sugar together in an ovenproof dish.

Cover with foil and bake at 200°C but until the fruit is completely soft. Drain and pour the juice (you should have about 500ml) into a saucepan, then heat and let bubble away until reduced by about half, leave to cool. Puree the fruit until totally smooth, then cool and chill as well. Whip the cream in a large chilled bowl until thick. Carefully fold in the rhubarb puree, add some of the reduced juice until the mixture is streaked like raspberry ripple ice cream. Serve in individual glasses.

Simply roasted This cooking method avoids the sludgy mess that can so often result from poaching rhubarb. The roasted rhubarb keeps its shape and bright pink colour, and can be used as fruit garnishes for vanilla panna cotta, enjoyed with homemade ginger

ice cream, or kept in the fridge and eaten as a delicious breakfast fruit compote with natural yoghurt.

Method: Wash, trim and chop into 5cm lengths. Place rhubarb into a baking tray, pour over golden caster sugar (approx. 85g sugar for 550g rhubarb but adjust to personal preference), sprinkle with water, cover with tin foil, and roast at 200°C for approx. 20 minutes or until soft but not mushy. Reserve the resulting sugar syrup and drizzled over rhubarb when serving.

Rhubarb gin Spirit infusions are very much in vogue: from fruit infused vodkas to the traditional but unbeatable sloe gin. These fruity tipples can easily be prepared at home, delicious on a warm evening served over ice, or mixed with lemonade or tonic.

Method: Use 200g chopped prepared rhubarb to 700ml gin, along with 150g caster sugar. Combine in a sterilised 1 litre jar, seal and store for at least 3 months before drinking, shaking it once a week.

And finally....Freeze it When you have finally over-

done all things rhubarb, god forbid, don’t waste it! This sturdy vegetable freezes exceptionally well.

Method: Trim, wash and chop into batons and place in sealed freezer bags.

Then pop into your freezer ready for a cheeky pie on a gloomy winters’ night.

16 Features

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Going up Hugh Grant goes undercover for New Statesman - who knew Hugh had a journalist lurking within?

Health & Fitness

Embracing the pole Melissa Steel

T

Elderflower cocktails surprisingly delicious, deceptively alcoholic.

Royal Wedding Sick Bags - “Throne up”, best pun of the week Queues for May Ball tickets start at 1am - you’d have thought someone would have worked out online tickets by now It’s April, not August - put those bare legs and flip flops away...

Big Brother comes to Channel 5 possibly the most unneccessary revival of the century Blue sing for Britain on Eurovision 2011 - in the singer’s graveyard, where they belong

Going down

music and Daniela’s serious yet fun attitude ensure it is all about the sport.

As the hour passes, more moves are added and I am surprised at how quickly they form a routine, even if my nervous thighs do cling a little too hard to the pole and the occasional limb threatens to knock over a water bottle or two. Daniela analyses each move, walking from pole to pole and offering tips on how to improve your technique.

One thing that dawned on me throughout the hour of tuition is the level of skill professionals must possess; the sheer agility and fitness as they swing from a pole is astonishing. This relates to my only concern with pole fitness; it treads a thin line between sexuality and exercise, and as a result, seems to have a somewhat confused identity, at least to outsiders. One cannot deny its sexual connotations, yet we risk completely ignoring the physical, rather than sexual, prowess by shunning the sport as a whole.

Ultimately, my advice is simple: just swing with it.

I attended for The Saint was part of a ‘Taster’ initiative by Daniela, a one-off introduction at £3 for an hour of exercise.

Before any dance can really begin, Daniela is eager to emphasise the importance of a good warm up. She goes through a series of simple but effective stretches with us, mobilising the whole body. Her knowledge of stretching techniques is amazingly detailed, as she calmly explains why she has chosen these poses, as well as the correct way to hold them. In this respect, the class beats other sport clubs; thanks to its small class size (only up to twelve people are allowed), the intimate setting allowing for much more detailed tuition. Daniela’s reassuring knowledge makes the lesson seem safe from the outset, and removes any lingering sense of trepidation from my mind.

The next track goes on the stereo and the class is taught how to walk around a pole. The choice of music is bizarrely unsexy, a mix of elevator music and those blood pumping, yet strangely sterile, gym tunes.

We move on to the next step, rolling hips in a figure of eight while holding onto the pole. Normally, this would signal the start of an increasingly sexual routine, but the

For more information, visit: www.x-staticapolefitness.com

Careers

10 reasons NOT to be a lawyer Ever needed a reason not be? Solicitor Jasper

Griegson

tells it like it is.

7.

If you are after fresh air, a job in the law is probably not for you. For many lawyers, their daily routine is sedentary and somewhat desk bound. The greatest moment of excitement in the lives of some lawyers is when they have a heart attack at 55.

1.

People don’t like lawyers. Lawyers are not nurses or Salvation Army charity workers.

If you decide to pursue a career in the law, you will not necessarily go to heaven.

2. Not all lawyers make a lot of money. If you work in a small legal aid practice in Liverpool, the pay is very different to that of a high-flying mergers and acquisitions lawyer in the City of London.

3.

Being a lawyer can be very boring. However glamorous it might appear to be on a television series such as Silk, the reality is often very different.

Toiling for years in the suburbs as a residential conveyancer does not really carry the same kudos as being a top QC. Do not confuse fiction with fact.

4.

The law is not a great career for women wishing to raise a family. Although lawyers pay lip service to the laws against sex discrimination there is something of a “glass ceiling” for women who try to juggle babies and a legal career.

Photo: swatman67

The Other Guys - their Royal Romance YouTube video is pure genius

he pole’s metal reflects the harsh artificial lighting. The techno music provides the beat for the dancers to slide and thrust to. There is a lot of grunting and sweaty brows, but it is not from the down-market clientele of a seedy strip club, it is the dancers themselves. Never fear, this is not some sort of retirement home for elderly or infirm exotic dancers.

It is X-Statica Pole Fitness, run by Daniela Bruns, an energetic class where baggy t-shirts and modest shorts are the pole dancer’s uniform. Far from being held in a sordid back-street establishment, it takes place in St Andrews’s local high school, Madras College.

Rather than titillation, the most explicit aim of this class is fitness. Could this be a new way to perceive, what we typically term, ‘pole dancing’?

While many graduates worry about what career paths the job market may force them to go down, former St Andrews student Daniela Bruns came up with a new, innovative idea, which embraced the often tabooed subject of pole dancing. A St Andrews alumnus, she offers various classes in Pole Fitness at £80 a term. The particular class

investigates the newest fitness regime to come to St Andrews

5. If you do work in the highpressure environment of a top law firm, the hours can be very antisocial indeed. It is not uncommon for high-ranking firms of solicitors to demand 2,500 hours per year from their trainees and assistants.

There is culture within such firms that frowns upon leaving early (ie.

8pm) and in which it is perceived as macho to be ordering pizza at midnight and working until the early hours.

6. There are a lot of unemployed lawyers. It may once have been the case that all roads to a career in the law were paved with gold but that is no longer the case. Lots of law firms have been hit by the financial downturn in the UK economy and this has meant that far fewer are hiring new trainees compared to five years ago. Furthermore, large numbers of those who were lucky enough to get a job have either not been taken on after training or have been made redundant.

8. Lawyers get sued. That may sound somewhat ironic but it is true. There is a high degree of professional responsibility that accompanies a job in the law. If you make a big mistake, you may well find yourself on the wrong end of a claim.

9. If you are fussy about what to wear at work, do not become a lawyer. Wigs and funny outfits still survive in some quarters and if you manage to avoid the funny attire, it is all very boring – suits and ties are the order of the day.

10. Last but not least, being a lawyer can be very lonely. This is particularly so for barristers, since no one will hold your hand in court or on those late nights when you are burning the midnight oil.

To read more from Jasper Griegson, follow his blog on: www.yell.com /solicitors/blog/author/jaspergriegson/

Features 17

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Careers

Photo: Jason Anello

LinkedIn: a student essential

Above: LinkedIn spreads the word around New York City. Currently over 200 countries are repsented on the social networking website.

Susann Landefeld investigates LinkedIn and it’s purpose amongst the students of today

F

rom the first day in St Andrews, it becomes evident that university is not only about getting a degree; it is about meeting people from around the world to make friends for life and build an extensive network of contacts.

Whilst seemingly cliché, most students experience the truth behind the mantra “It’s not what you know but who you know” once they face the daunting task of finding their first internship or work placement. In an environment as diverse and international as St Andrews, friends, tutors and professors all hold vast networking potential.

Although the majority of students today keep an active profile on Facebook, only few have realized the benefits of joining LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking site, before entering the professional world. Paul Brown, Director of the University of St Andrews Careers Cenre, says that within the St Andrews student body, “it’s at early stages at the moment but will grow.”

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn currently claims to have over 100 million members worldwide, more than half of which are located in over 200 countries and territories outside of the United States. In addition to professional profiles, LinkedIn operates more than one million company profiles and is used by 69 of the Fortune 100 companies in 2010. The network continues to grow at accelerating

speed and steadily expands its position as a key provider for recruitment services, meeting the reciprocal interests of employers

‘In terms of making contacts, LinkedIn is invaluable’ and employees. Last year’s survey of the recruiting platform Jobvite found that 83 percent of employers use social media websites, predominantly LinkedIn, when hiring for new jobs.

Though undergraduate students may give little reason for companies to build contacts, it is advisable to create a LinkedIn profile whilst still in university. “I would definitely recommend starting early,” Jai Popat of the St Andrews graduating class of 2010 says. “In terms of meeting alumni and making basic contacts with people you meet at recruiting events, it’s invaluable.

After all 5 years down the line, they could be a potential client!”

In preparation for job and internship interviews, LinkedIn holds a wealth of information about companies of interest. The ‘Follow Company’ feature publishes frequent updates in its members’

news feed, alongside the latest activities of fellow connections in the network. The insight into different career paths and educational backgrounds of professionals from a variety of occupations are a source of inspiration when it comes to choosing the type of internship and work experience that best qualify for the desired career.

