Issue 199

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THE SAINT ST ANDREWS, 4 FEBRUARY 2016

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Arts & Culture Natalie Correa reviews the London Men’s Fashion Collection Page 32

Photo: Lorelei Pfeffer

Viewpoint How Dillon Yeh learned to stop worrying and love the Trump

Students during Refresher’s Week celebrate Rodeo Night at the Union. Read on page 24 for a full recap of Refresher’s week highs and lows.

University Hall’s Old Wing to close for all of next academic year Joseph Cassidy News editor It has been announced that the Old Wing of University Hall will be closed for the duration of the 2016/17 academic year.

In a statement at the bottom of the accommodation services website, the University asks people to note that “due to refurbishment,” the old wing will not be available.

A spokesperson for the University said: “We know our residences are at the heart of our community and play a vital part in the unique St Andrews student experience. That’s why the University is engaged in a rolling refurbishment programme, in order to expand our estate and provide students with the best possible living space.

“As part of that effort, and to meet HMO requirements, the University will close the Old Wing of University Hall from September to May to allow essential wiring works to be completed.

“However we’re confident we have the capacity within our estate to manage this without jeopardising our pledge to find a place in halls for any first year student who wants one. “ The closure of the Old Wing of University Hall will affect 91 beds.

However, the University spokesperson also noted that there are currently 155 vacant beds in University accommodation and that they have “factored the closure into our planning for the next academic year.”

According to a statement on the University Hall Facebook page, most of the communal spaces in the Old Wing will be closed, including the West Common Room, Libraries, Senior Study and old wing Dining Room.

Rhys Madden, one of the senior students for University Hall, told The Saint that, “Originally the upgrades were scheduled for a slightly later date, but were moved forward so it doesn’t coincide with the closure of Andrew Melville in an attempt to stagger reductions in spaces, and avoid excess pressure on accommodation - so while it was a bit of a surprise it actually means that returning students will be more likely to gain hall accommodation the next couple of years.”

“Both RBS and accommodation services have been very accommodating, with an awareness of the importance of communal spaces in hall life, so while some communal spaces may be closing they’re expanding hours on bookable spaces to have them open 24/7 and also

looking into temporary social spaces similar to the Portakabin currently in place at Albany Park,” he continued.

“Accommodation services are also suggesting that returning student numbers don’t have to decrease proportionally with the total number of spaces, so most returners should manage to move back to University Hall, and if not University Hall then they’re confident they’ll be offered University accommodation elsewhere.

“In essence the improvements are necessary, and I believe the University is doing a good job at managing the impact of Old Wing’s closure on both returning students and new arrivals.”

Speaking to The Saint, the Students’ Association Accommodation Officer, Alexandre Cirric assured that the University was working and in discussions with students throughout the redevelopment process.

“With regards to the University Hall renovations, Ben Stuart [Head of Residential business services] has notified the Senior Students of all the halls, including University Hall, and taken questions from the Senior Students about this issue,” he said.

Going on, Mr Cirric said “He’s been open about the series of HMOs that need to be taken place across the relevant accommodation sites.”

Pat Matthewson, President of the Students’ Association, also expressed his support for the ongoing work of the University.

“Residential business services has worked closely with the student-led Accommodation Team and senior students in order to ensure minimal disruption as the Old Wing is renovated to meet new HMO requirements.

“Together they have found solutions safeguarding access to common rooms and other facilities.”

“This experience underscores the importance of current efforts to expand the University’s accommodation portfolio, ensuring a robust supply to meet any future hurdles that may arise.”

The spokesperson for the University also told The Saint that they are “currently in a tender process for the redevelopment of Albany Park and the extension of University Hall. Once a contractor has been brought on board work will begin to structure a build plan.”

“We are committed to keeping students informed of developments as these projects move forward. The director of residential and business services will be pleased to respond to any queries, though plans are still at an early stage. Any queries from residents can be addressed to accommodation@ st-andrews.ac.uk.”

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Features New anonymous app ‘Thoughts Around Me’ set to rival YikYak? Page 15

Sport Alex Hayes reports on the unstoppable progress of Saint Football under Stuart Milne

Page 36

2 News

thesaint-online.com

4 February 2016 • The Saint

Student maintenance grants to Are you an international be converted into loans Inside the paper

student hoping to work in the UK? Viewpoint, page 8

Features

Photography

R&A Ransome Scholarship recipient thanks her donors

Compare winter in the US from coast to coast

Page 20

Page 26

Money

Events

How to make the most of Valentine’s Day, single or otherwise

The Saint compares the variety of upcoming fashion shows

Page 13

Page 26

Editorial board

Tom Williams

Maintenance grants for university students from low-income families have been scrapped and converted into loans in the Government’s latest round of spending cuts. These grants were previously given to students from low income backgrounds to assist them with the costs of living while at university.

Students in England and Wales from families with annual household incomes of £25,000 or less previously qualified for maintenance grants of up to £3,387 a year.

The grants were not repaid –– unlike student loans which cover tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year, which graduates start to pay off when their income reaches £21,000 a year.

The same conditions will now apply to the maintenance loans.

The Labour Party has said the proposal amounts to a “broken promise,” and has also criticised the way the government tried to push the proposals through the House of Commons without debate.

Shadow Education Minister Gordon Marsden said the government has “shied away” from scrutiny of the issue by putting the plan to a committee vote last week.

He warned the proposals would mean poorer students graduating with more debt than their peers.

He added: “When the government tripled tuition fees in 2012 they tried to sweeten the pill by talking up the centrality of the maintenance grant to

ensure that the most disadvantaged could still access higher education.

“They promised three things: A national scholarship programme, the maintenance grants for the disadvantaged programme and an earnings-related threshold that would be up rated with inflation.”

Ministers may ensure that students from the very poorest families still qualify for grants – for example, by reducing the cut-off point from £42,620 to £25,000.

Vince Cable, who was responsible for higher education as Business Secretary in the Coalition Government, blocked plans at the time to convert maintenance grants into loans.

However, Sajid Javid, his Conservative successor, has drawn up the spending cuts in a department that is not protected like health, schools and overseas aid are.

The National Union of Students has criticised the change, but Prime Minister David Cameron has said the new system would help to “uncap” university places as he said that tuition fee loans, introduced by the coalition, had increased the number of students from poorer households attending university.

The transition from grants to loans is likely to impact 500,000 less affluent students across the UK. However, as St Andrews has one of the lowest number of students from lower income backgrounds in the UK, with only 13 per cent according to a 2012 study by The Times, it remains to

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be seen whether this will have a significant impact on the University.

For the 13 per cent belonging to lower income backgrounds who may have previously taken advantage of the maintenance grants, it is likely to add a sizeable amount to their student debt when they graduate.

Mellissa Turner, Member for Widening Access and Participation said that the government is abolishing support for those with the greatest need.

‘Unfortunately we are in a period of economic challenges and money should be put to the places it is needed most.

“Although university is undoubtedly a great place and important to further the chances of individuals in the future, I believe it is not always the correct answer for everyone,” she said.

“I must stress I do not support the decision to abolish the student maintenance grants, but I recognise the difficulties in this current economic climate.”

Pat Matthewson, President of the Students’ Association, told The Saint that: “The shift from maintenance grants to loans underscores a larger philosophical shift away from the idea of higher education as a public good.

“If the evidence is correct in suggesting many middle and lower income families are ‘deterred by debt’ the move undermines the meritocracies that universities can and should be.”

Editorial

Maintenance loans: the Devil’s in the details

T

o many, the government’s announcement that maintenance grants for low-income household students would be replaced with loans was seen as the next installment in its crusade against students. First, tuition fees were raised to £9,000 for the 2012 intake, and now students from low-income households are to be denied the financial support they need to attend university in the first place.

Obviously the idea of reducing support for low-income students sounds incredibly unfair. Almost catastrophic, in fact, for such students in St Andrews who already have to deal with ridiculously high living costs.

But, we must ask ourselves: what is the reality of the situation?

To see beyond tabloid headlines, we need to look at the fine print and delve into the details of the new maintenance loan. Previously, with the grant system, low-income

students were eligible to receive up to £3,387 a year. The new system allows these same students to receive up to £8,200 yearly.

The trade off being that, although students are due to receive more financial support under the changes, they may have to pay this sum back following graduation (unlike under the previous system). We say students ‘may’ have to pay back their loan because the structure of the new system requires that repayments be taken as a percentage of any earnings over £21,000. Simply, students who take out maintenance loans will not have to pay a single penny back unless they earn over £21,000.

As such, the previous structure of the grant is not entirely gone. Rather, low-income students will have the opportunity to receive increased financial support throughout their university years, which they will not have to pay back later unless they

possess the means to do so.

In St Andrews, the increased sum received by low-income students may help cover the exorbitant prices of living in the Bubble, enabling them to further immerse themselves in university life. Consequently, we believe that criticism of the new loan on the grounds that it reduces financial support is incorrect. Rather, the loan will be providing more support than the grant did.

Indeed, the changes may actually help widen access to St Andrews for students from low-income backgrounds, as they will now be able to live and study in the town comfortably.

It is for this reason that The Saint endorses the change, because it recognizes that living costs are arguably more important than tuition fees when considering a university. If students are unable to afford the day-to-day costs of a

town like St Andrews, the question of whether they have the grades to study here, or whether one day they must pay back their loans becomes irrelevant.

What’s most important is whether students have the financial support they need to deal with daily living costs, and turning the maintenance grant into a loan will do just that. It will allow students who may have previously dismissed St Andrews (despite no tuition fee’s for Scottish students) as unaffordable, to instead reconsider the university as a place of study.

Of course a grant providing a larger sum without requiring payment would be preferable.

However, if it is a choice between a lower grant or a higher loan, we believe that low-income students, especially those in St Andrews, will benefit from a larger amount of financial support available.

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 Students’ 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.

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St Andrews free speech ranking downgraded from “Green” to “Amber” Reem Awad The Free Speech University Rankingss (FSUR) 2016 have given St Andrews an Amber Free Speech rating.

The University Ranking for Free Speech analyses the level of free speech at British universities. A survey of 115 universities shows that 90 per cent of universities censor speech in 2016 in comparison to 80 per cent in 2015.

Run by Spiked Magazine, the survey’s website states that they examine “the policies and actions of universities and students’ unions” and “provide a detailed, annual insight into the state of free speech, debate and expression in the British academy.”

This ranking uses the traditional Traffic Light System, Red: ‘Bans and Actively Censors Ideas on Campus’.

Amber: ‘Has Chilled Free Speech Through Intervention’. Green: ‘Has A Hands-off Approach to Free Speech’.

Through using the Traffic Light System, the ranking gains support for its simplistic and straight forward design.

Since the publication of the university rankings, the ‘Down with the Censorship campaign’ to stand up against the restrictions has been launched.

However, reasons behind the free speech restrictions and censorship have been justified by as necessary to meet universities and student unions’ aims to protect students from possible harassment on issues regarding sexuality, race and religion and the need

to create “safe spaces” where students can feel safe from physical or psychological harm based on their identity.

The National Union of Students is committed to the creation of safe spaces and the idea has been adopted by many student unions across the country. Its deputy president, Richard Brooks, recently said: “Student unions are often the only place where students can be themselves, a place where they can think about things and challenge ideas and thoughts in a safe environment.”

Jo Boon, convenor of the St

Freedom of speech is a basic human right that should be upheld within a university environment Andrews University feminist society told The Saint of the need to balance the right to free speech with the safety and wellbeing of students.

“The feminist society is able to continue with a broad range of excellent, and sometimes controversial, activities, debates and campaigns,”

she said.

She then added; “However, there are examples where students may feel less comfortable speaking out on controversial topics.

“Recent examples include: Bob Lambert’s resignation, the lack of gender neutral bathrooms and experiences of sexual violence.

“Students must be respectful of one another, careful not to make libelous claims and considerate of the impact of their words but able to speak out on issues of concern to them.

“Freedom of speech is a basic human right that should be upheld within a university environment.”

Former University of St Andrews Principal, Louise Richardson who recently moved to the University of Oxford spoke on the issue of free speech at universities in the wake of the Cecil Rhodes Statue Campaign.

The campaign gained huge media coverage to bring down the statue of the ‘founding father’ of apartheid in South Africa from the university’s campus.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, she stated that “We need to expose our students to ideas that make them uncomfortable so that they can think about why it is that they feel uncomfortable and what it is about those ideas that they object to” Jackie Ashkin, the Students’ Association Officer for Racial Equality told The Saint that she believes that this survey shows that St Andrews must do more to promote and protect free speech in universities.

“I think it’s good that we’ve come up on the radar - we’re traditionally a very conservative institution, but I think students are very aware of the coming storm,” she said.

University is a place for us to be confronted with ideas and people who make us uncomfortable Going on, Ms Ashkin commented: “There are a lot of American students on campus who have expressed their relief to me over being in the UK and away from really horrific attempts at censoring ideas.

“University is a place for us to be confronted with ideas and people who make us uncomfortable.

“Cecil Rhodes, like very many of the people that we venerate to this day, was not perfect by a long shot, and taking down his statue I think would, for the sake of consistency, mean that any number of statues in institutions across the UK would need to be removed.

“Free speech is a precedent that we need to actively be considering and negotiating in our everyday inter-

actions, because it’s really important that people are able to speak their minds, whether we agree with them or not.

The Students’ Association Director of Representation, Joe Tantillo, expressed his confusion to The Saint as to why St Andrews rating had been lowered, “St Andrews’ lowered rating is attributed to policies that were in place in 2015 and even before, so in the case of the Zero Tolerance policy to sexual harassment; I don’t understand why our rating has been lowered from Green to Amber.

“There have been no official changes to any of these policies.”

Mr Tantillo also went on to say, “St Andrews is a place that has been very open when it comes to free speech.

“We don’t have a no platform policy for speakers the way NUS affiliated unions do, even for radical speakers. Our councils voted against banning the song Blurred Lines, which the article in question alluded to as a form of censorship.

“All in all, I would say that we do a good job of allowing people to speak their minds, particularly in an academic sense.

“It seems whoever created this rating system has a problem with our sexual harassment policy.

If their argument is that people should simply be allowed to sexually harass each other for the good of free speech, well I would have to strongly disagree with them.”

Lauren Charlton Deputy news editor Tenants have now moved into the first council houses to be built in St Andrews in 17 years.

Though only a handful are currently complete, by March, 29 new homes will stand at Freeborn Court, off Abbey Walk.

The houses will consist of 22 two-bedroom and seven three-bedroom homes.

This comes as part of Fife Council’s Affordable Housing Programme which aims to provide 2,700 new and affordable homes to the public by

It’s great to see the modern, energy efficient flats welcome their first phase of tenants 2017.

The Council’s Executive Spokesperson for Housing & Building Services, Councillor Judy Hamilton, described the construction as “a lovely development that will help to

tackle the very high demand and low turnover of council housing in the St Andrews area.

“It’s great to see the modern, energy efficient flats welcome their first phase of tenants to what I like to call ‘warmer, drier, healthier homes’.”

St Andrews Labour Councillor, Brian Thomson, also welcomed the houses’ completion, noting the desperate need for new council housing in a town “where a huge proportion of the housing stock is owned by absentee landlords, who lease their properties as expensive student lets.

“As a result, many streets have almost no permanent residents, and the houses that do become available are only available to those with substantial incomes,” he told The Saint.

Councillor Thomson observed that this leads to many people who grew up in the town moving elsewhere in search for affordable accommodation, which he described as “not conducive to maintaining a sustainable community.”

Though the Councillor noted that the 29 new houses do not by any means alleviate the town’s housing problem, he hopes “the development does represent an important step, and it will hopefully be followed by the development of further new affordable homes, as other sites within the town become available.”

Tenant David Raynor also expressed hopes for further new housing in St Andrews for those who had not been as lucky as he and his fami-

Photo: Brian Thomson

Tenants move into first council homes built in St Andrews in 17 years

ly, who he describes as “happy” and “thankful” to have been offered one of the new flats at Freeborn Court.