“I started using LinkedIn after my summer internship. It’s a great way to keep in contact with colleagues and acquaintances,” third year student Elizabeth Ng says. In addition to networking, the site informs you about job opportunities, discussions groups on specific industries, related news and events. “Make full use of the St Andrews University groups – they are very well run and don’t contain spam,” Ng recommends.

Particularly the University of St Andrews Alumni group and its Mentorship Programme allow current undergraduates to reach out to the alumni community and seek professional advice. Hung Lee, manager of both alumni groups, describes the mentorship scheme as “an extension of the ‘Academic Family’ tradition into the professional world.”

Fourth year student Lauren Wilson took the initiative to contact ‘mentors’ and received very detailed responses within just a few days. “I think the mentorship thing is a brilliant idea,” she says.

“The alumni know the value of a St Andrews degree and the best way

to sell yourself and your skill set.”

It seems second and third year students will benefit from establishing so-called ‘mentor/mentee relationships’ early on. With still a few years left in St Andrews, they have plenty of time to join clubs and societies, or choose those modules recommended to best prepare for their desired career path.

“You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain,” Brown says. “It is very quick and easy to set up an account for yourself. Give yourself time to work out how to use the system most effectively.” After creating a LinkedIn account, a bar indicating the percentage of ‘profile completeness’ provides guidance and feedback on the progress of setting up a professional profile.

Information on education, past work experience and recommendations are among the features listed to maximize completeness. “An

‘You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain’ appropriate picture is necessary.

This is a different audience than Facebook after all,” Wilson adds.

“A detailed profile summary is useful for potential employers who might be looking at your profile

and is relatively easy to make if you upload your resume.”

LinkedIn members can choose between a free personal account and different upgrades offering more services against monthly fees ranging from $24.95 to $99.95.

“The payment options are quite expensive, especially for students,” Wilson says. “I think they should come up with a student account or a lower level option in the $10-$15 range.” She just switched to the Business account to test the benefits of the lowest paid membership, including the InMail feature that allows sending messages directly to LinkedIn members outside your own network.

However, creating a customized URL for the public profile on LinkedIn is a first step towards attracting potential employers. It increases the degree of control over privacy settings; the user can decide who is able to view the profile and get in touch via InMail. Meanwhile, loose privacy settings on social networking sites like Facebook, should be treated with caution. Statistics on recent recruitment strategies suggest that high public exposure on LinkedIn and profile listings in search engines like Google may indeed be beneficial to the career.

Eventually, each student determines individually whether professional networking will be the key to success. “LinkedIn is a useful tool,” Ng says. “But a lot depends on your taking the initiative to make the best use of it.”

18 Features Politics

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

On the bravery of women

Love in a cold climate

W

Photo: stardusttravel

Graphic: Zoe Zietman

Patrick O’Hare and Colleen Roberts interview three Honduran women on their fight to live as

S

t Andrews was lucky to recently host feministas en resistancia Mercédes Laínez and Evelyn Cueller, who attended the SLAS conference to speak about the continued struggle for women’s rights and democracy in Honduras. After hearing their inspiring stories, we felt compelled to interview them for The Saint, so that more students can learn about their struggle.

Feminism has different meanings for different women, but the two hondureñas’ understanding of the term is grounded in their experience of having overcome severe domestic violence. Evelyn told us that the moment she decided to take action was when she found a leaflet, documenting different types of violence, and realised that her ex-husband was inflicting every single one of them.

Taking her children and some belongings, she left her home, and

‘After the murder of her family, Evelyn realised she could go it alone, as a single mother and a feminist’ described her hesitation before crossing the road. Would she have the strength to start afresh by herself? How would she provide for her children? Yet just at that moment another women took the hand of her youngest daughter, and helped her across.

equals in their own country “I then asked God for one word, the word ‘no’,”she told us. It was this small word that she had to repeat again and again to her husband, who tracked her down, offering the many empty promises which she had heard before. The police refused to investigate.Taking refuge in her father’s house, Evelyn thought that she was safe, but worse was to come.

Living in one of Honduras’ poorest areas, armed burglars burst into the house weeks later, spraying Evelyn and her family with bullets, leaving them for dead. On that day, Evelyn lost her stepmother, but the rest miraculously survived multiple gunshot wounds. It was when she refused to return to her abusive husband, even after this great tragedy, that she realised that she could go it alone, as a single mother and feminist.

Mercédes, now a grandmother, had to find the courage to leave a husband of 22 years, who had subjected her to years of verbal and mental abuse. “He never provided me with anything,” she told us.

“Whilst he would often splash out on expensive clothes for himself, he would give leftover food to their dog, rather than to his wife.”

He also constantly humiliated her, breaking her down until she felt completely helpless; both women agreed that psychological abuse, leaving no physical mark, is often the worst kind.

After these experiences, it is no wonder that as volunteers, Mercédes and Evelyn claim they understand women in similar circumstances better than psychologists. Whilst Evelyn specialises in legal advice, Mercédes is a community leader who runs a weekly selfhelp group for women who suffer domestic violence. Both work on a voluntary basis, and affirm that

the best payment is the regeneration which they can observe in the women they work with. Mercédes and Evelyn showed us photos of when they were married, and emphasise how they have changed dramatically since, not only in confidence, but also in terms of a physical rejuvenation.

‘Two women per week are murdered in the Honduras’ In the years preceding the 2009 coup, tireless campaigning had achieved nothing short of a revolution in women’s rights in what is one of Latin America’s poorest countries. The government had set up an emergency phoneline for domestic violence and seven police units to investigate femicide, a phenomenon Mercédes described as “murder motivated by gender.”

Two women per week are murdered in Honduras and the media shamefully blame the victims for causing their own deaths by committing adultery, wearing a short skirt, or being prostitutes. With abortion still illegal in Honduras, feminists had nonetheless managed gain legalisation guaranteeing the morning after pill. Things were slowly beginning to change for the better.

Yet all this was interrupted, when Manuel Zelaya’s government was overthrown in a conservative, church-backed coup, he was replaced by businessman Roberto Michelleti then, following contested elections, Porfirio Lobo.

Many gains have been reversed, and there has been a return to the old order of impunity. When asked about the link between resistance and feminism, Evelyn told us that they were “resisting because of everything that had been taken away;” and they have paid a high price.

When the National Front of Popular Resistance declared their intention to boycott elections (instead calling for the restitution of their elected president), Evelyn and her partner were two of seven faces denounced on national television as terrorists.

The couple began to receive death threats, then in the middle of the night, armed men burst into her house, murdering her partner in front of their children.

Evelyn had to flee to El Salvador and although she moved town on her return, she still fears for her life.

Evelyn and Mércedes have been through too much to give up their lucha now. Within the Resistance movement, they promote their slogan “neither democracy at home, nor in this government.” They are not merely victims or survivors, but also fantastic company with an uproarious sense of humour.

The inspiring stories of courageous women, such as Evelyn and Mércedes often go unnoticed, like the cases of gender violence which they struggle against.

However, we should be clear that domestic violence is by no means a Latin American phenomenon, and we should work to make sure that it is does not go unnoticed here too.

For more information, visit: www.resistenciahonduras.net www.cawn.org www.derechosdelamujer.org

hilst enjoying a low-key dinner with friends on a tame Thursday evening, one of our friends’ eyes began to twinkle for our “well schmexy” waiter. The discussion turned to what the appropriate mode of action should be. As a big fan of bold moves, I led the way in concocting a plan. One gin and tonic later, along with a good dose of peer pressure, my friend ended up cheekily sliding a note with her phone number along with a tip, as she slinked away home.

In my book, this is a pretty bold move; others may chastise this girl for being desperate. As with so many emotional dilemmas, it treads a very thin line between being socially acceptable and a big faux pas. The question, it seems, is where do you draw the line between acts of confidence and desperation?

We’ve all been there: haunted by a crush and desperately seeking ways to interact with them.

Whether its sauntering casually past their flat, constantly finding reasons to brush past their desk in the library or casually bumpin’ ‘n’ grindin’ over to their section of the dance floor, there are numerous, subtle tactics we employ to hunt down our prey.

If we’re honest with ourselves, these moves often leave us feeling deflated and rather like borderline stalkers. There’s nothing worse than thinking back to all those texts, phone calls and lingering hugs, and cringing.

These actions, although likely to go undetected, are also unlikely to bring our desires to fruition.

Whilst I am a self-proclaimed fan of the bold move, it is much easier to perform if you aren’t really into the person in question.

The boldest moves I’ve enacted all started as a bit of light-hearted fun, including once persuading a boy that a snog was the best cure for my hiccups and setting up my own blind date with a rather dashing friend of a friend.

Interestingly, they both had very successful results.

So, I’m going to promote giving up those desperate tactics we all love to use. Let’s stop the stalking – because if we’re honest, that is really what it is. If you like someone, why not just tell them?

Instead of trying to catch their attention by merely cruising past (lets be realistic, most of us just aren’t that attractive), why not strike up a conversation instead?

If the bold move doesn’t work, at least you will have a funny story to tell. Sadly, my friend never did get that call, but who wouldn’t give her points for trying? Surely it’s better than all those shameful, secret memories.

Ivy Stormont

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

In Pictures 19

The Kate Kennedy Procession 2011

Photos: Celeste Sloman, Tam McTavish & Axel Wallin

20 In Pictures

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Rugby 7s Tournament

Charities’ Summer Fayre

Photos: Celeste Sloman & James Lawson

A rts & C ulture Editor: Al Bell Film Editor: Ross Dickie Style: Ruby Munson-Hirst Stage: Emma O’Brien Music: Rosalie Jones

STYLE

arts@thesaint-online.com

INSIDE ARTS & CULTURE

Up Style Yourself Ruby Munson-Hirst meets Upstyler, the latest online store to be championing vintage and charity shop finds in the bid to make the fashion world a kinder, calmer and more individual place to be.

T.V Camelot, The Borgias and Game of Thrones Page 22

Music A free album from Starslinger! And many more dope albums from this month reviewed.

Page 24

Film 3D film has always kinda sucked...

Ishbel Beeson hopes it will go away soon Page 23

Theatre Seeing Double?

Frankenstein as seen in theatre on screen.

Page 25

“Leave the City” from Upstyler’s launch issue. Photograph by Lee Jenkins

In their latest issue, “Work it Baby” (www.upstyler.co.uk), editors Susanne James and Dawn East asked if it was possible to have it all: a career, motherhood, a beautiful home, healthy meals on the table whilst keeping fit and looking good. Without an entourage as big as your extended family, they concluded that keeping things ‘in perspective’ was a better option to having other people running your life for you. Yet when I met the Upstyler creators Dawn and Suse, they seemed to have the majority of these pressures nailed down. As working mums, the duo traded in hectic careers at Grazia magazine to pioneer a fashion revolution closer to their own hearts.

Abandoning fast lane careers at

an established and highly successful weekly glossy is a risk most people wouldn’t take. But with an itch to do something new and the independence granted by being their own bosses, Dawn and Suse dared and embarked on the Upstyler project as means to be able to balance the growing responsibilities of the real (grown up) world. Not only did they dare, they dared to do something truly worthy of their risk: saying no to fast fashion and the barrage of ethical and ecological baddies synonymous with it. The ferocious consumer battle that the fashion world and its buyers are facing is big and ongoing but Upstyler’s decision to donate twenty percent of their profits to

charity Trekstock, is an admirable move in the right direction.

Upstyler.co.uk makes vintage shopping easy and available to everyone, cutting out the trawling through rails of stinky old jumpers and odd matching shoes, to magically reveal the hidden gems buried at the bottom of the pile, straight to your laptop screen.

Sourcing from car boot sales, auctions, vintage warehouses and charity shops, Upstyler’s buyers pick out an ecclectic range of garments from classic vintage Prada Sandals (left) to Neon fruit clip on earrings (right, both available at upstyler.co.uk).

Sat in their shared office workspace surrounded by overflowing bags of vintage delights I watched as Suse and Dawn excitedly

scrambled to find their favourite new pieces just in. Also in tow was Dawn’s toddler Albert who seemed entirely unfazed by his mum’s enthusiasm for a load of clobber. The atmosphere was relaxed, fun but piping with energy… a long way from the intensity of working on someone else’s clock.

There is something deeply down to earth about how Upstyler operates, from its ethics to promote ‘an alternative to the ‘identikit’ high street’, to Suse’s inspiration being ‘girls she sees on the bus’ – they function at a level that balances the beautiful and shiny side of fashion with a conscience that is devoted to having fun and playing fair.

146 South Street St Andrews

Evening shoes for The May Ball and Graduation Ball in stock.

Students get 10% off!

22 Arts & Culture

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

T.V.

Medieval Times

In the wake of The Tudors, three new shows take up the gauntlet in the crusade to give the Middle Ages sex appeal.

By Charlotte Nathan As The Tudors draws to a close on BBC Two, there seems to be a brace of historical TV shows set to hit our shores over the coming months to fill the void. All of them American, none American history. Essentially recreating The Tudors with rich fabrics, naked women and a fairly laissez faire attitude to accuracy, The Borgias, Camelot and Game of Thrones “bring to life” Renaissance Italy, mythical early-medieval Britain and the fictional world of Westeros. To draw the crowds we have our big-name, Jonathan Rhys Meyers figures, with the leading men played by Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes and Sean Bean respectively. I’m excited.

The first episode of The Borgias had it all: beautiful women who don’t quite resemble the portraits of their real-life counterparts, scheming, plenty of blood and death, Derek Jacobi, and the Pope. The odddest, perhaps most inappropriate, moment was when, upon being elected Pope, Jeremy Irons, surrounded by the cardinals, has to undergo a ceremony in which his testicles are felt to ensure he is indeed a man (apparently his wonderful, deep voice wasn’t enough of a give away).

The entry about the election process for the papacy on Wikipedia mentioned nothing about this – the dilemma, which is more likely to be accurate? Inappropriate, inaccurate yet entertaining seems to rather sum up the first few episodes, and, I suspect, the rest of the series. Press for the show has highlighted how the Borgia family helped inspire The Godfather – however, as yet, the family don’t come across as a mafia so much as one man and his son misbehaving in Rome.

The other two series look like they’ll follow along the same vein. Guinevere and Morgan le Fay (Tamsin Egerton and Eva Green) in Camelot seem to fulfil the classic role of the strong and beautiful woman (both quite happy to get naked), whilst Arthur and his knights wave weapons and inspirational speeches all over the place. The creators

Photo Supplied

Joseph Fiennes in Camelot. have tried to give the show a modern feel (your typical reinventing the old for a new audience); at the party to celebrate Arthur’s coronation, for example, the girls are dancing in a way we’d more expect to see at The Lizard than a medieval celebration. Arthur comes across as your standard girl-obsessed teenager, suddenly thrust into kingship by the unexpected death of his father (indeed, when fetched to hear that he is, in fact, the heir to the throne, Arthur is found lying in the nude with his brother’s girlfriend). It’s

quite difficult at this point to see how Arthur will herald a new age of kingship, especially given his slightly questionable morals when it comes to unavailable girls; however, no doubt we shall soon see how his upbringing away from the evils of the royal court and his youthful bravery stands him in good stead to turn Britain around.

Game of Thrones has yet to be released, however, the book had so much sword fighting and sex I suspect the TV show will barely

have to embellish the original story. It will be interesting to see how similar the three series become as they develop, and how accurately they stick to their sources (though Camelot does have the advantage of being based on a myth). Not the most high brow television, but likely to be crowd-pullers, if only because Jeremy Irons being disdainfully evil, Joseph Fiennes dark and mysterious and Sean Bean rugged are too irresistible to miss.

BOOKS

It’s not a Memoir In her new memoir, Tina Fey is always the butt of her own joke. By Jon Ramsay

Bossypants

by Tina Fey Illustrated, 277pages Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown & Co. $26.99 “It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”

Tina Fey’s recent memoir, Bossypants (Reagan Arthur Books, 288 pgs), has been getting mixed reviews. The New York Times gave it a favourable critique, noting that, “Bossypants isn’t a memoir. It’s a spiky blend of humour, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new genera-

tion.” But Newsweek grilled Fey’s memoir, claiming “If a woman with Fey’s measure of success and cultural influence won’t give us the straight dope, then who will?”

I don’t really know what “straight dope” is, as I’m not pear shaped, balding, or a drug addict. But I assume Anna Holmes, the Newsweek writer, meant to express that Bossypants doesn’t represent women in a positive light. I disagree.

Bossypants is an enthusiastic and encouraging model for women looking to work in show business. “My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is

better used doing your work and outpacing people that way.”

Like the Qu’ran, Fey’s book is open to interpretation by the reader. There is a lot to laugh at, and the delivery is always well timed. But if read the right way, there is also much to be learned. The book is littered with self-deprecating anecdotes, ranging from kissing gay men to mountain climbing. Fey is always the butt of her own joke, and it creates a comforting feeling for the reader.

This isn’t a memoir, although it is labelled as one. Fey begins with her childhood, and ends with the present, but between then and now there is a lot of content that cannot be categorized on a timeline. With chapter titles like “The Secrets of Mommy’s Beauty”, “Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat”, and “Sarah, Oprah, and Captain Hook”, it is

clear from the start that this book is scattered.

It’s almost as if every thought that came to Fey’s mind was written down, regardless of proper chronology.

Because of this, any reader who is looking for a biography of Fey will be disappointed.

But if you enjoy 30 Rock, and the style of its screenwriting, Bossypants is better aimed at you. Fey’s writing never falters, or gets boring. The jokes keep rolling, and it’s a fast read.

Bossypants is aimed at women. This is not a controversial claim. There are no helpful hints for men in the workplace, or advice for men trying to become more comfortable with themselves. But I would not discourage a man from reading this book. It is a helpful tool for understanding particularly crazy women, and where they’re coming from.

Arts & Culture 23

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Photo: Supplied

FILM

A scene from Carmen in 3D

Dispose of your glasses at the exit Whatup with 3d cinema? by Ishbel Beeson In 2009 James Cameron’s Avatar blinded us all with its dazzling special effects, astronomical budget and wonderful use of 3D technology, fooling many members of the public into believing that it wasn’t, in fact, a completely unoriginal copy of Pocahontas set in the future and painted blue, with a predictable plot, terrible acting and cringe-worthy dialogue. Yet, two years on, cinemas are still filled with bins to dispose of your 3D specs.

But how has the 3D fad progressed and will it be sticking around much longer?

James Cameron sure thinks so, recently declaring; “In two years everything will be produced in 3D and 2D versions will be extracted from that.” Although this claim seems somewhat ridiculous, recent releases suggest filmmakers are taking the 3D phenomenon seriously as, alongside the bloated blockbusters, respected European auteurs are exploiting the technology for their latest releases.

Werner Herzog’s recent documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about 30,000 year old cave paintings found in Southern France

was shot in 3D as Herzog believed shooting in conventional 2D would not do the paintings justice. Also, fellow German filmmaker Wim Wenders is about to release the first 3D art-house film, Pina, about ‘Tanztheater’, a form of contemporary dance. Wenders first came up with the idea for the project way back in the 80s but it wasn’t until now that he believed technology had advanced enough to adequately bring his vision to the screen.

Similarly, culture vultures have been targeted with the recent run of stage productions screened in 3D worldwide. For a limited time last month, the NPH cinema showcased The Royal Opera House’s Carmen in 3D, which received a good turnout from pensioners and students alike. Screening something like this in local cinemas certainly makes it far more accessible (to see it at The Royal Opera House would set you back up to £219.50) and encourages those who have never experienced opera to embrace something new. But the 3D aspects did little but distract and seemed somewhat gimmicky.