Asserting that the housing is “of a very high standard,” he said, “These

These flats are beautiful inside and out flats are beautiful inside and out and the area is going to be so quiet once the building is all completed.

“We are two minutes from the town centre by walking, but yet

you feel [like] the flats are in the countryside.”

Mr Raynor explained that in his previous two-bedroom flat elsewhere in St Andrews, two boys (aged 10 and six months) were forced to share a bedroom with their two stepsisters (aged 14 and 10). He described the situation as “unworkable” and “distressing.”

The tenant’s job as a firefighter required him to be on call 24 hours per day and able to get to the fire station within minutes, making moving out of St Andrews impossible.

With the family unable to afford private rented accommodation and the waiting list for housing in St Andrews so long, Mr Raynor was considering resigning from the fire service in order to find a suitable home

for his family, when he was offered the flat at Freeborn Court.

Stewart Shearer, Managing Director of Robertson Partnership Homes, responsible for the construction of the houses said: “We are delighted that tenants are now benefiting from their new homes at Freeborn Court, following the handover of the first phase of council housing in St Andrews in nearly two decades.”

“We are committed to providing affordable housing across Scotland, with Freeborn Court one of three projects being delivered in partnership with Fife Council. Combined, these developments in St Andrews, Methil and Kirkcaldy will deliver almost 300 affordable, quality homes for the people of Fife.”

4 News

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4 February 2016 • The Saint

Sam Maybee Changes to the block grants given to Councils announced in the Scottish Government Budget have left Fife Council with a projected £91 million budget gap over the next 3 years, with severe cuts to public services expected as a result.

A reduction in public spending allocated to local government in the UK Autumn Statement led to Finance Minister John Swinney to announce a 3.5 per cent cut to the block grant given to local councils for the next financial year. This comes on top of a real terms 8.5 per cent cut in Scottish Government funding to local government between 2010/11 and 2013/14.

Although the Finance Minister claims that the equivalent figure for English councils is 27 per cent, the proposed changes have nevertheless provoked significant opposition from figures in local government across Scotland.

Since the announcement of the budget in December, negotiations have been ongoing between local government association Cosla and

the Scottish Government. The funding agreement as it stands, according to Cosla, is likely to result in £350 million of cuts across Scotland, although council tax will remain frozen. Talks appear to be in deadlock, with Cosla maintaining that the current proposals are unacceptable.

Fife Council in particular faces one of the largest shortfalls, with the Council admitting that the changes would require a significant ‘prioritisation’ of services. The different Council departments have all been asked to identify changes that can be made to assist in reducing the shortfall. An online consultation has also been launched, with the Council inviting Fifers to submit their views in advance of the budget being set on 11 February.

The deadlock between the Council and the Scottish Government appears to show no sign of abating, however. In a statement, Cllr David Ross (Lab) equated the proposals from Mr Swinney to “highway robbery.”

He questioned the value of the Council Tax freeze, which remains a part of the proposed funding settlement. The eight year freeze has been

a key SNP manifesto commitment. He said: “Most people now realise that the council tax freeze is past its sell by date having been in place for nine years with no alternative means of funding local service put in its place by the Scottish Government.”

Cllr Ross also criticised the penalties that would be imposed on the Council were it to raise Council Tax, which he claimed could total over £10 million. It now seems increasingly likely the proposals may be challenged in court, with Cllr Ross saying: “I have asked the Council’s Chief Executive to

£91 mil

Cuts that may have to be made to Fife Council’s budget seek legal advice on whether we can challenge these latest proposals from the Scottish Government in the courts on the grounds that they are completely unreasonable.”

time for everyone involved in the UK gin industry and our gin trail is the start of a fascinating venture to share the origins, art and innovations involved in producing this Great British spirit.

“British gin has a strong, vibrant history.

“By publishing the gin trail map we hope to mark its renaissance and ensure its future as a quintessentially British, internationally spirit.”

The “hard work and ingenuity” of the distillers has also been praised by Scottish Secretary David Mundell.

“Our distillers are creating some unique gins by experimenting with techniques from the whisky industry and using new blends of local botanicals.

“It is really exciting to see such innovation within our great tradition of gin distilling,” he added.

Other locations include Gordon Castle, Fochabers, Moray and Dunnet Bay Distillery, Caithness.

Photo: The Saint

The Eden Mill is featured in a new Scottish tourist trail showcasing the country’s best gin distilleries and bars that has been launched in a bid to capitalise on renewed interest in the spirit.

The spirit is worth £1.76 billion to the UK economy and about 70 per cent of it is produced in Scotland.

The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) hope the new Scotland Gin Trail could boost the industry’s fortunes further.

It also features distilleries as far afield as Shetland, Moray and Perthshire as well as specialist bars in the Central Belt.

Organisers of the gin map hope the new initiative can mirror the success of the well-established whisky trails in Scotland.

Last year research revealed that

there were around 1.5 million visits to Scotch whisky distillery visitor centres in 2014.

They spent a total of almost £50m on tours and in their shops and cafes up from £27 million in 2010.

Elizabeth Truss, the UK government’s Environment Secretary, has revealed ambitions for UK gin exports to rival the success of whisky, which reached £4 billion last year.

She said: “There has never been a more exciting time for the industry, with the UK being the biggest exporter of gin in the world, selling enough to make 1.6 billion gin and tonics.

“I want to the harness the ambition of our Scottish gin-trepreneurs, helping them to grow the UK’s reputation for quality gin both here and abroad.

“I want to see it up there with Scotch whisky in terms of global sales.”

Mike Beale, chief executive of the WSTA, said: “This is a hugely exciting

Open provides £140 million boost to Scottish economy Joseph Cassidy News editor

It’s Gin o’clock: Eden Mill to feature on distillery tourist trail Joseph Cassidy News editor

Photo: Wikimedia

Fife Council may have to cut millions from key public services

The Open Championship in St Andrews brought £140 million into the Scottish economy last year, according to new research.

A report, commissioned by golf’s governing body the R&A, showed spending by visitors to Scotland for the tournament generated £88 million – nearly double the £47.5 million achieved in 2010 when the event was last held at the Old Course.

St Andrews, which is known around the world as the home of golf, hosted the 144th Open in July, with American Zach Johnson winning the famous Claret Jug trophy.

Admissions topped more than 237,000 over the course of the event, with 93,000 fans flocking to the Fife town for the event, including 26,400 from overseas.

Separate research by Kantar Media Sport Intelligence suggested the event, which was broadcast to more than 500 million homes worldwide, generated a further £52 million in marketing benefit .

The economic impact assessment, carried out by Sheffield Hallam University’s sport industry research centre, estimated the benefit to Fife alone was about £52 million.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told STV: “We all know that golf and its origins are synonymous with Scotland, but these excellent figures show that the connection between the game and its spiritual home is as strong and productive as ever. “[Visitors] have the opportunity to experience not only one of the finest courses in the world, but also take in such a stunning setting on the Fife coast.”

NUS warning to Scottish universities Tom Williams The National Union of Students (NUS) in Scotland has warned that plans to reform higher education south of the border, could damage the success of universities in Scotland.

In a Green Paper Report, the UK Government plans to widen participation and drive up teaching quality through a new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This establishes a scheme by which universities will compete over who has the best teaching standards.

In response to the proposal, NUS Scotland said the plans had “too narrow a focus” and should instead concentrate on learning outcomes.

Scotland has “rightly rejected” the “consumerist model of higher education,” says NUS Scotland, warning Scottish universities not to get dragged into fulfilling the necessary metrics to compete.

Furthermore, there are worries that there could be a rush roll out of the TEF. Chris Millward, Director of Policy at Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), commented on the small window of opportunity to run pilots for the TEF before the planned launch in September.

He said: “Normally we’d want the development of new systems to be based on evidence, but that can take a long time to develop...we don’t have the

luxury of time here.”

Part of the UK Governments’ plans are to establish a new regulator, Office for Students, in order to promote student interests. It would be formed by merging the HEFCE and the Office for Fair Access (OFFA).

Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson said: “The new Office for Students would have a clear remit to champion value for money and the student interest in its decision-making. And by opening up the sector to new universities and colleges, students will have more choice than ever when they come to apply to university.”

However, there has been some controversy regarding the merge.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: “You can imagine the political excitement felt when they [politicians] realised they could name it the Office for Students, meaning no one could say they were not acting in students’ interests, even while cutting maintenance grants.”

These reforms come in the wake of the Scottish Government’s Higher Education (Scotland) Bill introduced in September 2015. A petition condemning the bill was launched by the Students’ Association to ‘save our rector’ after fears that it could dismantle one of the universities’ oldest traditions: the rector.

The Saint • 4 February 2016

News 5

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Scotland’s political parties call for the reintroduction of the post-study work visa Joseph Cassidy News editor Scotland’s political parties have united to call for the return of the poststudy work visa.

The visa, which allowed international students to stay and work in Scotland following graduation, was abolished by the UK government in 2012.

Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) from Holyrood’s cross-party group jointly wrote to immigration minister James Brokenshire following a written statement from Scottish Secretary David Mundell apparently ruling out a return for the visa.

Speaking to BBC Scotland, a Home Office spokesman confirmed that there were “no plans” for reintroduction, adding that the system “undermined the UK’s work migration routes and damaged the reputation of our education system”.

However, Mr Mundell later backtracked following widespread condemnation from universities and politicians in Scotland, saying that the government was open to “reasonable suggestions” regarding the visa.

Humza Yousaf, a minister in the Scottish government who chairs the

cross-party group overseeing the issue, said that the UK government was “all over the place.” In support of re-introducing the visa, Mr Yousaf said that Scotland had “different immigration needs” from the rest of UK. MSP’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that she was “deeply disappointed and angry” that the government had no plans to re-introduce the visa.

She went on to say: “I believe there is a consensus in this parliament and out there in Scotland to reintroduce the post-study work visa – and I think it’s time the UK Government got on and did it.”

The Smith Commission, set up to look at more devolution of powers to the Scottish government following the independence referendum, said the Scottish and UK governments should explore the possibility of introducing “formal schemes to allow international higher education students graduating from Scottish higher education institutions to remain in Scotland”.

A spokesperson for the University of St Andrews also condemned the apparent decision of the UK government to rule out a return of the post study work visa, telling The Saint that: “As Scotland’s most international uni-

versity it is vital that we have a policy environment that allows us to attract the best students from around the globe.”

They went on to say that: “The true value of St Andrews graduates goes far beyond the enrichment of our higher education system. We know our international graduates progress into an incredibly diverse range of destinations, including professional positions and further academic study, and have great contributions to make as some of our brightest global citizens.

“We have used every channel available to us to lobby against making it more difficult for them to work in the UK after graduation. Significant restrictions to post study work visas give our international HE competitors a significant advantage and threaten our diversity.”

The calls for the return of the post-work study visa come at the same time as the UK government announced intentions to make changes to the Tier-2 visa, which would prevent people from settling in the UK unless they made earnings of at least £35,000 a year.

Many have expressed concerns that the changes could prevent inter-

national students from entering careers in the UK once they graduate.

Catherine Stihler, MEP for Scotland and Rector of the University of St Andrews, expressed concerns about how the changes could affect international students and others from abroad who have settled in the UK. “I have concerns for the industries who would be impacted most by this - such as IT. We have hundreds of thousands of unfilled IT vacancies in the EU due to the shortage of workers with the relevant skills. Therefore we need to attract talent and innovation and not be turning it away,” she told The Saint.

Ms Stihler continued: “On a human level, these workers will have built a life here by starting families and becoming part of their local communities. All of that should not be snatched away because they do not meet a salary threshold which is vastly above average UK earnings.

“Our universities need foreign students too, just like here at St Andrews.

If these students have fears about having their new lives taken away they may choose not to come in the first place. We cannot allow this to happen.”

Pope preparing to pop to the Bubble?

“Top takeaway in Scotland”: Cromars snags national award Joseph Cassidy News editor Cromars has been awarded the prize of top takeaway in Scotland at the Independent Takeaway Fish and Chip shop of the Year awards ceremony.

The restaurant was also up against nine other finalists from across the UK to try and win the national award as the best in the UK However, it lost to Simpons Fish and Chips from Cheltenham.

The winners of the annual Seafish Authority Awards were announced at a ceremony at London’s Lancaster Hotel on Wednesday 20 January.

“It’s the one everyone wants to win, the big one that counts the most,” owner Colin Cromar told The Courier.

Referring to award they did win Mr Cromar also said “It’s very much a team effort for and I want to thank my staff who put the hard work and dedication into Cromars every day.”

“It’s great for the whole area and we do benefit enormously from the cosmopolitan feel St Andrews has with so many visitors and people staying here from all over the world,” he noted.

“I think many of the restaurants and artisan suppliers here are aware that we have a real opportunity to shine, but we have to keep standards high.”

Staff from Cromars also gave a special presentation on the business to the judging panel on 19 January ahead of the ceremony.

The Pope may be visiting St Andrews later this year.

According to a statement on the Facebook page of the ‘St Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity’ Pope Francis will join representatives of various other Christian Churches, Hindu communities, Muslim national, leaders of the UK Jewish Community and the representative of the Dalai Lama on 23 September to sign the declaration.

A University spokesperson confirmed that plans are presently being made for the signing of the St Andrews Declaration and that they are in communication with the Vatican Secretariat of State.

Though they could not confirm whether or not the Pope will in fact be

attending.

The declaration has been organised by The Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics (CSRP) of the University of St. Andrews which is currently celebrating a year of activities with the theme of Inter-Faith dialogue.

The year is intended to culminate with the signing of declaration which will take place at Parliament Hall, University of St. Andrews, on Friday 23 September 2016 11.00am.

This event and the conference on inter-faith dialogue that will take place from 23-25 September 2016 will be co-sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics (CSRP), the St. Andrews Inter-Faith Group, the St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Society, and the International Politics Association, all from the University of St Andrews.

Fife Council will spend £10,000 on the refurbishment of a rectory in St Andrews, it has been announced.

Councillors voiced concern about using taxpayers’ money for the grade B listed house, built in 1938, which is home to the rector of All Saints’ Church.

However, they agreed on condition it was spent on the ground floor suite of rooms, including meeting rooms, to be open to the wider community.

Hepburn Garden roads to be resurfaced Funding for resurfacing to parts of roads in St Andrews have been allocated by Fife Council.

The resurfacing will take place on the roads around Hepburn Gardens.

Councillor Brian Thomson told Fife Today: “I’d been contacted by a number of local residents - particularly those who cycle - who are very concerned about the uneven surface on the stretch of Hepburn Gardens between the Melville Park roundabout and the junction with Lawhead Road East.

“The concerns expressed led to me teaming up with Chris, to call for improvements.”

Cemetery expansion announced Sufficient burial space remains in Fife despite a number of cemeteries nearing full capacity, it has been claimed.

Fife Council says there is no immediate concern about provision for the dead, despite announcing an expansion of a St Andrews cemetery to cope with a shortfall in burial spots.

Around 500 new plots are to be created at the town’s Western Cemetery and could be ready as early as spring.

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Funding for rectory refurbishment

1 The Saint’s 2016 housing guide 2 Race2 Budapest Liveblog 3 The highs and lows of last semester 4 Former professor loses claim against University 5 Ayton House purchased for £26 million

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InFocus: Ruairidh Bowen AKA ‘Rujazzle’, the organiser of ‘dRAG Walk’

“It’s much more than just clothes or make up. It’s about expressing who you are. It’s about self-love.”

Despite its success, Mr Bowen was not always so sure of dRag Walk, explaining: “This is St Andrews, there’s never a demand for it [drag] here, but I’m the kind of person who makes people like things. You have to create your own niche in a sense.”

Mr Bowen thanks TV shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race for a revival in the popularity of queens, claiming “People are interested in drag nowadays.

“Obviously St Andrews is quite a conservative place so drag can seem a bit transgressive at times, but I think that’s a good thing because it does challenge perceptions of gender and sexuality.”