We don’t need bits of confetti to appear as if we could reach out and grab them to draw us into the world of cinema – filmmakers have been honing their techniques for years to do this without forcing us to recoil in horror as something appears to come pelting towards

‘Recent reports suggest the craze won’t last much longer as filmgoers refuse to continue paying the increased costs for 3D.’

us. The camera’s privileged position, as it swooped up from next to the conductor in the orchestra pit to the middle of the stage, would have been enough to take us “into the heart of the production on a magic carpet ride” without the subtitles floating in mid-air in front of us. Although the production itself was fabulous and the brilliantly directed camera work gave us the best seats in the house, the 3D aspect simply caused eye strain and frustration (especially for those unfortunate souls among us forced to wear their 3D glasses on top of their real glasses).

Recent reports suggest the craze won’t last much longer as filmgoers refuse to continue paying the increased costs for 3D – for a family of four to go and see Gnomeo and Juliet 3D in Leicester Square last month cost a ridiculous £50. But the fat cats in Hollywood deny the dramatic drop in 3D attendance and continue to back more 3D productions than ever before, suggesting this somewhat irritating fad will not be fizzling out anytime soon.

24 Arts & Culture

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

The Critics LO-FI

POP/INDIE

In Love with Oblivion

ELECTRONIC/ HIP-HOP

Apocalypse

Volume 1

ELECTRONIC

Mind Bokeh

Crystal Stilts

Bill Callahan

Star Slinger

Bibio

Slumberland

Drag City

Bandcamp

Warp Records

In Love with Oblivion sounds, like almost everything else the Crystal Stilts have released, as though it was recorded on a mountaintop.

The obtuse lyrics, unsettling atmospheres and intense catchiness of the songs are also in-keeping with their previous releases. Brad Hargett continues to explore his expansive bass voice, which evokes an image of Ian Curtis, Roy Orbison, and a snooty butler in a reverb chamber. His lethargic chant on ‘Alien Rivers’ sits perfectly with the foot-dragging drumming while on more up-tempo numbers like ‘Shake the Shackles’, ‘Half a Moon’, and the opener ‘Sycamore Tree’, he manages to sound simultaneously worked up and half-asleep (with good results). Those high pitched organ drones, oft overlooked elements of their music, are especially nice on this album, effectively casting the creepy songs in relief. The Crystal Stilts have crafted a tighter follow-up to 2008’s Alight of Night and stuck to their lo-fi aesthetic, one part ambling 60s songwriting, two parts brooding instrumentation, because it works.

Maayan Adar

Bill Callahan has produced an almost freewheeling album containing the trademark droning voice and the mixture of despondence and wry humour that has gradually come to be expected of him. Callahan, also known as Smog, creates songs with incredible highlights, a little like Beatles songs or Python lines, a personal favourite being “I painted myself into a corner again/ Because I didn’t like the colour of my floors/ After you walked all over them”. Callahan is well versed in drawn out relationships and break-ups. In Apocalypse his surly self is launched into the literal and metaphorical wilderness of love and open country. The solitude of a cattle drover and his musings on freedom in an open field are a recurring theme but Callahan does not ultimately sing the freedom of the frontier as he is tied down by his very human love. ‘Riding for the feeling’ is emblematic of this as it is a touching meditation on the eviscerating helplessness of separation. The Apocalypse is what lingers somewhere in the midst of this disjoint.

Martha McCarey

After graduating with a degree in music technology from Leeds Met, and successively worked his way through a variety of music genres, mancunian musician Darren Williams has gone on to create one of the UK’s most successful sample-based electronic projects: Star Slinger. Drawing his influence from a wide range of hip-hop, R&B, synth and electronica, Williams’ productions are loosely structured around a mix of repeated beats and carefully fragmented samples all of which serve to create a wonderfully energetic sound that retains a strong, soulful depth. Using just his macbook, novation launchpad, keyboard and turntable, Williams has remixed the likes of deerhunter, gold panda, childish gambino and the go! team, and is a favourite of numerous artists and listeners alike. Despite having achieved such remarkable success in such a short space of time Williams is still keen for others to listen, enjoy and share his music completely for free, and as such nearly all of his tracks can be downloaded (for free) from his website at: www.starslinger.net.

Tom Curry

a seemingly unconnected sequence of exploration. ‘Wake Up’ takes a Balearic approach which fails when put in a minimalist context, ‘Take Off Your Shirt’ is a bizarre guitar-driven power-pop anthem that’s about as edgy as Status Quo, ‘More Excuses’ sounds like what might happen if David Gilmour were to try his hand at D’n’B and many tracks, such as ‘Anything New’ and ‘Light Sleep’ just seem to give up on themselves, sounding like the background music in some forgettable TV show.

There are some highlights on the album, the glitchy ‘Artists’ Valley’ and the jangly ‘K is for Kelson’ are good reminders of what Bibio has to offer, but overall this album is simply lacking in what Ambivalence Avenue had in abundance: unification.

Lewis Wade

ST ANDREWS THEATRE

POP/INDIE

Something to Die For

Speed The Plow

The Sounds

David Mamet

Side One Dummy Records

I’ve listened to The Sounds on and off for the last couple of years, so naturally I was very excited when this album dropped onto my desk a week or so ago. Obviously by this I mean I went out and bought it with my own (i.e. the British taxpayers’) hard earned cash, but it’s fun to pretend anyway.

Something to Die For is the fourth major installment from this Swedish ‘indie’ Power Pop outfit (apparently no-one got round to telling Sweden that calling yourself ‘indie’ isn’t cool anymore) and while there are a few things here to give the listener pause, overall it is a unsatisfactory affair.

All the elements of a great Power Pop record are here: crisp sounding guitars, synth and bass clip in and out, framing the strong Blondieesque vocals of Maja Ivarsson. Yet, although the aesthetics are largely the same as the group’s previous

Bibio’s latest release, Mind Bokeh, offers us a chance to return to the sonically engaging landscape of Stephen Wilkinson’s mind. While 2009’s Ambivalence Avenue was heralded as a pinnacle in folktronica’s puzzling pre-eminence, Mind Bokeh seems to be a confused recycling of those concepts into a directionless array of music.

The production of Mind Bokeh is impeccable; samples manage to simultaneously intertwine with vocals and the wide range of instruments easily keep the whole thing ticking over. Opener, ‘Excuses’, is a good mood-setter; it’s groggy and nebulous, setting up the potential for an album that could go anywhere. However, there just seems to be something missing that would allow the album to be as gripping as previous efforts.

From this beginning we’re treated to a rehashing of various genres in

Parliament Hall April 12th-13th

offerings, Something to Die For lacks those killer pop choruses that carried 2009’s Crossing the Rubicon.

The result of this is an album that steadily builds expectations but ends with disappointment; think sitting through the Blue Peter opening sequence eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of Connie Huq, only to be confronted with Richard Bacon.

Lyrically the album is also a lacking refinement and is more than dabbling in cliché, a matter brutally exposed by it’s aforementioned pedestrian melodies. Iverrson provides an appropriate coda to the album when she cries out in ‘Best of Me’, “We are still young, but we’re getting older”. If Something to Die For is The Sounds’ midlife crisis, then roll on retirement (…and/or Dignitas).

Seth Starkadder.

David Mamet, is not a name billed as a crowd pleaser within the fairly small confines of the St. Andrews stage. Speed-the-Plow, a deeply satirical look into the flawed world of the American film industry, chronicles the ‘moral’ struggle of producer Bobby Gould who has to make the ever complicated choice between a fast-buck and the prospect of finding something ‘real’. This is classic Mamet, and by no means a simple tale of Hollywood’s capitalist hustlers. Yet in the unusual venue of Parliament Hall, a stage artistically strewn with the clutter of a new office, the lights went up on a new class of am-dram.

A play which relies almost entirely on the slick rapport between its leads Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox, director Jasper Lauderdale could not have found a better pairing in Lorenzo de Boni and Conor McKeown. The successful, but jaded Gould was artfully portrayed by de Boni, who

balanced both express control and unabashed gusto in a magnificent performance. Every movement, from his arrogant sweep of his newly acquired office, to his blatant leering at his new secretary was executed with panache. McKeown as his ever loyal, if not somewhat envious colleague Fox, bounded around him with the wide-eyed intensity of a caffeine induced high. Downtrodden by Gould in the opening Act, McKeown’s deranged fervour in the final Act was a feat of unparalleled physicality. Confronting Gould’s decision to cut his chosen script, he lithely climbed onto the table, assaulting his friend physically, whilst calmly verbally attacking him.

Their dialogue bounced off each other in a spectacle akin to a verbal boxing match, their exuberance and natural comic timing offering the audience a 90 minute treat. Daria Challah, as the vapidly ambitious temp Karen, did her best to hold her own against the vibrant male

characters, bringing an understated naivety to a part made infamous

by Madonna in the original production.

On the page this is a hectic script, on the stage the fast pace of Lauderdale’s production left the audience reeling in delighted exhaustion. The cast deserve nothing less than hyperbole. As for the director, who paired a deft understanding for the piece with an innate comic ear, and his producer (Kate Andrews) this can only be but the start of an illustrious creative partnership.

I cannot label this play ‘unmissable’- by the time this goes to print, you will have missed it. I will however, take great pleasure in telling you all that this was a testament to student theatre at its best, and that you really should be kicking yourself if you missed out.

Emily MacDonald

Arts & Culture 25

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011 BRITISH THEATRE

Frankenstein Live screening at DCA

Every performance of Danny Boyle’s on-stage interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein has sold out. This was a statement that distressed many a fan of Boyle and the novel respectively, including myself. Would I never get to see what was being hailed as ‘ecstasy’

by The Guardian?! However, then came a wonderful email from the Dundee Centre for the Arts (or the DCA to you and me). Through the wonders of modern technology the DCA was offering the opportunity to see the most talked about play in London live from the comfort of our little Scottish arts centre. Cue the Hallelujah chorus.