Describing the event as thriving on inclusivity and “not taking yourself seriously”, Mr Bowen believes that dRag Walk reflects what drag is really about: “loving yourself for who you are and not trying to be something you’re not, expressing all of the things you love about yourself and not caring what anyone thinks - which is a

good at this, and actually I’m quite good at make-up, and I’m good at dressing and things. Performance I came to later.

I didn’t plan on doing it.”

He also told The Saint about more unusual sources of inspiration: “I study art history and involve that in my drag as well. I’ve done crazy things. I’ve done an Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup per-

My drag persona is a ditzy, blonde fashionista, that’s what she is formance – bizarre things like that.”

Amazed by the rapid growth of drag in Glasgow over the past year, Mr Bowen said that he was confident drag will become “mainstream” in the near future, predicting “within the next five years, it will become really big.”

However, he stresssed that “drag is more than just a physical thing. It’s more than just crossdressing.

“It’s a way of life, a philosophy, a state of mind and a political statement.

It’s much more than just clothes or make up. It’s about expressing who you are. It’s about self-love. It’s about making a statement about being different, about gender and sexuality and lots of different things.”

Mr Bowen was eager to point out the freedom which comes with drag, “There’re no limits to what drag is, that’s the whole point,” he said, explaining that the term drag denotes not only men dressing as women, but includes drag kings (women dressed as men), faux queens (women dressed as women), androgynous drag and club-kid drag, to name a few.

With this in mind, he encouraged anyone considering drag to simply go out and experiment: “ Most of Mr Bowen’s family and friends, however, “love it” and think Rujazzle is “amazing”.

The student smiled as he explained that his brother perhaps loves her the most: “My brother’s straight and he thinks I’m really hot in drag, which is weird.”

Rujazzle was also popular in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Ambassador, a competition designed

by RuPaul to scope interest in and boost awareness of drag in the UK. After submitting a video audition, Mr Bowen went to London and performed for RuPaul, “I didn’t win, but I got to be a finalist – top 20 UK queens.” He laughed, “And I’m from St Andrews!”

Mr Bowen fears people in St Andrews “are not used to” and

“don’t know how to react” to drag, whereas in big cities, “people are used to seeing arty people or freaks, whatever,” he laughed.

However, the student stressed that he has never experienced harassment in the town, “Obviously when I was starting out in drag, I would go to The Lizard in drag and no one really cared.

You’d get the odd person who’d be a bit funny about it but it was fine.”

Overall, Mr Bowen claims to have had “more harassment as a gay man than a drag queen. When you’re a drag queen, people are too scared of you to say anything. You’re seven foot tall and you have a weapon, you have heels, you can stab them!”

By contrast, Mr Bowen explained that he has had many positive experiences as a queen, with one of the most touching coming in the form of a Facebook message in summer 2015.

As well as having come out as a queen in his first year of university in 2012, Mr Bowen was also the only p e r son to come out a s

Photo: Jade Watson

Presented by Saints LGBT+ and the University of St Andrews Charities Campaign, dRag Walk, which takes place tomorrow Friday 5 February, combines queens, fashion and fierceness.

The charity “tongue-in-cheek fashion show” is expected to sell out for a third year running, in what has become one of the most popular events of the St Andrews’ calendar since it was first devised in 2014 by Ruairidh Bowen.

The Saint caught up with its creator and this year’s host, perhaps more commonly known as Rujazzle, St Andrews’ very own drag queen, in order to find out more about the event, as well as about Mr Bowen’s own experience with drag both in the town and further afield.

The fourth year art history student, who is also Vice President of Saints LGBT+, said that he created the competition two years ago when “there was a renewed interest in drag in gay culture”. He remembered thinking, “this is a thing that [Saints] LGBT+ can do, and it’s become really popular.”

good lesson, I think, for life.”

Rujazzle first made an appearance on the streets of St Andrews in 2012, when Mr Bowen first tried drag, making up one half of the Jazzle sisters.

“One of our friends named us that back when TOWIE [The Only Way is Essex] was a thing, with the vajazzle.

She named me ‘Rujazzle’ because my boy name’s Ru and my friend’s called Benjy so he was ‘Benjazzle’.”

Mr Bowen described Rujazzle as “glamorous, but a bit stupid too. My drag persona is a ditzy, blonde fashionista, that’s what she is.”

The duo’s popularity quickly amassed, with the pair often “going out and causing a stir in the town. We got booked to host events. We hosted The Lizard a few times - the glamour of it all,” Mr Bowen laughed.

It was when Rujazzle started going out in Glasgow, however, that she began to gain more fame and recognition as a queen. Now, she hosts an average of two shows in Glasgow each week as well as others across the country.

“I’m a full-time working queen,” Mr Bowen explained, “I do drag because it’s so much fun, I’ve made great friends through doing it, and I get paid to do it nowadays so I can actually make a living from it and pay my rent.”

When asked what first inspired him to try drag, Mr Bowen said that for him there was no clear-cut decision: “I was just doing it for house parties because it was funny.

“I suppose maybe, when you’re gay, every gay man tries it out at least once. Then you think, actually I’m quite

Photo: Jade Watson

Lauren Charlton Deputy news editor

gay in his year group whilst still at school.

It is this openness that Mr Bowen believes prompted a boy who had been three years’ his junior at high school to contact him and explain that seeing Rujazzle “inspired him to come out.

“I think the confidence that I was

Educate yourselves. Come to dRag Walk.

Go see queens wherever you’re from exuding and the fact that we come from the same place and we both accept who we are inspired him, which I think is really special.”

Mr Bowen voiced hopes that the effect he has had in St Andrews has been similar, that he helped to change how d r a g is perceived in the town, and has perhaps inspired more people to try it.

“I think it probably would have happened a n yway because drag is becoming very popular in the gay community,” Mr Bowen continued, “But I’m so happy that dRag Walk exists and I do hope that it will continue when I leave this year. I think it will.”

The only concern which the student has regarding the event is that its popularity at times overshadows Saints LGBT+ and skews opinions of the society.

“We have had a lot of concerns from members of the community who believe, that that’s all we do, that we just do drag, In fact we do one drag event per year.”

Apart from this, Mr Bowen only expressed excitement for the coming event and renewed interest in drag overall, urging people: “Educate yourselves.

Come to dRag Walk. Go see queens wherever you’re from - Glasgow, London, the US. Drag is becoming a big thing.”

V IEWPOINT viewpoint@thesaint-online.com

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Dillon Yeh Dissects Donald Trump Is no news really the bvest kind of news?

Editor: Tom Coombes Deputy editors: Lila Velcoff, Beckie Thomas @saint_viewpoint

Re-introduce the post-study work visa, or we’ll all suffer

Tom Coombes

T

here has been a concerted effort recently from Scottish political parties to see the reintroduction of the post-study work visa which was abolished by the UK government in 2012. This plan for a reintroduction forms part of wider group of changes being sought by the Smith commission as part of wider devolution of powers to the Scottish government following the fraught independence referendum of 2014, and the key part is that under current visa laws international students can only stay in the country for four months after graduating, rather than the two years it had been previously.

Let us not forget also that four months was a number reached through not inconsiderable consternation and debate; Theresa May, Lizard Queen of Westminster, had wanted to scrap any grace period whatsoever. Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that she had this particular error in judgement blocked by none other than our own stoic and just advocate of student rights: Gideon “have you ever seen him blink?” Osborne. Rumour has it that shortly afterwards pigs were seen sprouting wings in Gloucestershire and the devil ice skated to work.

The First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has been an outspoken supporter of the reintroduction of post-study visas, describing her anger and disappointment that there were no plans from the UK’s government to reintroduce this visa and it is little wonder that the problems of these visas are being most loudly criticised north of the border.

Post-study immigration is a key part of the Scottish economy especially in swiftly expanding sectors such as technology and IT (indeed thank god something is expanding in Britain other than national debt and cases of bigotry). These sectors have already been hit by skill shortages; latest estimates stand at there being the need for 10,000 new workers to sustain its current growth.

That’s more people than study in total at St Andrews, which is (as we are constantly reminded by the university itself) ‘the best university in Scotland’. Surely it could only benefit the economy of Scotland to allow international graduates to stay in the country and contribute to it.

25 per cent of job vacancies are the result of ‘skill shortages’, up

from 15 per cent in 2011, before the visa changes. In a jobs market about as easy to navigate as the Bermuda triangle in a thunderstorm and with only one wing perhaps these apparently open places could be filled. It must be a relatively popular route for people; after all Scotland is the home of square sausages, thistles and gingers, who wouldn’t want to stay here? It’s even sunny for five days every year.

It’s not just individual sectors which are crying out for help, the small and medium sized businesses (which constitute 99 per cent of Scottish businesses) can often not afford the sponsorship scheme which can enable students to stay longer than the stated four months, probably being the main reason behind why 85 per cent of employers backed calls for a return to our collective senses.

Hilariously, should gallows humour be to your fancy, it was recently decided that this particular cart simply wasn’t going downhill fast enough, so it got the kick it needed by adding the intention to change the Tier-2 visa salary cut-off point to £35,000 instead of £20,000, as well as the introduction of an immigration skills charge. This charge doesn’t seem to mean anything but is instead a cunningly created extra charge meaning that the amount of money which a small business would have to spend on an employee who has studied perhaps half an hour away, contributed to the local economy for four years, fits the vacancy for a skilled job which they presumably were given on merit but just HAPPENED to be born outside of the EU is just under £40,000, which is not sustainable for a small business or as a starting salary for somebody only just joining a company. Yet it is these companies which have the vacancies which need filling.

It is not just in Scotland that the visa should be reintroduced. That should be across the entirety of the United Kingdom. But the problem is that the idea of the post-study work visa seems to be getting lumped into the wider immigration shitshow and as such is being treated in some corners as tantamount to actually pissing on Winston Churchill’s grave. Seriously, look at the comment sections on any story about this visa. My favourite was NODROG1234 who told us ‘British culture is disappearing fast, because we Brits are ignored, we feel like second class citizens in our own country. This has brought us to the stage that we just don’t care anymore. Never in my livetime [sic] have I witnessed such a malaise in my once great country. The only

happy one [sic] are the immigrants and illegals who know they can make a fortune out of the british [sic], this included wiping out all culture’, presumably then going on to shout at the nearest American or Australian banker for being a horrid immigrant who paid about £80,000 into the system to study and stay in NODROG1234’s ‘once great’ country, all the while paying taxes, supporting businesses around them and generally contributing to society. The selfish, thieving bastard.

I will not, because it is like repeatedly mashing your head into a brick wall (like wot we should have bilt round Dover [sic]), when one wades into the mire of the wider immigration problems, but this visa is a completely different situation. Silicon Valley was built around using the universities of Stanford, CalTech and Berkley and their standout international students alongside the standout ‘homegrown’ students to create the biggest hub of technology to be found anywhere, a hub which has given America a huge boost economically.

There is no problem with utilizing minds which you have spent man hours moulding to your bene-

fit by giving them jobs and careers in the United Kingdom. But this can only be done if you give them the opportunity to stay on.

It is wider than this also, and considerably closer to home for us than it is for people at other universities. At a university as proudly international as our own, these changes to the work visa will probably be affecting many of the people you know currently.

Almost all of us have friends who hail from shores different to our own, and a restriction of time on them trying to find a job in the United Kingdom makes it feel as though international students are not properly welcome in the country, or are simply being used as cash cows to help fund our universities.

Our own Rector Catherine Stihler MEP said that ‘if these students have fears about having their new lives taken away they may choose not to come in the first place. We cannot allow this to happen’, something which would affect our own university more than almost any other, standing currently at 38 per cent. It is part of the unique culture at this establishment than you can start your night drinking Ouzo with a Cypriot and end it sobbing into

a Dervish bought for you by a kindly passing Japanese. Part of this brilliant diversity which makes the fabric of our university is in danger of being unravelled.

This is not something which should only matter to you if you are an international student planning on staying in the UK, it matters to us all. This is not a problem of ‘Britain is full’. This is simply a question of choice. Any person who has spent four years pouring their time, effort and money into their studies here should be afforded the option of being able to stay and make the most of what we can offer, and help make Britain a better place.

God knows we need all the help we can get. The opportunity presents itself best once studies have finished. Four months is not enough time for most of us to get a job once we leave university, so why should there be greater rush and pressure on international students?

There is a problem, but it is not international students filling the skilled jobs vacancies. The problem is that we now almost seem to be making an effort to drive away the very intelligent, knowledgeable and skilled people which we are creating here, and with whom we share our streets.

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

The Saint • 4 February 2016

Viewpoint 9

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Devil’s Advocate

Should grades be based on exams instead of coursework?

YES H

Isaac Leaver

ands up all of you students out there who want to be academics?

Please make it known that you long to spend your days trawling through archives and libraries, spending hours on end on windswept hillsides armed only with a raincoat, measuring tape and unwavering sense of intellectual duty, pursuing the search for the incontrovertible ‘fact’ or optimum ‘model’.

If so, then truly I salute you and your dedication to your particular field. Nonetheless, I can already predict that you form a noble minority.

Our tutors and lecturers rarely make mention of it, but it is ineluctable that most undergraduates are more than happy to jump academic ship once we have our hands on that first degree.

So, if not the eternal classroom, where is it that we envisage ourselves at work in our professional futures?

I imagine it is hurrying through the corridors of the FCO at 3am, coffee spilling down an un-ironed shirt, as Russia abruptly announces that it is pulling out of a ceasefire in a farflung warzone. Reassuring a shaken shareholders’ meeting the day after your company has lost millions of pounds of hard-earnt savings owing to a fresh tumble in retrospectively dodgy stocks. These are the sorts of destinies for which the majority of us are headed.

At those points, what matters are steely nerves, a quick wit and the ability to seem put together and confident off the back of little warning and even less new information. And, yes, to be plain, that is not to mention the capacity to blindly bullshit effectively. The attitude of ‘looking at the matter-inhand from all angles’ and retreating for a few days to do some background reading before committing even the first thought to paper is so often completely redundant in ‘the real world’.

In fact, it is nearly as redundant as the hundreds of pages of arcane scholarship we put ourselves through just so we can secure those degrees we desire.

Allow me to introduce a couple of clarifications here. Firstly, my qualm is not with academic work per se, which is of an immense value that is heeded frustratingly little by people in other sectors. Secondly, nor do I wish to contend with the basic principles of looking at events within a wider context or engaging with indepth study when the opportunity is present. However, my point is that we live in a world when projects and

proceedings can veer dramatically off-course in a flash and subsequently demand split-second responses, yet our university’s emphasis on coursework woefully under-prepares us for such a world.

Imagine therefore, a system wherein essays, although mandatory, counted for nothing (this model naturally does not apply to all subjects) and everything depended on an exam. They of that laudable breed who wished to one day take the place of their professors would still be free to delve as deeply as possible into their subjects to produce unassailable arguments and theories. Even better, they would feel more comfortable to creatively break orthodoxies, assured that a gallant yet ultimately questionable attempt would not cost them dearly. The rest of us, still held to some sort of account by tutors still armed with the opportunity to dissect- and maybe deride- our termtime efforts, would no doubt be committed to getting our respective essays done as quickly as possible. For us, the vital opportunity to engage in relevant extracurricular activities and broaden our knowledge and cultural bases through wider reading or travel would be only extended. The obvious importance to know your subject would still be enshrined in the exam, another final test in cobbling together something respectable in a matter of an hour. We would all leave university considerably more personally adapted to the field we were intending on entering, from ivory towers to glass skyscrapers.

As regrettable as it is, the world does not turn by the power of deliberation. Philosophers are not kings.

It runs on a thousand snap-decisions made by people who very often- whatever their formal education and position in society- have very little idea of what they are precisely doing and who are working with ingenuity, initiative and easily-adopted conviction. In this imperfect world, these qualities, alongside argumentative skills and a broad general knowledge base to facilitate optimum decision-making, are the stuff of leaders.

Modules which are 60% coursework and 40% exam are not fostering such qualities. Change that to 100% exam (or as close to as possible) and the chances would be much higher.

NO

Emily Allen

We live in a world when projects can veer dramatically off-course in a flash and subsequently demand split second responses

“

The results of merely a few hours of writing could either directly or indirectly affect your future career path

14% 44 votes

E

very student knows the feeling.

The nervous wait before you are called in. Abandoning your coat or jacket at the back of the room, despite the temperature having the amazing capability of plummeting from warm to freezing in a matter of minutes.

Trying to find the right desk and exam paper combination and checking that your assorted writing implements work. Sitting there with nothing to do but fidget while the invigilators look for absentees who are probably either still asleep or are in the wrong exam. After what seems like an eternity of taking labels off of water bottles and looking around to see who is this exam’s Mr I-have-twenty-pens, and trying to guess who will be Miss I-need-more-writing-paper. Finally, the invigilator says you can begin.

Then you open the exam paper and the real panic sets in.

As simple as the theory of sitting an exam may be- an assessment of a field of knowledge taken within a certain time period- the reality is, as is usually the case, somewhat different.

For a start there is often an enormous amount of material which you are required to learn beforehand, of which only a small amount could potentially be tested in the exam. Whether the format of the exam consists of essays, translations or scientific formulae, it could be merely a few pages of the entire textbook or novel that you have spent the last few weeks or months poring over.

This is where it becomes evident that coursework is a far superior method of assessing a student’s progress.

Either being given a question directly, or choosing from a selection, the student has a time period far longer than just a few hours in which to complete the work set. Immediately, this relieves the student of potentially underperforming under pressure. The overwhelming experience of the exam environment as well as having 278 votes to scribble as much as you can about a certain subject can lead to nerve-related forgetfulness of material.

It is a classic example of, despite knowing a piece of information well enough to recite it in your sleep, when asked to recall it on the spot (however well you may know it) you instantly forget it. That begs the oftasked question; are exams a

86%

test of memory or knowledge?

Given that the duration of exams is so short, not normally more than a few hours, there are any number of factors which could influence performance during this short space of time, ranging from feeling under the weather to the distractions of having hundreds of students around you, creating a cacophony of exam-related noises. As such, the results of merely a few hours of writing could either directly or indirectly affect your future career path and therefore life as a whole, even though the concept of ‘proper’ adulthood may still seem far away for a student stuck in the stage of no longer being a child but not really a functioning grown up, either.

Meanwhile coursework means that students can manage the time given to them and find out how and when they work best to complete the work set, a task which is much better accomplished in a few weeks than a few hours. With more time being allowed comes the ability to complete the work to a much better standard.

This is particularly useful for Arts students, whose essays require the time to word and edit them well and to a high quality standard, which is why the difference between first and last drafts of essays are so remarkable.

Whatever the nature of the coursework, though, it takes time to create a piece of work that the student can be proud of; exams rarely do their large bank of knowledge on a certain subject justice.

A piece of work which is completed over several weeks allows for a greater standard of planning, independent learning and in-depth reading about of the subject in question. It provides the student with an opportunity to carry out their own research and judge what extra information, whether it is found in a book or in the internet, will be the most of use to the task in hand. Rather than just regurgitating what they have been taught, they can add to it using their own self-learning.

While exams encourage rote learning and unoriginal, parroted thinking coursework is an example of assessed work which demonstrates more developed thinking, amended and polished incrementally. All in all, coursework provides students with a much better set of life skills to prepare them for the ‘proper’ adult world which, in reality, isn’t so far away, and is in itself a constant progression with room for improvement and development at every opportunity.

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

10 Viewpoint

4 February 2016 • The Saint

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Why Trump might actually be alright, kinda Dillon Yeh

I

t is currently my favourite conversation starter. At the bar, a flat party or even on the dance floor of The Vic. Meet a stranger, exchange the usual cordial greetings, and then ask them the question: So why are you voting for Donald Trump?

Now I’m not saying that I’m voting for Trump. But it’s sure a far more interesting question than asking what hall they live in or trying to make some off-point connection with their major (I study economics, I’m not going to try to relate to your divinity degree). Usually the stranger walks away slowly or thinks I’m making a poor attempt at humour.

If they do answer, they usually reject his legitimacy and cite a plethora of bigoted comments made by him.

Overall though, everyone seems to view Trump as nothing but an isolated phenomenon in the process of American popular democracy.

Trump is normal though.

Characters like Trump, and Sanders as well for that matter, are a common theme in US presidential elections.

They are relative extremist compared

to their centrist party leaders, with Trump championing the far right and Sanders the far left of the political spectrum.

Non-traditional centrist presidential nominees are no stranger in a presidential nominee. There was Michele Bachmann in 2012. Ron Paul in 2008. Reverand Al Sharpton in 2004.

Steve Forbes in 2000. The list goes on.

Rather, what makes this election year unusual is the overwhelming support that both Trump and Sanders have been able to garner, much to the horror of party centrist and the opposition. Yet at the same time, these type of election years are not unusual. It is just a part of a massive US political cycle that occurs about every 50 years. Extremist have received massive popular support, and even the presidential candidacy many times in the past. In the 1960’s, there was Barry Goldwater, a republican presidential candidate infamous for his “your children will be communist” campaign ads and advocating for bombing Vietnam with nuclear weapons. In the 1910’s, there was William Jennings Bryan, who, like Sanders, campaigned for progressive populism, workers’ rights and attacked

the business elites. In the 1850’s and 60’s there was the Know Nothing Party, who ran on an extremist platforms of anti-Catholicism and racial discrimination platform. And in the 1810’s there were discontent radical factions of both Federalist and Democrat-Republican parties centered around issues of slavery and foreign affairs.

These political movements are nothing but the result of a change in voter sentiment. They represent a breakdown in the traditional two-party system. They occur when large percentages of the voting population become frustrated and disillusioned with the current government. It is the people’s angry backlash against a perceived inefficient congress and a distant unresponsive administration.

Whethergrounded in reason or not, voters begin to lose faith in the centrist status quo of Washington.

Those more ex-

Picture: Creative Commons

treme-viewed nominees grow attractive, with voters flocking to their nonconformist platforms.

The rise of Trump and Sanders are the result of disappointment in the unfulfilled promises of the Obama administration, who ran on a campaign of “Hope” in 2008, and four different congresses crippled by partisan divide. The Trump supporters want a more nationalistic protectionist government with an emphasis on constitutional rights (whatever that means?)

Issues such as American dependency on Chinese trade, veteran affairs reforms and second amendment rights mirror populist views that Obama has allowed for a Chinese geopolitical rivalry, neglect for military veterans and the threat of federal legislation on gun ownership.

Meanwhile, the Sanders supporters want a more socioeconomic progressive society, with the aid of a greater role of government. Like the Trump supporters, they are also discontent over the current government’s response to issues such as income inequality, climate change, minority rights, education and healthcare. A positive/negative feedback system has developed, voters urge for nonconformist positions, candidates oblige and grow even more radical, until voters and candidates become increasingly polarized, alarmed by the opposition’s extremism.

The things is that these guys nev-

er win. History says so, regardless of what the latest polls may imply. (Polls will inherently be biased despite their random sampling methods. Centrist and passive voters are far less likely to answer the polls, while the more passionate extreme voters do answer the long questionnaire forms. The latter are also the type of people who call in on radio stations. They are those people). Their popular ideas will instead influence the more centrist candidates. Like an amoeba absorbing a paramecia, centrist candidates will see the success of the nonconformist candidates and incorporate their radical ideals into their own platforms, while still maintaining enough neutrality to appease the centrist voters.

Sanders’ advocacy for higher corporate tax and attack on healthcare costs have already been echoed by Hillary.

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz is trying to be a knock-off Tesco’s everyday-value Trump with slightly more polite rhetoric and less ridiculous hair. It’s not fooling anyone.

I agree, the remarks and behaviour of Trump is completely unpresidential and inappropriate. And while I’m not saying that Trump is good, I’m not not saying that Trump is good.

His extremism is a healthy component of a functioning democracy reflecting a frustrated voting population.

But seriously, don’t let him into your country.

The Principal’s Scholarship: excellent idea or exceedingly unfair?

A

lot of talk surrounded the University’s announcement a couple of months ago about the winners of the Principal’s Scholarship for Academic Excellence. Many people I spoke to were not happy; they were enraged at the amount of money given to students who could easily not need it. Given the reputation of St Andrews students, many people assumed that those students probably did not need the money, since it is often harder for students who come from more challenging backgrounds to perform highly at such a difficult university. These students, however, are the ones who need the money.

Many students who I spoke to had a lot of questions about this scholarship. How do they pick who gets it? Do they check the economic backgrounds of the students? Are students who actually need the money given adequate financial assistance from the University? Where did the money come from? Did it come from a grant specifically designated for this purpose, or did the University take its funding and allocate it to these students?

I sat down with the Vice Principal (Proctor), Professor Lorna Milne, to

to take chances on subjects they have never taken before or subjects that may be more challenging than others.

Professor Milne informed me that although students’ backgrounds were not a consideration in this award, they did take a look at the backgrounds of the winners after the decisions were made and found that there were a number of them who came from different backgrounds, such as schools that usually send hardly any students to university at all. There were also a number of mature students who received awards. In addition, the gender breakdown of the winners was proportionate.

They tested the methodology before they put it into practice, checking that the way that they were calculating this would not disadvantage any one group, and it has not.

Professor Milne truly beamed when she

discussed the students who won the scholarships; she described how lovely and deserving they all are.

Many of the winners use the money to fund additional degrees, or to finish paying for their current ones.

The University decided to give out this scholarship when the Westminster government took the cap off fees for UK students not from Scotland and students not from the EU. The University decided to use some of the money for bursaries for students with hardship, but they also wanted to set aside some money for students who showed that they could truly perform well. The University is not just about assisting those who need it, it is also about excellence. How could this not be true, after all, considering the student body of our prestigious university?

In terms of where the money comes from, it was not money given to the University specifically for this scholarship. The University Court made the decision to allocate the money for this purpose; the University would set aside part of its money for these scholarships. They also used some of the money for Picture: The Saint

Lila Velcoff

ask her about the scholarship and to find answers to all these questions.

The scholarship, which rewards the 50 students who have the best academic record in the university, offers 5,000 pounds to students after they complete their third year of study at St Andrews. The scholarships are divided proportionately according to faculty, so there are slightly more in the faculty of Arts, then slightly less in the faculty of Science, and slightly less in the faculty of Medicine. The University does it this way because students who study Maths and Physics, for example, tend to do better since there are right and wrong answers, whereas Arts students are largely graded on essays, which tend to receive lower marks. The difference in average marks are actually quite considerable; the highest average in Science was 19.76, the highest average in Medicine was 20, and the highest average in Art & Divinity was 18.45, but the second highest average was 17.95. However, almost every school within the University had students who were awarded this scholarship.

The University calculates the scores based on the student’s second year marks and honours marks. They exclude first year marks in an attempt to even the playing field for students who may not have had the advantages of upbringings and schools as many other St Andrews students have. They also want to continue to encourage students to play dangerous intellectually; they want students

a different scholarship, the Laidlaw Scholarships. However, considerably more money is used for bursaries for students who need the money to pay their tuition, rather than for rewards of recognition.

Still, it does not seem right that students who might not need the money are receiving it, no matter how well they do, instead of students who truly require the money in order to study at St Andrews.

No matter how honourable the University’s intentions are, and I do believe they are, it is still unfair that people who are accepted at St Andrews cannot study here because of their lack of financial support.

Although it is true that the University can only do so much, it seems rather strange that they are choosing to give the money that is leftover from student fees to students without even checking their backgrounds. Perhaps a better idea would be to award the highest-performing students that come from backgrounds which lack financial abilities. But, to be fair, it would be problematic and controversial to pronounce a cut-off, and various other conflicts would surely arise from this.

Despite the University’s attempt to give all students equal opportunities by not counting first year marks, one year at University cannot undo 18 years of privilege or lack thereof.

Therefore, this scholarship, albeit its conscientious purpose, is still not completely fair. But then again, very little in life is.

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

The Saint • 4 February 2016

Viewpoint 11

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Fear and Loathing in St Andrews

Picture: Surabhi Desai

I

Don’t turn on the news, it’ll only get you down

Isaac Leaver

M

y personal obsession with the news started young with an insistence on watching BBC Breakfast every morning before school for at least half an hour in order to garner some idea of what was going on in the world. It has grown to the extent that I now start and finish every day with the Guardian app, and in between skip from The New York Times to the Telegraph websites and back to seek as many stories as possible. Rolling live blogs covering elections are to me what white nominees are to The Oscars or being an oleaginous git is to Ted Cruz.

I know that I’m not alone. Our proverbial ‘globalised world’ with its equally cliché ‘24-hour media’ has made large swathes of us in the UK and beyond complete addicts to current affairs. Scrolling down my Facebook page assures me that I’m not the only one indefatigably sharing articles.

One of my old English teachers at school was wont to lament the ubiquity of news and advocate complete abstinence from it for the sake of personal sanity. However he, like many other people who speak out against prevailing currents and the thirst for information, has gone unheeded by his former pupils. My friends with whom I shared that class are just as likely as me to keep one eye fixed on their news website of choice.

Imagine my shock when I sat down at the Viewpoint writers’ meeting, bereft of ideas for an article and relying on some relatively eye-opening morsel of news to subsequently chew upon, only to find out that no such story existed.

As far as we knew at that point, with all the students having just returned from their winter breaks and the stories such as Bob Lambert’s and Louise Richardson’s departures (one somewhat more edifying than the other) covered sufficiently, nothing of note had happened. Maybe the content of The Saint today has since proved this wrong, something which would definitely draw a sigh of relief from my lips.

However, out of this void of events has come this article, an ultimately reflective piece that doesn’t glibly critique one particular thing or tie itself down to a certain occasion. Instead, it leads to the exploration of a broader theme which the vast majority of us in the West experience on a daily basis to varying degrees. In this void I have been able to take a good hard look at my own expression of a trait of our collective lifestyle- a dependence on constant news at all levels to chat about and comment upon- and explore just how healthy it may be.

One thing that has struck me is just how personally constructive it is. Because nothing has really happened, there is time focus on existing information out there and to evaluate that properly against our own values and worldviews. It is incredibly easy, when faced with a deluge of new events pouring in from every direction, to immediately categorise them all into established boxes without much due consideration. X immediately goes into the box labelled “St

Andrews is failing poorer students” without so much as a second glance at the headline whereas in a flash Y finds itself amongst all the other stories labelled “Golf is a waste of time”.

Maybe, on closer inspection, X and Y do belong in these boxes, but until you are sure of it all you have succeeded in doing is reinforcing an echo chamber dictated by previous opinions. No news affords you the opportunity to do a bit of an intellectual spring clean and to begin to sort through the clutter of these different views.

Secondly, and more viscerally, no news is kind of reassuring in a town like St Andrews in a nation like the UK. Sure, things are far from perfect wherever you go- and this corner of this country is no exception- but in the grand scheme of things we live in a safe, prosperous and free environment where the majority of people are polite and respectful. To wake up and find out that nothing has happened means that nothing has changed, that it is a day to get out and focus on other things and not worry about a new dimension to the ‘housing crisis’ or another cut to student funding. It is a day to enjoy the remarkable town in which we live.

Maybe I wouldn’t be able to hack this ‘no news’ lifestyle. In all probability, I doubt anyone studying at a university with such an international and academic perspective like St Andrews would be able to. We are creatures who thrive off stuff happening because we crave the fodder for our voracious intellectual appetites.

However, just this one day is perhaps the day that we follow my dear former English teacher’s remonstrations and ditch the madness of the news for the serenity of the immediate surroundings we so often overlook.

Tom Coombes

turned to my Roommate, my eyes rolling around and my heart pumping whatever shit that jumpedup black-tie clad scum had given me.

Jesus it’s never hit me like this before.

Bastard. His accent tried to shout Tower Hamlets but the cut of his suit kicked that in the face and screamed Harrow. Jesus would those people put anything into their body… I treated mine as a temple, albeit an experimental one.