In Frankenstein Shelley explored the symbiotic relationship between Frankenstein and his creature. In the late 19th century this idea of the double was popular within literate,

made famous in novels such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The sinister idea that everyone has two sides to their personality fascinates audiences to this very day. Boyle’s production was most interesting in this respect. Jonny Lee Miller and (the not at all stupidly named) Benedict Cumberbatch swap roles every other night, both playing the monster and the creature respectively and in their own unique ways. The DCA screening had Miller as the creature and Cumberbatch as Frankenstein, and both were faultless. What strikes the audience is the understanding that each have obtained from playing both roles. It enables them to truly play on the idea of the double personality, as you can tell they know what it is like to be both creator and monster.

I’d never been to a live screening of a play before and I was somewhat suspicious that it wouldn’t be able to capture that magic that being sat front-row-centre gives.

Would the tension be lost? Would the intended atmosphere suffer?

How would I cope without being sprayed with the actor’s saliva? But needless to say, any chance to see a production of this must be taken and in the end the screening was a pretty marvellous experience. Sure it’s a little less personal with a big old camera lens between you and the actors, but if anything was lost from the production it was hard to notice because the show was beautifully visceral and one of the best imaginings I have seen.

Eleanor Parks

Source Code

FILM

Following the incredible critical and commercial success of Inception last year, 2011 is seeing a crop of high-concept blockbusters hitting screens in an attempt to capitalise on the audiences captivated by Christopher Nolan’s cerebral thriller. In a month that also sees the release of Limitless and The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code, Duncan Jones’ follow up to the excellent Moon, stands out as the best of this new bunch.

The premise is thus: protagonist Colter Stevens, played capably by the likeable Jake Gyllenhaal, wakes up on a train heading toward Chicago, confused and disoriented.

His last memory is of piloting a helicopter in Afghanistan, and as he struggles to make sense of his surroundings, we quickly learn that he has somehow assumed the

identity of another man. Eight minutes pass, and a sudden explosion rips through the train, consuming the carriage and killing everyone on board. Predictably, however, all is not as it seems; Stevens wakes up in a mysterious cell, confronted by the enigmatic Goodwin, a terse and exacting Vera Farmiga, who promptly sends him back to ‘relive’ the same eight minutes in an attempt to identify the bomber.

Stevens faces a race against the clock, repeatedly trying (and failing) to stop the bombing whilst attempting to discover more about his own situation. It’s all a bit silly, but the interesting, Groundhog Daystyle scenario plays out briskly, with Jones wasting little time on extraneous sub-plots, while also managing to inject some welcome elements of humour into an intense

ninety minutes. Gyllenhaal and Farmiga are joined by love interest Michelle Monaghan and a delightfully overacting Jeffrey Wright, the small cast allowing the audience to invest in the characters, in addition to aiding the overall coherence of the plot.

It may lack the atmosphere and aesthetics of Moon, and the saccharine ending grates slightly, especially when compared to Inception’s masterful conclusion, but as an exciting, engaging, and satisfying thriller, Source Code does a lot of things right. The tagline reads, ‘Make Every Second Count’, and it’s hard to think of a more fitting pré-

Photo: Picselect

NPH

cis for a film so tightly constructed, and for a director who continues to

exceed expectation.

Ross Hamilton

Blue Valentine

DVD

Blue Valentine is the anti-romcom. Charting the birth and eventual breakdown of a relationship, Derek Cianfrance’s latest feature is a poignant study of love, ageing and the loss of innocence. The film begins in the present, with Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) arguing over the finer points of oatmeal, but periodically flashes back to the time when the couple first met.

Both characters come from working-class backgrounds and, albeit in different ways, from broken homes. While Dean’s mother left him when he was very young, Cindy’s parents chose to stay together, stubbornly suffering through a loveless marriage. As Cindy ironically puts it; “I don’t ever want to be like my parents. I know that they must have loved each other at one time right? Did

they just get it all out of the way before they had me?”

Where romcoms tend to be somewhat two-dimensional, predictably concluding with two ridiculously attractive people getting it together, Cianfrance’s film attempts to show the whole spectrum of love – from the romantic idealism of youth to the loneliness and regret of old age. The bittersweet nature of the movie is elegantly summed up in what is arguably its most memorable scene: Ryan Gosling crooning out ‘You Always Hurt the Ones You Love’ on ukulele with Michelle Williams tap-dancing in a

Photo: image.net

Available 9th May

doorway – at once affecting and tragic.

Blue Valentine is a very intel-

ligent, beautifully realised piece of filmmaking and was clearly a labour of love for all those involved. One

example of this is in Andrij Parekh’s thoughtful cinematography: the warm, nostalgia-tinted flashbacks shot on film, the comparatively cold present scenes captured on digital.

In preparation for filming, Gosling and Williams also spent a month living together, buying groceries on a budget, getting to know each other and, most importantly, arguing. The resulting performances are remarkable in their authenticity, with Williams picking up a greatly deserved Oscar nomination. The film is a brilliant example of what American cinema can achieve when it is freed from the rigidity of the Hollywood machine.

Special Features: Audio Commentary, Making Of, Deleted Scenes, Q&A. Ross Dickie

26 Arts & Culture

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

FOOD | Lighter Fare Toasted Bread Here’s a simple recipe to follow:

By Hayley Morgan Food should be easy, especially when its just lunch. Rule number one when I make a sandwich: toast the bread. In high school chemistry my one and only proud moment was when I told the class that toast tasted so much better than bread because carbohydrates caramelize like sugar. We had been asked to give an example of a chemical reaction so I wasn’t just being a nerd.

Anyways, not only did I make everyone in the class hate me for referencing the Economist science section, but I gave the teacher the tragically wrong impression that I actually knew anything.

Things went downhill from there.

However the fact remains that things taste better when toasted up a bit. While your bread is evolving in the oven or toaster (or a pan if you are really desperate), get your

fillings together. Today I opted for hummus, lettuce, cheddar cheese, and slices of apple. Sounds odd, tastes good.

Another underappreciated option is the grilled cheese sandwich, which is honestly one of the best lunches I can think of. I don’t know why in Scotland people fuss with toastie makers because all you need is a frying pan and you’re golden.

Bread and cheese are of course essential, but things can go wherever you want from there. Slice in that tomato you’ve been meaning to get rid of with a spoonful of pesto; stir some sriracha into a bit of mayonnaise and chuck that on one of the slices; thinly slice half a pear and pair it with some mustard. Don’t add all of these things at once, unless you think it would taste nice, in which case, go for it. Avoid

lettuce because it will wilt and just taste wrong, but go ahead and have that on the side and you’ve got a complete meal. Done.

If you’re a fake cheese fan, that’s fine. Pre-sliced and weirdly meltable, its probably got things in it that you shouldn’t be ingesting everyday but I love it so don’t be ashamed if you do too. Cheddar is better though, and gruyere, emmental, and swiss work as well.

Go with what you like, it’s the technique that matters anyways.

First get your prep out of the way.

Grab your pan, preferably of the non-stick-not-too-thin variety. If it cost 5 pounds at Tesco watch your heat because burnt bread is not ideal but will be hard to avoid.

Turn on your burner, electric stove, or in my tragic case, a hot plate to a medium high setting and set your

pan on top to warm through.

Butter your bread, remembering to place the pieces buttered side down in your now hot pan. Add your fillings and cover with the second bread slice. Don’t be tempted to crank up the heat at this point because your cheese won’t melt and the whole thing will have been for nothing. And now wait.

A good grilled cheese deserves about 10 minutes of patience, unless you are using those Kraft singles, in which case they’ll collapse in 3. If you want to feel like you are doing something, grab a spatula and press on the sandwich. Or heat up some tomato soup because they deserve to be together. If you are using a decent cheese, add a few bits to the pan to melt and stick to the edges of the sandwich. Trust me on this one.

Spicy grilled cheese sandwich with avocado and rocket 2 slices wheat bread, buttered 1 spoonful mayonnaise 1 squeeze sriracha chili sauce (NOT sweet chili. look for a rooster on the bottle) 1 small handful rocket 1 half avocado 50 grams cheddar cheese, sliced 1. Stir together your mayonnaise and sriracha. That’s chili mayonnaise by the way, so next time you see it in a restaurant, don’t be too impressed.

2. Spread one bread slice with the chili mayonnaise. Cover with cheese slices, avocado, and rocket 3. Add the second slice of bread.

Toast in a pan for 4 minutes per side over medium high heat, until the cheese melts and your patience runs out.

A dying artform?

With the Internet as an increasingly dominant forum for the distribution of music, what is to become of the album artwork that graced the covers of CDs and Records? by Rosalie Jones Over the past few years there has been much debate about the damage that the internet has done to the music industry. From the demise of the independent record store to the illegal downloading that is putting increasing pressure on the music industry, a wide range of accusations have been levelled at this new mode of distributing music. Unfortunately the damage does not end with these market level problems and in fact extends further, with the internet changing the art form of the album itself.

Critics have highlighted the fact that the advent of iTunes and downloads has ultimately separated the individual songs from the idea of an album as a whole unit. Songs are no longer bought in the form of an album, a complete artistic entity wrapped in plastic from a record shelf, but are instead easily individually selected and separated from the album as a whole. Music, it could be said, is no longer listened to in the form the artist intended. Luckily many fans still purchase a whole album, and gladly at that, however it cannot be denied that the popularised single will almost definitely greatly outsell the album itself. However, far from just separating the listener from the album as a whole piece of music, downloading is also separating us from the album as an object, an object that is an artistic statement in

itself, formed as a complete creative package, artwork, lyrics, inserts and credits.

There was a time when buying a record felt like you were investing in a piece of art; LP’s were prized possessions. The gatefold wallet opening onto your lap, revealing a mighty span of colour, information and art, the inner bag containing lyrics and reams of information about the band, this was an object worth all that scrimping and saving as a student. These physical dimensions allowed for full creativity, expansive cover designs, the use of texture; it was a great platform for upcoming and established artists. Slowly this platform has been diminished in size, reduced to the CD case and now even risks being eradicated, leaving only a 50 pixel by 50 pixel space as a thumbnail, if that. This leaves very little scope for the best and most avant-garde of artists and graphic designers who have previously represented artist’s music for decades.

Wired.com recently had a piece about the best album artwork ever.

Their favourite cover, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was produced in 1967. This was a Grammy award-winning piece created by the great artist Robert Fraser, who married the work of designers Peter Blake and John Haworth with more than 70 other artists, writers, thinkers and people

influential to the Beatles. The whole expansive art project proved to be 100 times more expensive than any other cover made before and its influence, Wired believes, is ‘immeasurable’. This is what the music fan is at risk of losing, great statements like these will be reduced to jpeg’s on iPods, the effect lost forever and the association of music and art rarely seen again to this extent again.

Luckily, however, a few within the industry are fighting back against this demise. Understanding that the force of the internet is unbeatable, they have realised that they need to work within the new digital space to raise the album cover back up to the art form it deserves. Eliot Van Buskirk, of Wired. com, explains how music label

designers are experimenting with new tools and are hatching plans to reinvent album artwork for the digital age. They have acknowledged that musicians need good album artwork to stand out in an increasingly crowded arena, and art is beginning to fill the image building role as labels invest less into the promotion of their acts. They feel that the next phase of album design is online, with contests to design album covers open to the public through websites like Talenthouse.

Other ideas being developed include liner-note fly-throughs and DVD style menus, which would basically mean you sweep through the lyrics and artwork in a very cool way. These are all compelling ideas that are forcing the industry to once again engage with art and

the full range of creativity that accompanies music.

Overall, it seems the platform for art within the music industry is not disappearing, perhaps it is just changing and the industry is slowly adapting. Ultimately, this change is inspiring a wealth of innovation and experimentation that will hopefully continue so that we can gain some of the pleasure that album artwork provides but through a different medium.

Whether these will ever live up to the joy created by a record cover, sleeve and insert is yet to be seen, and for now jumble sales and those few remaining record stores will still be inundated with dedicated fans seeking out that original LP, an object to be treasured.

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Arts & Culture 27

Photography

From the new Stereoscope Magazine, launched on April 30th at the Barron.

28 Sport

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Sport in pictures Action from the BUCS Ultimate Championship last month (all photos by James Lawson); Snapshots from last week’s St Andrews Rugby Sevens (all photos by Celeste Sloman and James Lawson)

Have an upcoming event or fixture to be covered?

Want to see your name or your club in The Saint?

Email Richard at sport@thesaint-online.com

Sport 29

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Saint Sport Interview: AU President-elect, Andrew Hall

Whistleblower

The Saint speaks to Andrew Hall about his election win, his preparation for his term as President and his involvement with Project Zambia.

THE SAINT: Having had time to reflect on it, how was the whole campaigning experience?

Andrew Hall: Absolutely crazy, the most hectic week of my life. You have meetings throughout every day, you go to the halls, you meet the sports clubs, do your PR – you find yourself running around town like a bit of a lunatic! It was fantastic though, and I’m glad it all paid off in the end.

TS: What is Project Zambia, and what has your involvement with it been?

AH: It’s part of the ‘UK Sport IDEALS [International Development through Excellence And Leadership in Sport]’ programme. The volunteers go out every summer to Zambia and coach sport in deprived areas; we use sport as a medium to teach the likes of health and sanitation issues, make relationships with communities and hopefully leave lasting sustainable support out there. I’ve just come back from an induction weekend in Durham to learn about the project and which organisations are involved, like UK Sport and Sport In Action. I’m extremely jealous of the people who are going out there this summer, because it looks absolutely fantastic.

TS: For Saints Sport, how do you plan to manage the transition between Andy Dick and yourself?

AH: My time as Basketball President has allowed me to see the ins and outs of the AU. Over the rest of the semester, Andy Dick is keen to get me involved with the people and connections who I’ll be

Photo: St Andrews Athletic Union

TS: Looking ahead, have you made plans to get things started early, in this semester?

AH: Well, the situation [with Project Zambia] has changed. With the changes involved with the AU and BUCS Live, those first few weeks are going to be so important, so I’ve made the decision to defer Zambia till next year.

ALL SMILES: Andrew Hall is very optimistic about what Saints Sport can achieve next year

working with next year so I’m in the best position to start and I know exactly where the AU is at. Also, I do still have a degree to salvage, having probably lost a few weeks through campaigning! Hopefully a lot of the plans for continuity and direction can be set up over the next year to ensure that’s the legacy that’s left.

TS: Andrew ‘Does’ Saints Sport – what and when?

AH: I go round every club and effectively become a club member, speak to the committee, speak to the club members, generate a personal understanding with each club and find out what’s happening on the ground level rather than sitting in the office. I can also provide a lot of publicity for the clubs, take videos, photos, do a blog and designate a whole part of the Saints Sport website to this, showing the sports people might not have heard of.

It’s going to be hard work fitting it in, with the 62 sports clubs; I’ll get

started as soon as my dissertation allows. And I need to plan: know beforehand what I want to get out of the sessions, the information and publicity has to be the same for every club. But I’m really excited for it.

TS: As you see it, what shape is Saints Sport in, and are you confident steps forward can be made next year?

AH: Saints Sport is amazing – I’ve loved my time doing sport in St Andrews over the last four years.

But improvements can be made and hopefully my policies will address some of the issues. We’re currently 26th on the BUCS rankings, which is pretty good but hopefully we can improve on that too. It’s all about getting as many people involved as possible and improving the overall sporting experience for the students in St Andrews. If I can help facilitate that over the next year and leave a lasting legacy, then it’d be really rewarding.

Sport Editor Richard Browne on the Sheffield experience at BUCS...

While it is impossible to quantify what I gained from being a part of the Media Team at the BUCS Championships last month, what I can safely say is that it was a thoroughly worthwhile experience, one that I learned a great deal from.

Irrespective of financial restrictions at the moment, it is clear that student sport is in excellent health.

The small sample of matches and events I witnessed in my role as reporter – Basketball, Fencing, Netball, Ultimate and Volleyball – were of a quality as high as they were competitive and intense. It was thus a privilege to watch some of the UK’s premier athletes at this level, and indeed many look set to represent their countries in the top international competitions in future years.

It was a completely different situation to that of my customary writer and, most recently, editor role for The Saint. Here, sport was the primary focus, in some state-of-the-art venues. This is not to belittle St Andrews sport, but the event in Sheffield was, as you would expect from the BUCS Championships, on a much grander scale.

What did I gain from that? First, a greater awareness of the UK-wide university sport picture. The range of universities and institutions represented, not only in terms of athletes, but organisers, volunteers, sponsors and so on, was quite astonishing.

And, while certain universities – the usual suspects like Loughborough and Leeds Met Carnegie – dominated many events, each had its own individual and team success stories, with St Andrews no exception!

The range of sports was another thing: nineteen in total. While some high-profile events, like Athletics and Cycling, were not on the programme, those that were more than made up for it. For these nineteen events to take place simultaneously required an incredible organisational effort. That – thank goodness – was not in my remit, but I was able to gain an understanding of the background work put into these big events.

From a media point of view, perhaps the best thing was having two

of my assumptions confirmed. First, the concept of spending four days wandering around watching sport and writing about it was something I definitely enjoy – quite a relief, considering I hope to make something of a career out of it. Some were sports I’d never before seen played, at least at a competitive level; Netball was great to watch, Volleyball even better.

For someone who thinks that they know quite a lot about sport, per the average person, it was something of a reality check to have to learn about a host of new ones. But the education process was one of the best things about the experience – going into a day knowing very little at all about a sport and coming out feeling you understood at least the basics and could appreciate the skill and commitment involved in the competition.

Second, it was reassuring to hear that my journalistic content and writing style are not completely rubbish (you, dear reader, are entitled to disagree!) Needing to compress a day’s events into 500 or so words was a challenge, but one that proved satisfying on its completion. Equally, describing something I’d barely seen – the Ultimate comes to mind here, with up to half a dozen matches going on at any one time – to paint a representative picture was as fulfilling as it was tricky. Then seeing my reports up on the BUCS website and possibly circulating to local media was very rewarding. And all I’d done was watch the athletes do the hard work and write about what I’d seen!

Overall, then, the BUCS Championships was a fantastic experience for me. Everyone I met was hugely accommodating and helpful, from the BUCS staff and volunteers to coaches and competitors. Unsurprisingly for a sport-oholic, I enjoyed being able to sit and watch some superb performances from teams and individuals, knowing that was my task as Media Team writer. I can only hope that I contributed a worthwhile amount to the Championships; it would only be fair, given how much I gained from the event. And witnessing Saints teams bring home some medals? The icing on the cake.

Sporting World

A controversial (and horrendously gaudy) statue of singer Michael Jackson was unveiled by Mohamed Al-Fayed at Fulham’s Craven Cottage ten days ago, with the club chairman saying that if fans did not like it, they could go and support another team. Don’t be surprised if Stamford Bridge is full for Chelsea’s next game.

Andrew Flintoff has sparked a row in Lancashire after referring to natives of nearby Burnley, including his ex-England compatriot James Anderson, as “six-fingered dingles.” However, what started as a joke turned quite nasty, as

hundreds of fans messaged him on Twitter complaining about the inappropriate jibe. We can’t help but wonder if James Anderson needs special six-fingered batting gloves though...

this week claimed he wanted to keep working for another twenty years – which would put him well into his eighties – and ensure that Arsenal don’t win anything for another twenty years.

The fans of Uruguayan football club Penarol unveiled the world’s largest flag during their recent cup game against Independiente.

The flag was 15,000 square metres in size, covered two thirds of the stadium, and had to be carried to the ground by 300 fans because of its weight.

Kevin Na set an unlikely and probably unwanted PGA tour record for the highest ever score on a par-four hole last week.