I couldn’t see the colour of his eyes. Goddamn. They were just pure black looking out at me. I thought this place was a pit of despair, but those things were the real deal… just STARED at you man. Sweaty-upper lip… spit dribbling out the side of his mouth… a vein in his head dancing the rumba… this guy was SICK. We were TWISTED. I threw my head back and let out a laugh, though it sounded more like a cry for help.

“Hello?”

I whirled my head around. That damn yank girl was still talking at us.

She shifted out of focus… and back in again. I looked at my arm. My pulse was beating braille into my wrist.

“I asked you what you were doing here.”

So she wasn’t just gonna leave it. Christ can some people not see how busy we were. Those bouncers were clocking us and I was trying my best to act sober despite the fact I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to see again.

I gestured “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Duke Jagger, and this three hundred pound Glaswegian is My Roommate. We are here in search of the British Dream.

We came to St Andrews because a fella in Carlisle told us this was where we’d find it. Tell me, you seen it?”

She ignored my question.

“You thought you’d find it in Ma Bells?”

“We gotta start somewhere.”

I beckoned over to the barman and slurred for two Pablos. The look on his face told me he had no idea what they were, the same look was enough to send my Roommate into a fit of fury, lashing out towards the poor guy and grabbing him by the shirt.

“TWO DAMN SHOTS OF VODKA AND FILL IT WITH WDK DAMMIT” he threw him back behind the bar. Glasses spilled everywhere.

I took a look at the bouncers, they were distracted throwing out some guy, obviously high on a mixture of self-righteous hedonism, the inbred self-loathing of this godforsaken generation, too much grass and probably a tequila worm. Lucky son of a bitch.

The bouncers hauled him out by his

hair as he kicked and screamed. His clothes were from The Wire but his shining, sweaty porcine face and suede tasselled loafers were pure Kent. Poor guy. Too embarrassed to be himself, too full of pride to be something else. He’d settled for being neither and nothing.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT KIND OF VODKA DAMMIT JUST MAKE US THE DRINKS… AND MAKE HER WHATEVER SHE WANTS” I could feel the sweat flowing freely down my brow and down my back. My blood was too thick for any hot climate but in this sweat filled Tupperware box? Shit in this camel-coloured shirt it would probably be looking like wings.

Angel wings? Maybe a sign from god… Too late for that; we’d left him behind in Nottingham… Satan was a fallen angel… I was going to fall, or crash soon… the fall from this height would probably kill me. Satan reborn? I wasn’t important enough for that. Just another waster crashed out on a street in this town.

That stuff was still knocking me sideways, my head feeling like it was swelling and I’d lost control of one half of my mouth. My leg was twitching and my Roommate’s whole body was convulsing. We needed to leave.

I grabbed him by a Hawaiian-printed sleeve. I couldn’t speak anymore. I just looked at the door. Somehow through his forsaken paroxysms he understood and mumbled to me, damn near falling off his chair.

“As your future lawyer I agree.

Let’s get outta this stinking place” Through contractions we walked to the door. Nobody stopped to look at us. Who would notice another two bodies in this train wreck? We were just figures on a news report now.

We climbed into the Fiat 500 from the rental company outside. Spasming boot to the pedal… lights gone… paint scratched… exhaust making sparks out along the road as we took off. My Roommate reached into the back seat for our bag of chemicals. I damn near went off the road.

“You take one more goddamn substance and I’m gonna carve you a new mouth” “Jesus man I was just going for the Famous Grouse, why you gotta get all caught up on bodily harm again man?”

“Not harm just some body modification. Now shut up and pass it” We sailed off down the road, taking out post boxes and shouting at people stumbling back blind drunk in the gutter.

We’d bought the ticket, we’d taken the ride, and we weren’t ever coming back.

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

12 Viewpoint

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4 February 2016 • The Saint

Amy Elliott dons her tinfoil hat to consider conspiracies

O

ver the Christmas holidays, whilst doing a typical trawl through the internet in search of something to do, I came across the story of a conspiracy theorist, James Tracy, whose prominent and vocal beliefs in the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 being a hoax had lead to his dismissal as (somewhat ironically) as Professor of Communications at Florida Atlantic University in 2015.

In the particular case of James Tracy a character we could describe as ‘offbeat’ to put it mildly - it would seem that such action was justified; the parents of Noah Pozner, a six-year old victim of the massacre, claimed that Tracy had contacted them asking for proof that they were their son’s biological parents, and photographic evidence that he had even existed. When they refused, he boldly claimed on his blog that this was further evidence to support his theories.

It’s easy to look at people deemed ‘crazy’ by society and overlook the possibility that there may be some semblance

or to conceal it - is an arguable root cause of a lot of ill. Just look at the judicial system, for example - its existence is at least partially necessitated by the existence of deception.

It is somewhat sad that to really trust someone in the truest sense of the word (whatever that may be) is a big deal, and normally comes hand in hand with growing to love them. These are crazy times; it is, sadly, easy to predict that in the next week, month, or year, something immeasurably catastrophic will happen somewhere in the world, and for this prediction to be realised.

Tragedy as a result of human volition and vice has always been an inevitability, and, thanks to the international nature of news broadcasting, we are now more aware of it than ever. We live in a world in which a terrorist attack one week is old news the next: constantly evolving, but almost sadly and strangely cyclical; this cycle being (in the case of the headline news, at least) one of generally overwhelming negativity.

It’s easy to forget that however unbiased any media outlet may claim to be, those who decide the angle of news in any form are human individuals. Therefore, it obviously follows that the news will always be - at least to an extent - manipulated, simply because this is in the very nature of the human mind: to perceive information, and then condition it,

according to one’s particular whims and workings.

For example, under this article there will be a little memo in italics which will read ‘The views expressed in Viewpoint do not represent the views of The Saint, but are individual opinions.’ You are therefore reminded that these are my opinions and that they are not affiliated with the good name of The Saint. But if this newspaper is a body, then what is it without the individuals which that body is comprised of? And what are the opinions of those individuals if not varying and complex and, above all, highly influenced by social context in the varying forms it assumes? Surely, therefore, this is applicable to any other newspaper, however biased or unbiased it claims to be to any

given political leaning.

It is important, therefore, to question any information which we are given which is subsumed under the title of ‘news’. We are being educated to be critically minded, and so surely it must follow through that this is how we ought to process the information handed to us by the media.

Most of us are susceptible to influence - which is in some ways good, because it means that we are capable of openness and absorption. But just as we (hopefully) question things we hear on the grapevine, so we should question anything presented to us as absolute truth, even if it is reported as fact.

To finish, I quote Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’; ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you’.

Picture: Creative Commons

Amy Elliott

of truth in what they are saying. My very own flesh and blood uncle is a staunch believer, for example, that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’. Though this is widely accepted to be a bogus and unsourced opinion, he is what can only be described as a ‘hater’ of former US President George W Bush. Obviously, hatred towards political figures is often borne of a disparity in political ideologies and, more simply, a mistrust of the real motivations of these figures. So really, the belief in 9/11 being an ‘inside job’ is just a widely circulated exacerbation of a relatively normal paranoid thought, much like the kind that most people experience most days. The most committed conspiracy theorists are probably those who feel most alienated and frustrated by society, and ironically, their paranoia pushes them even further to the fringes.

To an extent, we’re all conspiracy theorists, because paranoia, or at least rumination, is a natural response to a world in which people don’t tell the truth the whole time. We therefore have to cultivate our relationships and our opinions on foundations which are, in parts, uncertain.

It’s just a fact that most people lie at least sometimes - quoting statistics here would be obsolete; there can be no valid statistics because people lie about lying. That deception exists - that someone can intentionally say something which they don’t mean in order to plug their own agenda,

Timothy’s time-consuming train journey T

he day had been long and grey as it always was over here in Her Majesty’s realms. Timothy Darling sort of liked the monarchy, but only because it was quaint and rather upper class. He often wondered how time-consuming all these royal rituals were, and thought back to the Olympics when the Queen (if it was her, which it wasn’t, mind you) jumped out of a helicopter. Of all things, what an absolute waste of his goddamn time it was to watch a little old lady parachute out of an aircraft.

Some protested that it was cool and hip, but it was also rather irritating.

Then again, the Olympics were just as irritating and time-consuming. And nothing was worse than public transport during the Olympics.

If Timothy could, he would have his own private helicopter fly him to work everyday, and he would certainly vouch for the efficiency of this procedure compared to the sodding Olympics. In fact, he would have the whole ritual organised beside him everyday just to prove that his helicopter would reach the office before the ground would reach the less-than-amused and certainly unhurried Queen (which wouldn’t be the Queen, mind you, just to replicate the original ritual.) Well, he certainly would have if it weren’t all so time-consuming.

Illustration: Renee Godyn

Flo McQuiggan

Timothy Darling’s train finally reached the platform. He was supposed to have waited for twenty minutes, but it felt rather like five.

He decided that thinking about the Queen, and a helicopter for that matter, was awfully time-consuming, so he ceased promptly. Upon entering the train, he thought about how time-consuming it was to pack a bag, book a seat, sit in the seat, and take the train. He would have decided that it would have been much less time-consuming to not take a train, but then he would have had to think of the helicopter, and that would have displeased him, as it consumed time he was unwilling to spare.

Deciding between having a tea and taking a nap, Timothy came to the conclusion that the latter would be more beneficial to h i s

health, and ultimately a better way to spend his time. He decided to doze off at exactly 11:05.

At exactly 2:04 pm, which was one minute shy of a two-hour nap (which, mind you, was terribly irritating), Timothy Darling was woken up by an announcement saying that there had been an “occurrence” in the firstclass seating area, causing a relocation of several passengers. He thought of how long it must have taken to find the noun that would be least offensive to all passengers, and cryptic enough for them not to know whether there was a public urination, or a violent incident. After deciding that incident was a better word than occurrence, the speakers announced it was a cleanliness issue, which made him quickly opt for public urination, as he refused to spend more time thinking about this irritating issue.

As the first class passengers moved along, one very striking man was allocated in front of him. The man was irritatingly handsome, Darling thought, and very well composed.

He wondered if this irritation was jealousy, because he had previously in his life decided upon that it was more auspicious to be attractive due to it taking less time in life to get what you want. At that point in time, he felt lucky to be, in his opinion, moderately attractive.

The man in front of him had a blinding watch, and a navy blue suit on. Security guards were allocated at a nearby table and accompanied him.

Timothy felt watched, and wondered, but only for a split second, if he was the type of moderately attractive man who might look suspicious.

A few minutes passed, and a

woman going through the carriage shrieked. The security guards bolted up and held her back. “I love you, I love you!” - she screamed at the man. He smiled and signed her arm.

Timothy thought it was quite time efficient to carry a pen in a pocket, and sign an arm rather than get out a paper – it looked like the quickest way to get this baboon to move along. The man must have noticed that Timothy was visibly shaken, although in a calm way, mind you: he apologised for disturbing the carriage.

Don’t apologise. There was an insane woman in the train, and you removed her by the prompt signing of her arm. It was an efficient way to deal with the situation, and in any case, a better incident than public urination.

The man broke out in laughter.

You know what? I like you man.

Do you want a dedicated autograph and a picture?

What would I want that for?

Timothy replied, thinking that this sounded rather time-consuming. Did this man think he was insane too? He started thinking of the most efficient way to avoid being signed and removed from the train.

Oh, so I take you aren’t a fan?

Timothy Darling wasn’t a fan, because he hadn’t the slightest idea who “George Coonie” or why he was introducing himself. In any case, whoever George was, he noticed that Timothy was confused - but only slightly, as being rather confused would have been sort of irritating for everyone.

You know? Batman?

Yes. I know who Batman is.

Timothy thought this was rather quaint. He wondered briefly if this George was related to a cer-

tain Elizabeth, and if his helicopter was down today. Maybe it wasn’t so efficient after all. George had an American accent though, so he concluded that he wasn’t royal, and the helicopter was efficient after all.

All right little guy, I’ll do some impressions, how about it? Maybe it’ll come back to ya.

A few impressions later, Timothy Darling was even more confused (but still only to an appropriate amount), and no closer to knowing what this foreigner wanted.

Suddenly, George Coonie turned his face to a certain angle, having given up his impressions, and Timothy Darling finally realised. He felt terribly embarrassed, and rather slightly irritated.

Oh. Right. You’re him from the coffee advertisement, Expresso Nespresso.

Yes, well. That’s all well and good sir, but nonetheless I refuse to be signed by you.

Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about being ousted, as his stop was next. Timothy got up, and waited to exit the train. He thought a little about how horribly time-consuming this whole morning had been. He decided the name Expresso was rather ironic, as advertisements are rather long. He concluded that he wouldn’t drink an ironic drink, because they required extra time to think about. Unlike Expresso, Timothy Darling was sure that if he had to pick a name for anything, it would certainly have alliterations in it, as they are, ultimately, less wasting of time.

And with that finishing thought, he hopped off the train, in a very efficient and timesaving manner.

The views expressed in expressed in Viewpoint Viewpoint represent views of The Saint individual opinions.

The views do do notnot represent thethe views of The Saint butbut areare individual opinions.

MONEY thesaint-online.com/money

Maintenance loans: Discouraging low-income students?

Tips for navigating housing season

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Artwork courtesy of Louise Fraser

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with art, nature and alcohol

Cambo Gardens’ Snowdrop Festival features 70 acres of woodlands filled with thousands of snowdrops Meilan Solly Money editor Coming up with unique date ideas in a small town like St Andrews can seem like a daunting task, especially if you’re on a student budget. Luckily, The Saint is here to provide inspiration for celebrating the most romantic day of the year whether you’re on a 25, 50 or 100 pound budget. If you’re a nature lover, cinephile or history buff, we have an idea for you. Listed prices are estimates for two people.

25 Pounds 11:00 a.m.: Start the day with brunch at Bibi’s Cafe.

Food choices include homemade blueberry pancakes and Eggs Benedict. £10 to £15 12:30 p.m.: If it happens to be a sunny day, it’s the perfect time to visit the St Andrews Botanic Garden. Home to plants both native to Scotland and

from around the world, the garden features glasshouses, a water garden and a rock garden. Free admission.

2:00 p.m.: Whether you’re an art lover or have never visited a museum, a trip to the Fraser Gallery will open your eyes to the world of contemporary Scottish art. Take this time to appreciate local culture and discuss abstract pieces. Free admission.

3:00 p.m.: After a busy (but inexpensive) afternoon, go to one of your flats for some down time.

6:00 p.m.: Around dinnertime, make a Tesco run to purchase meal ingredients. You could make spaghetti and meatballs Lady and the Tramp style or opt for something more sophisticated. Enjoy a romantic meal at home, perhaps with some wine. £15.

8:00 p.m.: End the night with a film. If you’re a fan of romantic comedies, try Crazy, Stupid, Love. If dramas are more your style, try Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, three movies that follow a couple’s love story over 18 years.

The Fraser Gallery’s collection includes this piece, “Cafe Le Champs de Mars, Paris,” by Jack Morrocco

50 Pounds

11:00 a.m.: Begin Valentine’s Day with brunch at Northpoint Cafe, famous for being the place where Will and Kate met (for coffee). £5 to £10 12:30 p.m.: If you’ve ever wanted to brush up on the history of St Andrews, now is your chance. The Museum of St Andrews includes exhibits on the lives of students through the ages, ancient artifacts from the school’s founding and the study of flight. Free admission.

2:00 p.m.: The museum is ideally located between West, East and Castle Sands, so this is your opportunity for a romantic beachside walk. Pick your favorite beach and enjoy a chat with your partner.

3:00 p.m.: If you’re cold after your beach walk, stop at the Byre Theatre for some hot chocolate or coffee. After warming up, it’s time to head home to get ready for a night out. £4 6:00 p.m.: St Andrews’ restaurants have plenty to offer no matter

what kind of cuisine you want. Three options are Little Italy (£20 to £25), Forgan’s (£25 to £30) and Grill House (£20 to £25).

7:30 p.m.: Head to the New Picture House Cinema. If you’re a fan of comedic dramas, try The Big Short, which features big-name stars like Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling and has been nominated for five Oscars.

If you're looking for a more intense movie experience, try Room, a film about a woman and her son's reintegration into society after being held captive for years. £14

easiest way to get to Cambo is to take the 95 bus service to Leven, get off at the Cambo Lodge stop, and walk for about half a mile. Bus fare £7.10 per person, £14.20 total 12:00 p.m.: Arrive at Cambo Estate. Explore 70 acres of woodland and celebrate the estate’s Snowdrop Festival. Entry is £5.50 per person, £11 total 2:00 p.m.: Enjoy some hot beverages and snacks at the estate’s tea room. £10 3:00 p.m.: Head back to St Andrews to relax before dinner.

6:00 p.m.: Put on a nice dress or jacket and dine at some of the fancier restaurants in town: Playfair’s (£50), the Doll’s 10:00 a.m.: Make House Restaurant (£60) and the a classic Scottish Vine Leaf (£56) all charge breakfast together, or Illustration: Zoe Schodder about £55 for three-course opt for the American meals. version of bacon, eggs and toast. £10 7:30 p.m.: End Valentine’s Day 11:00 a.m.: Leave for Cambo, a with a St Andrews classic and indulge country house and estate located just a in your favorite Jannetta’s gelato flafew miles away from St Andrews. The vor. £5

100 Pounds

James Fox Being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t need to be a miserable experience. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. 14th February is as good a time as any to hit the town with your friends and take advantage of some lucrative deals.

As with any great night out, the first stage is pre-drinks. The choice of beverage is, of course, a personal one, but for the best value look no further than Tesco. Here, you’ll find bargain brands such as Carling at just £12 for 20 cans or the more palatable Stella Artois at £15 for 18 cans — both are perfect for sharing with friends.

Alternatively, Gallo’s pinot noir is drinking well at £5 a bottle, and you

can always stick with the ever-dependable £2 Crofters. For those in a particularly spirited mood, £10 will get you a bottle of Aldi’s imitation vodka, gin or rum, which can provide a base for a perfectly decent mixed drink.

Upon heading out, fuelled by all the wily endeavour of one who’s succeeded in attaining an adequate level of insobriety at such a modest price, remember that the battle to save money has only just begun. An essential port of call should be the Union, as given that Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday, when prices are reduced. A vodka and mixer, for example, costs just £1.50.

Despite the small entry charge, the Vic can also represent good value for money on a Sunday, offering a £2.50

pint of Tennent’s or a £3 Strawberry Smash cocktail. Yet keep in mind that it’s only open until midnight.

Why not even take advantage of some tasty offers especially for Valentine’s Day? On offer at the Rule is a bottle of Prosecco for a measly £10. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a mate date — although who would blame you for keeping it to yourself?

As you dance the night away, safe in the knowledge that the size of your hangover will be matched only by that of your bank balance, try to resist the urge to throw it all away on expensive fast food. Now you can head home from what’s hopefully been a successful and cheap night out, safe from the dismay of Valentine’s Day for another year.

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

How to embrace singledom with a cheap night out on Valentine’s Day

The Union’s Main Bar, known for having some of the cheapest drinks in town, offers a vodka and mixer for just £1.50 on Sundays

14 Money

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4 February 2015 • The Saint

Tips for navigating How bad are the Badlands?

The merits of living in Town Centre, the Badlands and the Outlands housing season

Applying

*When choosing flatmates, don’t simply assume that your friends will be the best people to live with.

Compare your attitudes on cleaning, socializing and studying, and consider drawing up ground rules in advance. *Make sure that your group is organized. Work together to keep track of application dates, forms and references. Try to have personal references, landlord references and guarantor forms prepared in advance. *Familiarize yourself with the process of renting a property. Lawson & Thompson has factsheets on its website explaining deposits, utility bills and more. The Accommodation Team has a How to Rent Guide that can be picked up in the Union’s Student Advocacy Office or found online at yourunion.net. *Speed is important when sending in applications, but don’t forget to double check details like length of the lease, location and deposit before choosing to apply for a property. *When properties are advertised, act quickly and be decisive. Don’t waste time viewing a property that is not appropriate for you, as you may miss your chance with another. *Don’t agree to rent a property as a backup while still searching for others. Withdrawing an application after it has been accepted means other groups who want the property miss out, as well as being unfair to the letting agent who must go through the whole advertising process again. *Use independent online resources such as zoopla.co.uk and studentpad. co.uk. These types of resources are excellent for finding properties managed by private landlords.

Budgeting

*Rents typically range from from £400 to £700 per bedroom per month depending on the location of the property. Remember that rent does not necessarily include gas, electricity or broadband, so it is important to budget extra for these items. *If you set up an account to pay your monthly rent, put in an additional amount to cover utilities, Internet, etc. so you don’t need to find extra money at the last minute.

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

In the coming weeks, thousands of St Andrews students will find themselves racing madly to secure the perfect flat for the upcoming year. To help alleviate the stress surrounding such highstakes competition, The Saint spoke to four local letting agencies — Delmor, Inchdairnie Properties, Lawson & Thompson and Town and Gown — and the SRC Accommodation Team.

Here are their top tips for navigating housing season.

*Keep an eye out for properties from friends and academic family in the years above you. They may just know about a place when you are struggling during the process. *Receiving an offer does not mean you have to accept it. Keep your search going if an offer is beyond what you feel you can pay comfortably.

Signing a Lease

*When you view a property, be sure to look around properly. Don’t rush into signing a lease without making a thorough inspection and ensuring the property fits your needs. *Your letting agency will go through the lease with you in detail, so make sure that you are fully aware of your landlord and tenant responsibilities. *After the lease has been signed, which is typically within a week of having an offer accepted, you are legally bound to rent that property as per the terms of that lease.

Scams

*Check that the landlord/property you are renting is running professionally and legally. All properties with three or more bedrooms need an HMO license. Landlords should be registered with Fife Council, and tenants should receive the correct paperwork and safety certificates. *Each year, a number of students are tricked out of thousands of pounds by scammers posing as landlords. The scammers advertise properties not owned or managed by them on portals such as Gumtree and Facebook.

To protect yourself against falling victim to such a scam, check Lawson & Thompson’s guide at lawsonthompson.co.uk/rogue-landlords.

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

Meilan Solly Money editor

Sanja Doettling As the hunt for next year’s private accommodation begins, this is the question on everyone’s minds: Where do you want to live? Or, rather, where can you afford to live? Since it’s hardly possible to describe St Andrews as a vast metropolis, there aren’t an overwhelming amount of housing options.

You could be lucky and live in Town Centre — a place often seen as posh, since rents tend to be high and houses beautifully furnished — or you could live further out in the “Badlands” across Kinnessburn.

The name gives away the stereotype of this area. It’s supposed to be the rough and dodgy “South End” of St Andrews, where the rent is cheap but the walk to town is long. Finally, there are the commuting students, living far beyond the safe walls of town in the “Outlands.”

The Outlands “Honestly, I was desperate,” postgraduate management student Martin Inches said. After a difficult housing search, Mr Inches found a flat in Guardbridge, a town several miles away from St Andrews. He pays £420 a month, which gives him a spacious room in a three-bedroom flat.

Guardbridge, with its 600 inhabitants, one pub and corner shop, doesn’t offer much. In that respect, Mr Inches said, “It’s just a place to sleep.”

Shopping, university lectures and social activities happen in St Andrews.

Mr Inches travels to town at least four times a week, spending around ten pounds total on bus fare.

“That’s the cheaper bus which only comes once an hour,” he explained. Being dependent on buses can be difficult, as they tend to run late, especially when there’s traffic in the morning.

For Mr Inches, the decision to commute was a financial one. However, leaving “the Bubble” does offer one advantage.

“In intense times, it is great to get

some peace and quiet,” he said.

And with Leuchars train station just around the corner, Mr Inches joked, “You can get out of there quite quickly.”

The Badlands Sam McReavy, a second year English and history student, lives near the hospital in a part of town commonly referred to as the Badlands. He lives in a four-person flat and pays £570 a month.

According to Mr McReavy, the biggest advantage of living on the edge of town is the spacious house — albeit

For me, one of the main questions when looking for houses was, ‘Can I have Raisin here as soon as I have children of my own?’ at a price. His flat includes four ensuite bedrooms, a large living room, a study room and two guest bathrooms, in addition to a nice back garden.

Living close to Aldi, Morrisons and Marks & Spencer is also an advantage.

“Of course, the disadvantage is the distance to the town centre,” Mr McReavy said.

He mostly walks or cycles, which shortens the trip to town to ten minutes. But the distance is a problem for house parties or after the Union closes.

Mr McReavy explained: “It’s hard to convince friends to come over because it’s a solid 20 minute walk.”

Town Centre This year, second year Jennie Matthews moved from her hall to an eight bedroom house on North Street.

On paper, the house sounds ideal: The six en-suite bedrooms are rented out for £534, the smaller ones for £522 a month. However, with a 12-month lease, Ms Matthews will have to pay rent during the summer.

She said: “It’s a very good location for going to classes and society meetings. It only takes you five minutes to get there on a morning.”

Ms Matthews also likes the location because it makes the house more sociable.

“For me, one of the main questions when looking for houses was, ‘Can I have Raisin here as soon as I have children of my own?’” she said.

However, the location is not without its disadvantages. Noise is an issue, as the walls in the house are very thin.

Ms Matthews said, “We live across from [the] Lizard, so Friday nights are bad because people are quite loud, and they also can look straight into the downstairs bedrooms.”

Despite the benefits of a home in Town Centre, Ms Matthews has decided to move out of her current home next year. She said the main issue with the house is its appearance.

“It looks like any other student house in other cities,” Ms Matthews said, adding that it doesn’t feel very much like home.

To get a house with a different vibe, she is willing to pay up to £700 a month.

Outlands, Badlands or Town Centre: In the end, St Andrews is a tiny place, and the differences in distance are rather marginal. How much one pays for rent frequently comes down to luck and connections rather than location.

Ultimately, everyone has different expectations and priorities for the place they want to live.

As Mr Inches said, “It’s a trade-off between lifestyle and money, really.”

The Saint • 4 February 2015

Money 15 Illustration: Dillon Yeh

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Maintenance loans: Discouraging low-income students?

Antonia Wade Deputy money editor In Chancellor George Osborne’s summer 2015 budget, he announced that student maintenance grants would be replaced with loans in the 2016-2017 academic year. Previously, £3,387 grants were available to students with household incomes of £25,000 or less, and increasingly lower grants were available to students whose families earned up to £42,620. Now, those grants are loans to be repaid, should those students land jobs earning over £21,000 after they graduate.

Following the announcement, critics commented on the risk that this could discourage students from lowincome families from attending university, as taking the full loan package on top of university fees would now come to £59,800 over three years (the average length of course in an English university). This is a serious concern for those universities with a reputation for high living costs or antagonism towards part-time jobs.

First year Tom Oliver highlighted an additional issue, saying, “The UK has a shortage in many skilled professions such as doctors, nurses, scien-

tists and engineers. Making university less accessible can only widen the gap in skills this country has. It can only make matters worse for the NHS, [which is] already having to employ more and more doctors and nurses from overseas.”

Mr Oliver’s quote highlights the fear that the new budget may decrease the numbers of prospective students applying to university. The importance of encouraging low-income students was recognised by the introduction of the maintenance grant, which “greatly improved the prospects for economically disadvantaged students in the past. Taking away this support line will revert this progress and make the student body more homogenous,” Mr Oliver added.

One defence used against critics of the change is that the maintenance loan is structured so that recipients of the maintenance loan do not pay anything back until they earn above £21,000. At that point, money is automatically taken from the student’s wages as a percentage of earnings above £21,000, similar to taxes. Therefore low-income students do not need to pay back the maintenance loan at all, should they not land a job which pays £21,000 or

above, after graduation.

In a town such as St Andrews, these developments provide both opportunities and drawbacks. With the loan now being repaid (unlike the grant), the size of the loan offered has

weight reach but fail to pass.

To boost the workout, exercises can be supplemented by using some small weights. Weights, which can easily be bought online or at any local sporting goods store, are cheap and can push your work- outs up a notch.

Improper use of weights can cause damage, but the potential for serious injury is low.

T h e greatest d r a w back of using online videos is the possibility of bad form. With no one to correct your shape or offer tips, you can make bad form a habit. This will definitely decrease the effectiveness of the exercises, as well as increase the potential for muscle damage.

More than that, the instructors in many videos are actively combative, and some could even say discouraging. This is a massive challenge for those just starting out: Why stop doing something fun, such as lounging on the couch watching Netflix, just to work up a sweat and get yelled at?

Gyms There are multiple gyms in St Andrews, from the university’s Sports Centre to the newly opened Functional Fitness. The price may vary, but which gym is right for you is mostly based on your personal needs. If you want to be able to swim, then a Sports Centre membership is definitely t h e

Making university less accessible can only widen the gap in skills this country has been increased beyond what was offered by the maintenance grant, and this could help with the high price of housing costs.

Previously, the maximum grant offered was £3,387, but this has now been replaced with a loan capped at £8,200. Living costs in St Andrews are amongst the highest in the country, and the previous maintenance grant

could barely cover this. The increased loan can provide more help, at the risk of potentially more debt.

Is this a determining factor for many low-income students, however?

The prospect of never paying off debt must surely be a terrifying and critical factor in determining whether students attend university.

Despite the role of debt as a discouraging factor, the BBC reported that in 2014 the number of students from low-income backgrounds did not change after the introduction of £9,000 per year fees in the 2012-2013 school year. This demonstrates that more debt has not actually discouraged low-income students from attending university, yet many of them have no choice. Significant debt is the only route to a university education for all of us. The quantity of debt just from tuition fees taken on by university students in England has risen from nothing in 1997 to £1,000 in 1998, £3,000 in 2004, to £9,000 in 2012. With this new legislation, the potential for debt has increased once again.

Yet loans are not the only financial option available to students. In the 2013-2014 academic year, a tranche of money set aside under the access

agreement was given to low-income and other poorly represented students in the form of bursaries, fee waivers and scholarships. 88% of the £435.7 million used in these bursaries went to students whose household income was under £25,000. Additionally, while this is not a perfect solution, there are also part-time jobs available.

In 2014, The Guardian reported that 45% of students had a part-time job, a practical solution to earning some extra income whilst at university.

Whether saddling low-income students with more post-university debt will discourage them from applying to university is left to be seen, but the omens are not good. Attending university is an immense force for socioeconomic change, and in a state which seeks to improve the economic status of its people, any barriers to education should be of concern.

Another blow could come in the form of tying university fees to inflation, which could further increase debt. As more debt piles up, this may precipitate major problems for society, and discourage low-income students from attending university at all.

For now, we shall have to wait and see whether those fears materialise.

to a swimming pool. However, it costs £42.40 for 10 sessions, a higher price than the Sports Centre, which costs £73 per semester or £120 for the year.

Functional Fitness differs from this model in that you can either access a conventional gym or buy a set number of class sessions for the month. This is a great idea if your schedule does not allow for regular visits to the gym, or if you make a resolution to get fit later in the semester.

The new gym also offers several types of memberships: six-month, 12-month and monthly. An unlimited monthly membership, including access to the gym and classes, costs £65, while a simple gym membership without classes costs £35.

If you’re looking for more of a long-term commitment, a sixmonth unlimited membership is £300, and a gym-only membership is £157.

The Sports Centre and the East Sands gym require a certain number of visits to make the membership worth it — if you can continue exercising regularly throughout the semester, you’ll make the most of your

investment. If not, then Functional Fitness may offer the better value for your money.

Remember that doing weights without proper form can cause damage. Having a more experienced friend, or even getting a single session of personal training, can revolutionise your workouts and prevent future injury.

Gyms are the best option if you are seriously seeking to get fit, complete with a wide range of equipment and support. This isn’t saying that you can’t exercise sufficiently without a treadmill, but there are few effective substitutes for professional equipment outside of the gym, if that is what you are after.

Sports clubs Clubs offer the opportunity to both meet new people and exercise in a way that can even be fun. When participating in a club you enjoy with your friends, it is possible to forget the pain of exercising.