The South-Korean took 16 shots to complete the hole, after twice driving into a forest, then hitting himself in the leg with his ball to pick up another penalty. Not even Rory McIlroy’s last Masters round was that bad…

RT

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger

Photo:: BUCS

Every fortnight we bring you a selection of the funny, bizarre and downright odd stories (and snapshots) from the sometimes very strange world of sport...

GET IN SON: The BUCS Hockey Championship in full swing

30 Sport

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

AU Clubs in brief CRICKET Flush of fixtures for 1sts

CYCLING Strong BUCS showing

FENCING SUS call-ups earned

GOLF Bournemouth next for Saints

WATER POLO Seven Saints for Scots

THE MEN’S 1st team, having opened their Scottish 1A campaign against Edinburgh yesterday, face a gruelling line-up of five fixtures in 18 days.

Rosie Holdsworth and Zoe Beesley took the Women’s Downhill team silver, with Holdsworth 9th overall.

In the XC champs, Holdsworth took bronze, Beesley 10th place and Huw Oliver 16th in the Men’s. Overall, the club entered more riders than ever before and all did themselves proud.

Three St Andrews students, Adam Gordon (Epee), Symke Haverkamp (Sabre) and Sebastian Schulz (Epee), have been selected in the Scottish Universities team for the Student 5 Nations.

Saints 1sts face Bournemouth 1sts in their BUCS Golf semi-final, to be played at Ganton GC (North Yorkshire) on the 3rd of May.

They will compete on the 25th of June at the University of Strathclyde.

Saints thrashed UW Newport 9-0 in the last round, and their reward for another victory is a final against Central Lancashire or Stirling.

There were seven Water Polo Club members in the Scottish squads for the Celtic Nations in Belfast earlier this month. James Dickinson, Liam Finlay, Lorcan Morgan and Miles Radcliffe-Trenner (Men’s) and Kristine Cosgrove, Kalliopi Gkikopoulou and Tess Herzenberg (Women’s) were all picked.

Smith, Mikaela Norbland and Megan Jones defended their title, taking victory over Stirling and Edinburgh Universities.

In the following individual

strokeplay, Smith, Angus County player, finished in an admirable 4th place and Bradbury, Welsh national player, was just behind, in 5th.

It was, therefore, a great week for the team, retaining the team title and finishing with two players in the top 5 of the Individual Championship.

Next Wednesday sees the team host Stirling, and Aberdeen come to St Andrews a week later.

Ladies Golf shine at Lossiemouth Megan Jones

It was a great win for the University of St Andrews Ladies Golf 1st team who have remained the titleholders of the 2011 Team Strokeplay Championship.

The Scottish Universities Golf Individual and Team Championship final are traditionally hosted at Moray Golf Club in Lossiemouth. The event took place from Sunday 27th to Wednesday 30th March over two links courses, the Old and the New Courses, which proved very challenging with windy and wet conditions on the first and last days.

Gemma Bradbury, Ashley

Shinty: Saints step up

Photo: St Andrews Ladies Golf Club

Ladies’ Golf Club member

GETTING INTO THE SWING OF THINGS: The team on their way to another title at Lossiemouth

defence line coming into play.

Despite plenty of scoring opportunities, a few brilliant saves from the keepers ensured that the score

remained unchanged at 2-0.

There were also dedicated performances from all three St Andrews boys - Matthew Cox,

Heini Davies

An impressive nine members of the St Andrews University Shinty Club were chosen to represent the North in this year’s SUS Shinty North vs South game held in Glasgow on the 9th of March.

Despite a late start and grey skies, the enthusiasm and skill shown by the Saints showed why the club is one of the most successful and committed university shinty clubs in Scotland.

It was a tough start for the North in the Women’s game – with Rachael T Borthwick, Heini Davies, Siony McKeown, Rebecca McPherson, Fiona Pannell and Alannah Savage making up more than half of the team - as they conceded two goals early on in the first half.

However, they did not lose spirit and both teams were evenly matched throughout the second half – with the North’s strong

Photo: St Andrews Shinty Club

Women’s Shinty Club member

BATTLING HARD: Nine Shinty Club members were crucial for the North’s teams

Stephen O’Donnell and Andrew Young - in a competitive Men’s match.

The game was fast-paced with end-to-end action but a sturdy defence and skilful shooting from the South overpowered the North with five goals. A consolation goal was scored for the North by Edinburgh’s Finlay Stark midway through the second half, leaving the score at 5-1.

Inclusion in the Women’s team was a significant achievement for Davies and Savage, having only played shinty since the start of the academic year. It was also a further accomplishment for Borthwick, McKeown, Pannell and McPherson who represented Scotland in the annual International fixture between the Scottish University shinty teams and the British University Hurling/Camogie teams in January. The Scottish team were triumphant 16-0, with all four St Andrews girls giving an impressive display and McPherson contributing to the outstanding victory with a goal.

The squads are now looking forward to the upcoming Littlejohn’s tournament which sees university teams from across Scotland coming together to compete for the coveted Littlejohn Vase.

Saints at BUCS

Continued from page 31

quality to triumph 12-4.

Overall, captain Stuart was delighted with how the weekend went, Flatball finishing ninth in the UK and second in Scotland, and was proud of each player in the squad, as well as acknowledging the work of Heywood in the team’s success. Edinburgh Ro Sham were third, behind Cambridge (Strange Blue) and eventual winners Sussex – who, it must be said, had been given a scare by Flatball in their pool match the day before!

In Climbing, St Andrews’ Xiao Xian Goh managed Women’s Individual Bronze. St Andrews Snooker team claimed the Team Shield in their first year in the competition, seeing off Ulster 2nds to secure Gold. And Ellie Cooper competed in the BUCS 2 (advanced) Trampolining, taking 23rd in the category out of 37 participants.

CHAMPIONSHIPS OVERVIEW Badminton was steamrollered by Leeds Met Carnegie, who mananged a clean sweep, while their Women’s Basketball 1sts took their Championship; Worcester claimed the Men’s Championship.

Loughborough and Birmingham were the respective Men’s and Women’s Hockey Championship winners, while Durham Men’s and Women’s teams – unsurprisingly – dominated Lacrosse. Loughborough outclassed Leeds Met Carnegie to take Netball’s top prize, but the northern side got their revenge by claiming the Rugby League Championship. London Met’s Men won their Tennis Championship, but their female counterparts were beaten to top spot by Durham.

Chairman of BUCS Ed Smith felt the competition was “bigger and better than it’s ever been”, in terms of organisation and participation, with over four thousand students competing at a very high standard in nineteen different sports, and looked forward to the years of competition and development ahead in Sheffield, and seeing university students representing their countries at an even higher level.

Sport 31

The Saint • Thursday 21 April 2011

Tennis Club member Chris Impiglia reviews a season of progression, promotion and silverware - it’s been a fine year...

Tennis in St Andrews is not easy. In a sport designed for the summer months and perfect conditions, playing outdoors throughout the winter, braving heavy winds, rain, ice, and snow, means consistent practice and training are hard to come by.

This year, however, there were no excuses. Gritting their teeth (and in some cases putting on thirteen layers of clothing) and after months of hard training in the standard St Andrews Tennis Team fashion, running with 100 lb logs across West Sands, sprinting up and down the Travelator, and doing backflips off the pier, the Men’s 1st Tennis team has had an outstanding year.

After a tough season last

year, Calum McRae, Alan Conroy, Ross Gamblen, Kevin Breen, Jonathan Grey and Christopher Impiglia swore to make amends, and they did so in spectacular fashion. Not only have they gone undefeated, drawing only one match with Stirling 3rds, they have won promotion into division 1A, and currently lie at the top of division 2A with eleven points to spare.

In addition, they have won the Conference Cup, beating Strathclyde’s 1st 10-2 in Dundee.

Next they face Montrose in the first round of the Scottish Cup. No doubt they will continue to impress. Although fourth years Breen and Impiglia will miss out on what will surely be a glorious season next year, they are more

than confident the other boys will be up for the challenge.

The Tennis Club overall has seen incredible success throughout the season, with thanks due to coach Mike Aitken, who has reorganized the Tennis Club, creating a ladder system and

two new 3rd teams, which has helped establish St Andrews as one of the top Scottish towns for tennis.

Aitken describes the success of the Saints humbly not mentioning the great contribution he himself has made to the Club:

Photo: St Andrews Tennis Club

Club Focus

SERVING UP SUCCESS: The hard work put in the players and staff at the Tennis Club has paid off with some great wins that mean next year could be even better

“The tennis teams have done brilliantly in their leagues and cups this season. Our Women’s 2nds beat our Women’s 3rds in the cup final which shows great strength in depth. The Men’s 1st team are unbeaten all season, winning both the league and the cup. It has been a great end to the season and we deservedly take home plenty of silverware.”

The Saints have shown incredible success in all levels of the Tennis Club: the Men’s 2nds lie in second place of division 3A, whereas the Men’s 3rds, who were only established this year, lie mid-table of the same group. The Women’s 1st have come runners-up in division 1A, the Women’s 2nds are top of division 2A, and the Women’s 3rds are third in the same division.

No doubt with Aitken’s help all the tennis squads will continue to celebrate great success, and hopefully they will all be rewarded one day with some beautiful indoor facilities.

through their first bouts to turn the match on its head. The Saints trio kept the tempo high and Manchester were left trailing – Haverkamp sealed it, his aggression seeing off Jordan Scofield for 45-30.

Hence they went into the Foil knowing they needed 32 points for overall victory. Laurence Carrick started Saints off; the bouts were astonishingly tight but DiazGonzalez confirmed the team’s triumph with a clever little jab getting the crucial 32 on the board.

While Manchester did win the category 45-43, it was Saints who were heading for the final, with Imperial (who had seen off Edinburgh) waiting for them.

Carrick got the final off and running for Saints in the Foil.

From the teams being level at 11all, Imperial rapidly took control andcomfortably took the category 45-26.