St Andrews has more than 50 club sports, including conventional options like football and swimming as well as unique sports like aikido and scuba diving.

When considering a club, remember that you have to pay for club membership in addition to Saint Sports fees. If you aren’t sure which club to join, attend a “taster” session that is helpful in trying out a sport before committing to regular attendance.

Antonia Wade Deputy money editor Some of the most common new year’s resolutions are to exercise more, get fit, or just lose weight. These resolutions, however, are also one of the hardest to keep. While this article is nowhere near a comprehensive list of possible ways to get fit, it offers a few options which are achievable, accessible and reasonably inexpensive.

Online videos and fitness DVDs This method is one of the most popular ways to get fit and can be done easily with friends or alone.

The idea of following a very human instructor, someone who likes junk food just as much as the next person, makes the exercises manageable and the end result of achieving total fitness seem possible. This motivation is crucial when starting something new.

Additionally, you don’t have to worry about being looked at or judged, as you can exercise with videos in the comfort of your own home.

Available DVDs and online videos target a vast range of results and areas of the body. From yoga to zumba and circuit training (albeit without much of the equipment), there is definitely a video to fit your needs. If you want some variety, try multiple kinds of exercises. Switching up your workouts gives your body new challenges and can help overcome the plateau so many people who are trying to lose

Illustrations: Zoe Schodder

How to change your exercise habits at home, the gym or in a sports club

wrong choice.

Additionally, there have been complaints about the recent queues to get into the gym, even after the refurbishment. East Sands gym is considered to be a much calmer gym, with fewer queues and access

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I

t is a testament to the quality of St Andrews’ nightlife that we require any sort of transportation (beyond mere walking) to get us home after a night out. Even the most remote student flat is reachable within a half hour by foot. Despite this, however, a heady night out often leaves us in such a state that some kinetic assistance is required, frequently in the form of a taxi. More understandably, students struggling to cart their groceries home or dislike the idea of walking in the rain may also opt for a cab ride as they undertake the lengthy sojourn from Tesco to David Russell Apartments.

Despite the constant sight of students piling into cabs following an evening at the Vic or throughout a particularly windy afternoon, few people would admit to enjoying taxi rides. No one likes attempting to issue directions to their house in the Badlands, scrambling for change to pay the overpriced fare, or struggling to reconcile the driver’s taste in music with their own. The litany of reasons to dislike cabs goes on. As a result, four St Andreans have taken it upon themselves to offer us an alternative: rickshaws.

Fourth-year student James Webb, inspired by his time spent driving a rickshaw in India, united with thirdyear student Charlie Buchanan-Smith and fellow fourth years Abraham McCauley and Simon Pepper to establish Chariots of Hire, a local business like no other. Based upon prior rickshaw escapades and a proclivity for cycling, the foursome launched

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Street smarts

Photo: Robert Sellar Natasha Franks

Editor: Emma Freer Deputy editors: Olivia Gavoyannis and Kirsty Hardwick

A new student business brings rickshaws to St Andrews

their brand in the first semester of the 2015-2016 school year. Meticulous research led the team to Aberdeen, where they purchased three stateof-the-art rickshaws, equipped with WiFi and speakers. The goal being to support one of the main tenets of the business: to entertain. As Pepper explained: “Taxi rides are a run-ofthe-mill occurrence. We offer people a more holistic experience.”

Considering their entrepreneurial spirits, one may expect the business owners to be students of management or economics. Instead they study courses as varied as chemistry, French, geology and biology. They explained to The Saint that this diversity aids them in the social aspect of their business. The ability to chat with guests about such an extensive list of subjects further improves the rickshawing affair. Pepper recalls conversing in French with a pair of customers one evening, surely making the ride home one of their more memorable experiences using private transportation.

In their debut appearance, Chariots of Hire stationed their rickshaws at the Old Course for GIG’s glamorous For Your Eyes Only casino night. The black tie-clad guests were intrigued by the prospect of such a unique form of transport and gamely clamoured into the vehicles. Cycling in its own right is no easy task, but combining it with a heavy rickshaw and poor weather conditions necessitates a certain amount of fitness that the four boys possess in spades. The team returned to rickshaw again at Masquerade Ball and later at the Kate Kennedy Club’s annual toga party, in

both instances earning rave reviews from their customers and ensuring their viability in the personal transportation industry.

Another notable feature of Chariots of Hire is their fare - or rather, the lack thereof. Rather than billing clients, the boys allow their customers to choose their rate of pay based on the quality of the ride. By allowing people to pay however much or little they want, the service is guaranteed to be top-notch as the boys seek to deliver a genuine experience.

With their wealth of life experience and assortment of interests, it is no wonder that the foursome is so keen to provide a positive, social experience for its customers. The rickshaws also allow customers to play music on request (McCauley fondly reminisces about one ride spent listening to Sorry by Justin Bieber on repeat), as the free WiFi permits their clients to use YouTube or Spotify en route. Most importantly, the customer’s safety is ensured should a potential emergency situation arise. Having undergone council-sanctioned training to obtain their street trader’s license in accordance to Scottish law, all four members of the startup are able to adequately cater to any needs their guests may have, large and small.

The rickshaws themselves, built in Germany and outfitted to every modern convenience, are impressive specimens in their own right. Far from the rickety contraptions that one might picture, the vehicles rival cars in their convenience factor. With the aid of indicators, lights, brakes and seatbelts, the rickshaws can obey all the expected rules of traffic as they

soar to speeds of 40 miles per hour.

Such rules were kept in mind during a Vic-sponsored rickshaw race from the Vic to Janettas Gelateria, which saw the rickshaws pushed to their limit as they skilfully navigated their way along South Street. Formally inspected and council approved, these eco-friendly vehicles are maintained to the highest standards and kept in a secure location when not in use.

Chariots of Hire seeks not only to offer an alternative method of transportation, but also to revolutionise the local travel industry. McCauley says he hopes to offer tours of St Andrews, aided by the knowledge accumulated during his four years as a student here spent traversing the town. This way, tourists and residents alike can witness the hidden gems that they may previously have overlooked, all from the comfort of a rickshaw and with the aid of their knowledgeable drivers. The group’s humanitarian ethos is demonstrated in its involvement with Sitara, one of the many student-run charity fashion shows on campus. Chariots of Hire has offered the free use of a rickshaw to be used for the event’s photobooth.

Although their primary business during the school year comes from students, the boys hope to increase their potential clientele during the summer golf season in St Andrews.

Chariots of Hire has been in talks with The New Inn regarding a potential partnership, with the goal of contributing a unique brand of tour to a market suffused with foot traffic. Having spent years learning the ins and outs of our town, the drivers now possess enough talent and street

smarts to take the road less travelled and to present St Andrews not only as a golfing hotspot, but as our home.

St Andrews is filled with the ambitious and the business-minded, as evidenced by the sheer amount of charity events, student blogs and budding organisations that we see advertised on Facebook each day.

However, Chariots of Hire stands out amongst this crowd for its intrepid premise and creative payment model.

The team describes their startup as an opportunity to demonstrate that while internships and grad schemes may be beneficial, we all have the potential to start our careers earlier and on our own time. As equal partners and their own bosses, the four boys set their own hours and work for as long as they desire.

Webb, McCauley Pepper, and Buchanan-Smith all come from different walks of life, but neither their passion for the peculiar, nor their passion for Chariots of Hire can be denied. It may be in early stages yet, but their business does appear to be gaining traction as they begin the process of obtaining a logo and arranging events on a more regular basis. The beginning of the new year and the promise of second semester’s full social calendar have provided the momentum they will need to foster their growing business, taking it from a niche market to a mainstream resource.

Even if one prefers walking or taxiing home after a night out in town, the idea of taking a rickshaw, even just once, should not be so quickly dismissed. It could be the ride of your life.

The Saint • 4 February 2016

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Features 17

An issue for everyone

Features editor Emma Freer speaks with the directors of this year’s St Andrews Foreign Affairs Conference about its theme: migration and displaced peoples

L

ast May, the newly elected St Andrews Foreign Affairs Conference (SAFAC) committee voted on a topic for the 2016 conference.

Cybersecurity and the experiences of women involved in foreign affairs around the world were both in the running. Ultimately, however, committee members voted for a theme that seemed innocuous at the time: migration. Of course, since then a major migration crisis has erupted.

In 2015, over one million migrants entered Europe, most of whom were fleeing conflict in Syria. Many more are expected in the months to come.

(To put the European migration crisis into perspective, more than 200,000 Syrians have died as a result of the ongoing civil war and 11 million others have been displaced.) In any case, this year’s conference topic could not be more relevant. Erika Naegeli, a third-year student and director of the SAFAC committee, says: “We are really lucky in the respect that [the topic] is newsworthy and people are engaging with it.”

This year’s conference – Migration & Displaced Peoples – will take place on Saturday 6 February. Starting in the morning, invited speakers will give short presentations on either their experience working with refugees directly or their academic work on migration. Panel discussions will be conducted with various speakers in hopes of encouraging lively discussion among both the presenters and the audience members. During breaks, students are encouraged to network with the speakers and each other.

camped on tourist beaches in Greece and Italy and in makeshift tent cities in the French port of Calais. We must mourn those lost at sea, suffocated in smuggler vans and crushed attempted to jump onto trains headed for the United Kingdom.”

Sierra Leder, a fourth-year student and deputy director of the conference, adds: “I think another part of success for us is also going to be showing our speakers that students do care. I think there can often be a disjoint between people in academia and people who feel that they are actually trying to help in the world. So I think we can show these speakers who are working amongst the refugees or who are have worked for these commissions for such a long time, we can show them that the next generation is fully behind them and that we also want to do something."

To this end, the SAFAC committee has invited students to speak at the conference for the first time. Tom Mhelchom, Bonnie Groves and Alice Rowsome all served as volunteer leaders at the refugee camp in Calais and will be speaking on Saturday about their experiences there.

Ms Groves spent four days working in the Grande-Synthe camp over the Christmas break. Though short, her time there was illuminating. “The most surprising thing about volunteering was how little the locals and other French people were engaged and knew about the situation,” she says. “No one knew that the government and riot police were actually actively hindering the volunteers from helping [refugees].” When she entered the camp site alongside other volunteers, they were searched for things that would add to the permanence of the camp, such as tents and sleeping bags. Alice Newsome was also shocked by the police presence in and around the camp. She says: “I understand the need for security, but this is not providing security by fear and terror, [which is] what these people are fleeing in the first place.”

Once inside, Ms Groves was saddened by how the camp’s routines had already infiltrated the children’s lives. When it came time for the daily snack, all the children queued up, already “used to the distribution methods in the camp.” On the other hand, she was inspired by the generosity of

*****

M

s Leder hopes that the student speakers encourage others to get involved. “So many of these world crises happen so far away and they’re inaccessible, so people who want to help so much just don’t have the opportunity,” she says. “So the fact that Calais is right across the channel has really provided a great opportunity for people,” St Andrews students included.

Over

1,000,000

migrants entered Europe in 2015

40 %

*****

of people migrating to Europe are Syrian refugees

T

UNHCR calculates

59.5 million

forcibly displaced people worldwide Photo: Lorelei Pfeffer

he goal of the conference is to begin a conversation that becomes a catalyst for action and to inspire solutions that benefit everyone. This is a tall order, but the committee is confident that the conference will be a success. The speakers include a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, a policy officer for Syria at the European External Action Service, a consultant on migration from IOD PARC Edinburgh, and professors of international law and human geography from universities around the UK. The hope is that each will provide a different perspective on the current crisis, as well as speak to the endemic nature of migration crises around the world and throughout history. “It’s not just something that’s been going on this past year, with the crossing from Turkey and the Syrian civil war,” says Ms Naegeli. “It’s something that has been occurring for a long time.”

Another aim of the conference is to reframe the current crisis as not only a political issue, but also a humanitarian one. In an article in St Andrews Foreign Affairs Society’s journal, Foreign Affairs Review, Ms Naegeli writes of the conference’s aim: “We must mind the hundreds

the refugees and the commitment of her fellow volunteers in the midst of chaos. One of the teams distributing supplies and providing support on the ground, Care4Calais, was started by an English accountant who quit her job for the cause. Ms Newsome adds that, despite the awful conditions and lack of resources, the refugees themselves were the most welcoming. “The days we were there, we saw the dozens of policemen teargas the camp, we saw police brutality, we saw the violence from the French right-wing groups,” she says. “But [we] saw nothing but smiles and warmth from the refugees.”

350,000

refugees arrived in Europe by sea in 2015

Both Ms Naegeli and Ms Leder stress that this year’s event is for everyone. The SAFAC committee has partnered with the School of Geography and is keen to present a variety of views on the theme: anthropological, geographical, political and more. “We’re really excited to make [the conference] interdisciplinary, especially since our focus this year is more than just a subject for international relations or politics,” says Ms Naegeli. “It’s really something that everyone can become engaged in.” *****

A

cademic engagement is certainly important, but personal engagement is also something the committee hopes to promote. Considering the scope of the current crisis, Ms Leder says: “It is relevant for everyone. No matter what you study, no matter what your opinion on it is. So I presume [the conference] will be useful for anyone who is interested in the state of the world.” The widening impact of this crisis is something that Ms Naegeli thinks the conference will help hightlight. “The Syrian civil war can affect migration in Europe can affect policy can affect St Andrews students,” she says. “Everything is kind of interconnected, and I really wanted to explore that with this conference.”

So it is fitting when Ms Naegeli suggests that our University’s population is especially well positioned to empathize with refugees, in Calais and everywhere else. “The international student and teaching body in particular knows what it is like to live and works in a foreign land,” she writes in the aforementioned article.

“The domestic student body, conversely, knows what it is like to live and work with people around the world.” *****

B

y approaching the issue from so many sides, Ms Naegeli says the committee hopes to “educate people from the ground up but also educate people horizontally, as broadly as possible.” Students who feel unlearned on the topic should take the conference as an invitation to learn more. Students who have studied migration and displaced peoples from the international relations perspectives should do the same. By including speakers from the field of human geography and from the non-profit sector, the committee hopes to reach every guest, wherever he or she may stand. Ms Naegeli says: “Ultimately, we don’t want to take a side policy-wise, but we do want to provide lots of diverse points of views so that you can make your opinions.”

To learn more about the event, including the day’s schedule and background information on invited speakers, go to the St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Conference (SAFAC) Facebook page.

18 Features

thesaint-online.com

4 February 2016 • The Saint

Anonymity sans negativity?

Thoughts Around Me, a new app from Kassem Younis, launches on campus

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new anonymous messaging app called Thoughts Around Me has been launched at the University of St Andrews. The app is available for both Android and iOS users to download and allows students to talk anonymously to one another as well as read and contribute to trending discussions globally. The app also enables users to post images, GIFS and polls as well as upvote and downvote discussion topics. Founder Kassem Younis told The Saint that the app will also be “rolling out some more exciting features soon” to enhance the conversational experience of its users.

The University of St Andrews is one of several universities where the app has been launched. This means that the University logo appears at the top of phones’ screens whilst students are using the app to talk to each other anonymously. When asked about why St Andrews had been chosen as one of the app’s launching sites, Mr Younis told The Saint that the University was a priority “because of its prestige and also the potential for extremely interesting discourse that could result [here].” On reflection the University does seem an ideal place to launch such an app considering how popular other social media networks, such as Yik Yak, have become among students. It could even be suggested that such apps have had a visible influence on student behaviour, with the most notorious example occurring when people started queuing earlier than in previous years to buy tickets for the Mermaids’ Christmas Ball.

Many blamed this on the hype that had been generated on Yik Yak the night before.

However, when questioned about how similar Thoughts Around Me is to other anonymous platforms, Mr Younis said: “Yik Yak is more just a bulletin board. There is not a lot of conversation happening, whereas on Thoughts Around Me we have some threads that go into the thousands of comments.” He added that the app has already facilitated discussions about a wide range of topics around the UK. “We have seen amazing conversations about people struggling with their sexuality, to domestic and emotional abuse, workplace advice to more positive stuff such as two strangers writing a novel together on a thread,” he said.