Next up was the Sabre; like in the semi-final, it would be decisive for the final result. Maiyuran Ratneswaran, later awarded player of the final, was instrumental for Imperial as they took control from the outset. Despite Saints’ resistance, they never let up the pressure, taking the category 45-20.

Imperial, then, had a lead of 44 points and thus only needed one more point from Epee to seal gold.

They got that point in the first bout but Saints kept going and Gordon took the category to 44-all in the last minute of fencing, only for Imperial’s Marcello Colombino to snatch it at the death.

Gold, therefore, went to Imperial with their deserved 135-90 victory. Their Women’s 1sts also took their Championship, defeating Cambridge. The Trophy finals brought victories for Birmingham Men and Cardiff Women.

Saints can reflect on their medals and the fact that they have placed second in UK university Fencing, a quite remarkable achievement. They can take great heart from their hugely-impres-

sive win over Manchester and their performance in the final against a side full of UK and foreign international fencers. The medals are a sign of hope for an equally bright future in the coming seasons.

The final day of the BUCS Championships in Sheffield brought gold for the Volleyball Women’s 1st team, who won the national Trophy competition with a comprehensive final victory.

Saints went into their match with Southampton at All Saints School, Sheffield, with a great deal of confidence. That confidence proved to be well-grounded as Southampton were no match for the Saints’ positive approach and understanding as a team.

The beginning of the match was a cagey affair. It remained close, before Southampton went 13-10 up, at which point Saints’ coach Alex Davidson called a time-out. That seemed to rally the team, a great block at the net and a couple of great kills helping them to 17-13. Some dodgy serves allowed Southampton back in, but they then repaid the favour and Saints were 21-17 up. The set was sealed in Saints’ favour at 25-19 when their rivals netted at the end of a long rally.

Both sides started the second set with stubborn defences that forced errors; however Saints showed greater attacking intent and went 11-4 up. Saints kept the pressure on and, with a Southampton serve going long, they had the set 25-13: one more was needed for victory.

Southampton, determined to start a fightback, went 6-4 up, but some well-aimed serves had Saints in the lead. Their serves continued to be deadly, as they moved clear at 11-7. Everything seemed to be falling their way: Lorena Tussis’ elbow set put them on course for 19-11. Then a couple of lethal kills, the last from Maria Christina Marchi, brought match point.

Southampton survived that one, but their resultant serve went long

to end the set at 25-16 and make Saints champions.

Captain Britt Martin said afterwards that it felt “amazing” to have won and it was “really welldeserved,” with the team’s hard work and a strong start disrupted by weather and scheduling problems, and the Trophy proved this was the “best team we’ve ever had in St Andrews Volleyball,” in terms of ability and mental strength, helped by not looking to one ‘star player’ to win them games. Coach Alex Davidson highlighted the team and individuals’ committed training and fighting spirit over the season, and believed they were capable of being in the top three teams in the UK. Victory on the day, he said, had been achieved by Saints playing on their own terms – “positive, attacking volleyball straight from the serve.”

In the day’s other matches, Saints’ friends and rivals Dundee made the final of the Women’s Championships, only to be beaten 25-14 25-10 by a ruthlessly-efficient Leeds Met Carnegie side, whose male counterparts also won the Men’s Championship with a 25-12 25-22 triumph over Sheffield Hallam. The Men’s Trophy was claimed by Manchester, who saw off Oxford in a five-set thriller.

MORE SAINTS IN SHEFFIELD St Andrews Ultimate Frisbee 1sts, Flatball, recovered from a disappointing first day of competition to establish themselves as the ninth best UK university team, a marked improvement on last year’s standings.

In a pool with some of the top teams in the competition, it was always going to be tough. Despite some excellent scores by the likes of captain Dave Stuart, Will Compernolle and Harry Glasspool, Manchester Halcyon, Sussex Mohawks (against whom Flatball led 5-4 at one point) and Exeter Urielproved too strong.

Flatball coach Ben Heywood said he was very pleased with the performances shown by the team,

even if results had not been ideal.

After an overnight team meeting, the rewards for those performances came in the second day’s placing matches. They showed against Oxford (OW!) that they were starting to click as a team and won 12-10. Next up was a local rivalry against Dundee (Shooting Stars). It was an extremely tight affair (7-6 to Flatball at halfway) and, locked at 10-10, it took a superb defence, sprint and catch from the subsequent huck from Glasspool to win the game; the players on the pitch and sidelines exploded with joy – they were into the Plate final, to face the guest team from Cork.

But the previous two games had taken a lot out of them and, despite an interesting hammer from Drew Courtright and every player giving their all, Cork had enough Continued on page 30

ACTION-PACKED: The Fencing Championship was intense (above), while Saints Women’s Volleyball - job done - celebrate winning the Trophy Gold having comprehensively defeated Southampton in the final (below)

Photo:: Alex Davidson

Continued from back page

Photo:: BUCS

Fencing and Volleyball claim BUCS Championships medals

Inside Sport: Focus on the Tennis Club - it’s ace! p 31

Sport SAINT

Shark Kings of Rugby Sevens

Kings got their revenge, their sustained pressure and pace on the flanks crucial as they struck just before and after the half-way point to help them to a 26-17 victory.

Before the Cup final was played, the Plate was decided.

The second tier competition saw Rat Pack and Fighting Cocks reach the semi-finals, only to lose out to Edinburgh Medics and Coolidge College respectively. The final itself was a topsy-turvy affair, with Coolidge moving 17-10 ahead just after half-time but ultimately the

Richard Browne

FULL THROTTLE: GLBM (above, pink and white strip) squeezed past Flint Tropics in this tense semi-final, but were then denied the top prize by Shark Kings

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Medics’ pace and control won them the day, running out 25-17 winners to claim the first piece of silverware of the day.

That only left one match remaining: the Cup final, between

More Sevens action on page 28

Medal success for mighty Saints Richard Browne Saint Sport Editor

Saints went to last month’s BUCS Championships in Sheffield in optimistic mood; they came back with Championship Silver (Fencing, left) and Trophy Gold (Volleyball, below left).

Photo: Richard Browne

students (mainly fourth years), Slipperies 1sts and 2nds and GLBM (‘Good Lads Bad Men’), the latter doing just enough to see off Spartans 35-22. By this point in the day, the sun was out and so too were spectators: every year the Rugby Sevens attracts current and former students, parents and people of the St Andrews town community, with this year being no exception.

As more people came to watch and bask in the sun and the relaxed atmosphere, the standard of rugby seemed to go up a notch, as the heavyweights in the competition went head to head in the quarter-finals. Luvians were not quite on form in their match, but Glasgow Titans put in the performance to punish them and the first big name was sent crashing out. Then it was the turn of the two Slipperies teams; the 1sts succumbing to Shark Kings and the 2nds to GLBM. The first semi-final saw GLBM claim their shot at glory as they defeated Flint Tropics 26-24. Flint Tropics were behind for almost the entire match and, though they never gave it up, they could not quite deny GLBM a deserved spot in the final. The second semi was a repeat of last year’s final: Glasgow Titans versus Shark Kings, a match the Titans won in extra time. This year, though, Shark

‘The sun was out and so too were the spectators’

Photo: Alex Davidson

The 42nd St Andrews Rugby Sevens, powered by Rampant Sporting, took place last Saturday and was a great success from an organisational and spectator point of view, and none more so than for the tournament champions and winners of the Drummond Cup, Shark Kings.

The day started early and was missing spectators (most still being in bed) and three of the expected 28 teams (who had pulled out only the day before). Nevertheless, Tournament Referee Tom Eyles had done a marvellous logistical job on getting the competition running as efficiently as possible, indeed as well organised as it has been in some time. His priority was “the rugby not the lash,” though how many of the attending teams shared his attitude it is hard to say.

The 25 teams who had made it began their campaigns with pool matches, having been drawn in seven groups and scheduled onto four pitches. The first match featured Glasgow Titans, last year’s Cup winners, and it was clear from the outset that they were in St Andrews with thoughts only of retaining their title: Rat Pack, who can count Prince William as a former player, were blown away 52-0.

Another team in contention for the main prize was Luvians, winners of the Cup in 2009 and the Plate last April. Like Glasgow Titans, they eased through their pool matches to sit top of their group.

The winner of Pool C, meanwhile, was Shark Kings – a team of St Andrews alumni, three times Cup finalists but never champions – whose captain Johnny Brock was optimistic that this could be their year. Their early form, notably a 68-0 win over Uzbekistanis, suggested they certainly had a chance.

The round of sixteen saw wins for the above three teams, as well as the teams of current St Andrews

Photo: Celeste Sloman

Saint Sport Editor

the current students of GLBM and alumni of Shark Kings. It was the latter who were on top early on, but University 1st XV star Matt Hannay’s break allowed GLBM to cut the deficit to two. However, with a couple of mistakes in the midfield being ruthlessly punished, Shark Kings moved to a 19-5 half-time lead. The second half saw both sides defend resolutely and make killer runs when in possession, but Shark Kings stayed clear and, with their 3119 triumph, won their first ever Drummond Cup. The event had been enjoyable to attend and the high standards of organisation and inter-team camaraderie were matched by the quality of sevens rugby on display. With a delighted Brock promising Shark Kings would be back in 2012 to defend their crown, it should be another one to savour.

And if that infamous posttournament lash was as bubbly as the champagne rugby shown during the day, it must have been one heck of a party.

The Fencing Men’s 1sts took silver in the BUCS Championship, defeating Manchester 131-119 to get to the final before succumbing to an impressive Imperial College team.

The semi-final was a closelyfought affair, but was decided by Saints’ dominance in the Sabre weapon category. For Saints, it was a particularly sweet victory having lost to Manchester twice in the BUCS Northern Premier division this season.

The Epee team of Adam Gordon, Darran Milne and Sebastian Schulz started well, taking a 2017 lead against some capable opponents. However, Manchester reeled in the lead and won the category 44-43.

Sabre was a very different story. The team of Symke Haverkamp, Dave Taiclet and Saints captain Cesar Diaz-Gonzalez stormed Continued on page 31

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