If received positively by students the app could be a refreshing change from the constant complaints and Dundee snubs that currently fill the feeds of Yik Yakkers St Andrewswide. There is no denying the fact that such yaks can be used as highly amusing procrastination material during revision week. However, for students who want to explore more personal issues or just have a meaningful conversation about something that interests them, Thoughts Around Me might be the app that they did not know they wanted. St Andrews has a diverse and intelligent student body

so it is easy to imagine how Thoughts Around Me, with its focus on discussion, could enrich the current social media scene at the University and enhance online interaction between students.

Another difference that Mr Younis points out is the demographic differences between Thoughts Around Me and other social media platforms.

“Yik Yak’s demographic is from early teens to university ages whereas our biggest demographic is between 25 and 35,” which he suggests is the reason why his app supports more mature discourse than others. The aforementioned Dundee snubs on Yik Yak prove this point. Mr Younis adds that the demographic for the app Whisper is “even younger” and, in his opinion, is why the app creates “quite a toxic environment.”

Mr Younis is not the only one to

Discrimination and prejudice are not prevalent in our community, but subconscious preconceptions and fear of judgment still hinder discussion between students.

Thoughts Around Me hopes to provide a way around this block point out that other anonymous sites have become hotbeds of negativity online. Following concerns that Yik Yak had become a tool for cyberbullies to assert their dominance, measures were taken to block the app in many high schools and middle schools in America. The app was amended so that geofences stopped students being able to access the app in the areas surrounding many schools. When asked about what measures have been put in place to stop cyberbullying on Thoughts Around Me, Mr Younis assured The Saint that the moderation team has been a “core component” of the app from the start and that stringent measures have been put in place to stop people from abusing the anonymity that the app affords them.

“We have a 24/7 moderation team that is internal, unlike everyone else who outsources to the Philippines,” he said. He also explained that the Thoughts Around Me team uses algorithms and internal tools involv-

ing “quite a complex system [that] scores users and becomes more strict on them if they are repeat offenders,” which means that their content will reach a moderator more easily. The team also takes a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who misuses the app and bans those who post inappropriate or discriminatory material permanently. Ultimately, Thoughts Around Me provides “a service where you can simply just discuss whatever is on your mind in a safe environment.”

Far from being a university where bullying is a problem, St Andrews is generally a tolerant community where people are able to discuss their views through various debates and club activities. However, anonymous social media sites are still valuable in such an environment as they allow an equality that is not possible in real life. Indeed, equality seems to be a core concept of Thoughts Around Me. Mr Younis told The Saint that the app revolves around the basic idea that “we all think, we all feel and inside we are the same.” He also notes: “It’s really motivating to see how people from extremely different ends of the social graph manage to connect over common issues.” Hopefully the app will encourage similar connections among St Andrews students and allow meaningful discourse between groups that would not normally mix in the established social scene. For example, the app might encourage residents of different halls to converse without rivalries, however tedious, getting in the way.

Although discrimination and prejudice are, thankfully, not a prevalent feature of our community, sub-

conscious preconceptions and fear of judgment from others can still hinder discussion between students.

Thoughts Around Me hopes to provide a way around this block.

Another reason why we should value sites that allow anonymous interaction is that they remove the presence of appearance-based prejudice from the online community.

Unlike other social media platforms there are no profile pictures associated with users on Thoughts Around Me or Yik Yak. So the focus is on what is being said rather than on physical appearance or how one presents himself. Indeed, many other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have been criticized for encouraging users to present enhanced versions of their lives. As Mr Younis points out, social m e dia as it

currently exists is no longer fulfilling its purpose. “Social media has failed us in the sense that it is not really social,” he says. “It’s become a type of social PR.” Instead of sharing genuine thoughts people agonize over how to best portray themselves, which results in an online presence that is inconsistent with reality.

In this way, anonymity encourages authenticity. It also provides more privacy. Mr Younis notes that a major priority of the app is to give users digital privacy, something for which he personally advocates. “Unlike other apps, there is no personal information we store [at Thoughts Around Me],” he says. “No phone number, email, anything.” He adds that this has the added benefits of protecting users because “if we get hacked, you are safe.”

The app certainly has potential, but as of yet it is flying under the radar of St Andrews students. Currently the home screen states: “There are no posts in your area.” Only time will tell what sort of discussions will occur after the herd of Yik Yakkers discover this new grazing spot.

Illustration: Flo McQuibban

Olivia Gavoyannis Deputy features editor

The Saint • 4 February 2016

thesaint-online.com

Features 19

Trigger happy Maddie Armstrong asks: should university really be a 'safe space'?

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n her first interview as the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford earlier this month, former principal of St Andrews Louise Richardson boldly insisted that universities should remain places where even the most controversial or disturbing viewpoints can be openly expressed. She told the Daily Telegraph: “We need to expose our students to ideas that make them uncomfortable so that they can think about why it is that they feel uncomfortable and what it is about those ideas that they object to.” And while she recognizes that such a vision is “quite the opposite of the tendency towards safe spaces,” she “hope[s] that universities will continue to defend the imperative of allowing even objectionable ideas to be spoken.” In fact, at the time of the interview Oxford students involved in the Rhodes Must Fall campaign were busy calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, due to the history figure’s association with British imperialism. (Oxford has since announced that the statue will not be removed.)

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign is just one of many movements led by students around the world to turn universities into “safe spaces” by sterilizing them of upsetting images, words or ideas. At Princeton University in New Jersey, students demanded that the name of former US president Woodrow Wilson be removed from the university campus because his support of segregation in the federal workplace made even referring to him an act of “microaggression” – a small gesture that is unintentionally violent. At Christ Church College Oxford, a debate on abortion involving only male speakers was cancelled because, according to the student union treasurer, it posed a threat to “the safety – both physical and mental – of the students who live and work in Christ Church.” Here at St Andrews, the Union’s Friday club night “P.U.L.L.” was renamed after an online petition criticized its aggressive, sexual connotations and insisted it would create an unsafe atmosphere. And everywhere media is being stamped with “trigger warnings” that tell viewers to proceed with caution because something following might upset them. ***** In a Telegraph article, Nadine Strossen, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, defined a safe space as one in which people are protected from “exposure to ideas that make them uncomfortable." Giving greater consideration to the feelings of vulner-

able people is undeniably a step in the right direction, but many worry that students have taken the concept of “safe spaces” a step too far. Our concern for emotional “safety” has been carried into the classroom and made us hypersensitive to anything that might be considered remotely “unsafe.”

There are very few courses worth taking at university that do not deal with difficult or distressing subjects, and this reactionary mentality has made it difficult for many professors to tackle controversial issues without backlash. One American professor using a pseudonym published an article that was titled: “I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me.” The article went viral. Additionally, the free-speech activist Wendy Kaminer was publicly condemned by the Smith College Students Association when she suggested that classes on American history or classes that taught The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would have to mention the use of the “n-word.” She was baffled when she was called out for simply discussing the historical use of racist slurs and expressed her dismay that students “can’t distinguish between being racist and having discussions about race.”

At some universities, professors are expected to issue “trigger warnings” when anything in their course might spark a painful reaction. Many feel obligated to tip-toe around important topics and censor what they say at the risk of being reprimanded, or even fired.

The issue is not that safe spaces and trigger warnings are bad ideas in and of themselves. In fact, there are many ways in which they are really valuable for victimized and vulnerable people. Many representatives of the St Andrews Students’ Association support safe spaces and trigger warnings as a means of actually increasing engagement, not censoring it. Miriam Chapell, the SRC Wellbeing Officer, clarified that “the purpose of safe spaces is not at all to inhibit discussion of sensitive issues, but rather to facilitate that very discussion in a supportive environment where those who may be personally affected are prepared.” She added: “Trigger warnings are just that – warnings.”

The president of the LGBT Society, Sigrid Jorgensen, also insisted that the backlash against safe spaces is based on a “fundamental misunderstanding of what a safe space is.” Rather than excluding unwelcome views, Ms Jorgenson feels that safe spaces should be defined as “workshops where people don’t judge others for their views and you can say what you want without fear of

Illustration: Dillon Yeh

j u dg e me n t . ” She continues: “You should still still hear a range of opinions.

Generally, it’s about facilitating an open conversation.” The LGBT Society recently initiated a program called “Open Door” in which staff members are “trained in active listening” and earn a rainbow triangle sticker that they can put on their door to signify that students are welcome to come in and talk to them at any time. They are also able to put distressed students in contact with a designated person at Student Services.

Should university be a "safe space," or an ideological battle ground?

Regarding trigger warnings, Ms Jorgensen argues that they actually help victims to overcome their emotions. “It prepares them so that it’s a lot easier to handle immediate emotions that are triggered,” she said. “We oftentimes have this idea that there is victimization occurring when we mention trigger warnings. But if it’s not something I’m comfortable viewing I won’t, and if I do it’s a way to gain control.”

The Coordinator of the Feminist Society, Jo Boon, agrees that trigger warnings are an important means of preparing people to engage in difficult topics, especially in the case of sexual violence. “Rather than preventing conversations taking place,” she says, “trigger warnings just flag up where they are happening and actually allow for more and healthier discussions because people are comfortable with them.” She argues: “If it helps even a few people then I think it’s worth it. The risk of not including one and triggering a painful memory, a relapse into an eating disorder or even a panic attack – to cite just a few examples – is far more important to me than the risk of sheltering people too much.”

***** The problem, some say, is that this preoccupation with things like safe spaces and trigger warnings has produced a broader mentality that makes it difficult to face harsh truths in the classroom and daily life. Our generation has become so extremely sensitive to political incorrectness and un-progressive views that we frequently stand accused of “self-infantilization.” Many people find the idea of “safe spaces” fundamentally childish. A widely-read article in the Atlantic referred to our preoccupation with emotion safety as the “coddling of the American mind.”

A headline in the New York Times chastised today’s university students for “running away from scary ideas.”

Even President Obama, acting as the concerned father that he is, stepped in to tell students that they should not be “coddled and protected from different points of view” because “that’s not the way we learn.” After the Paris attacks last fall, American journalist Judith Miller was perturbed enough to tweet: “Now maybe the winning adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for ‘safe’ spaces…” Miller’s comment was widely condemned as horrifically inappropriate and insensitive, a means of politicizing tragedy to advance her own agenda. However, some safe spaces do have a striking resemble to preschool. At Brown University in Rhode Island, an organized debate concerning campus sexual assault prompted the Sexual Assault Task Force on campus to set up a more extreme interpretation of a literal “safe space” where traumatized students could physically remove themselves from the university environment and curl up with a blanket, listen to lullabies, watch videos of frolicking puppies, eat cookies and play with Play-Doh. One can understand, in this instance, why some would argue that American students are being coddled and catered to in a way that may be more harmful than helpful. ***** Many people argue that the best way to facilitate a thorough and rewarding university education is to make students feel like they are in a safe space where they can engage with difficult issues and express ideas without fear.

This is especially true for the students that have been marginalized by universities in the past on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. However, this approach could backfire if it ultimately limits the number of issues and

opini o n s students are willing to acknowledge and engage with.

One of the most pressing issues today, for example, is the rise of extremist ideology and terrorism around the world. Speakers with strong views on both sides of the issue have recently been barred from a number of British universities. At Goldsmiths University, the Iranian-born spokesperson for the Council of ex-Muslims and campaigner against Muslim extremism Maryam Namazie was invited to speak on religious extremism in the age of ISIS, but protesters from University’s Islamic Society prevented her from talking by heckling her, shutting down her projector, and shouting “Safe Space! Safe Space! Intimidation!”

On the other hand, six universities are now facing penalties for allowing the radical Islamist human rights group Cage to express extremist views on campus because doing so contradicted the government’s anti-terrorism program Prevent, which calls upon universities to stop the spread of radicalization.

Louise Richardson, who is herself an expert on terrorism, opposes this policy.

When asked by the Telegraph if groups like Cage should be allowed on campus, she replied, “Provided that they can be countered, I think that we should let them be heard. In that way we model to our students how you counter ideas you find objectionable.” By refusing to hear speakers on both sides of a controversial issue out of fear for the “safety” of university students, important academic and societal debates are effectively stifled on campus.

University is meant to equip us with the tools and the understanding to confront difficult truths in the real world.

The real world is not a safe space. If we want to be forces of positive change, we need to learn how to face our fears and challenge ideas that we think are harmful.

Louise Richardson strongly promotes this vision of university education. “Education is not meant to be comfortable,” she said. “Education should be about confronting ideas you find really objectionable. That isn’t a comfortable experience, but it is a very educational one.” This leaves us with an important question to consider: should university be a “safe space”, or an ideological battleground?

20 Features

4 February 2016 • The Saint

thesaint-online.com

An open letter to my donors One scholarship recipient shares what she has learned at St Andrews

Mary Shiraef

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ear contributors to the R&A Ransome Trust: Last year I received a very generous postgraduate scholarship from you, which enabled me to live and study in the beautiful coastal town of St Andrews. What do I have to say for myself now that the year has passed?

This is a fair question, although a difficult one. It is difficult on the one hand because writing about oneself, especially in the early stages of one’s career, can feel like and indeed be a pompous, self-aggrandizing task. On the other hand, while I could easily record the events of my year in St Andrews because they were many, it is a greater task to reflect meaningfully on them, an attempt of which is something you deserve.

At the risk of sounding promotional, I will begin by reaffirming what you already know: the University of St Andrews is a superb academic institution. It is a fine place to live, and with the generosity of the scholarship, I have had no excuse but to immerse myself in the rigorous academic and vivacious social environment that is available to me. With your help, I studied in the School of International Relations, the highest-ranked IR department in the UK, took golf lessons at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club (I knew you would be proud) and developed a group of friends from all over the world, including Emma, a fellow Ransome scholar.

Together we participated in as many events as our studies afforded.

From academic conferences to dinner parties, cha-

otic Scottish ceilidhs amidst the castle remains to solemn Bach performances in regal cathedrals, from fancy balls with bumper cars to underground bars in Edinburgh and from a talk at which we met Nobel prize-winning activist Leymah Gbowee to a whisky tasting/creative writing event – we did it all. I would like to begin by saying how deeply grateful I am for these unique experiences. Expounding on them would take a short, muddled novel, but writing about what I have accomplished this year is a more complex question because indeed, it gets to the heart of the matter: Am I a deserving scholar-

ship recipient?

In my application statement, I wrote that “education is freedom, and I desire to discover the best way to share this freedom with the world” and further that the school in which I was teaching was “a multifaceted social experiment worth exploring and perhaps replicating.” Both of these statements were true, but not completely. The truth is when I applied for this scholarship, I was growing deeply critical of the institution for which I was working. And, because of how much hope I had when I began the job, I was also discouraged.

During my interview when I told you it was a pleasure to speak with people who also see education as an essential tool for individuals and act on it, I cannot tell you how sincere I was. What I did not tell you is that the cultural conflicts I was witnessing in India were casting over the optimism I gained in college a looming shadow of doubt about the limits or even dangers of education without good leaders.

My intention in pursuing further studies was to build on the perplexing educational conflicts I encountered in India and try to understand them with an indepth conceptual analysis of cross-cultural dialogue.

Do I feel like I

understand India any better with a Master’s degree on this topic? No. If I have learned anything about India it is that India is a disjointed, massive place with both beautiful and tragic parts that become more mysterious the more one visits. Do I feel better equipped to approach intercultural discussions after spending a year with my nose in books? Maybe, but “the proof is in the pudding,” as my professor, Nicholas Rengger, often said during meetings about my dissertation.

What I studied: My courses began with the large variety of academic approaches – including the realism of Henry Kissinger, the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir and the post-colonialism of Edward Said, among several others.

In the end, I focused my dissertation on hermeneutics, which was put forward by German philosopher HansGeorg Gadamer and, in my view, offers an approach rooted in classical Greek philosophy that draws from the strengths of all these approaches.

Hermeneutics says understanding takes place in dialogues. In a genuine dialogue, one uncovers the “prejudices” or “horizons” of oneself and others as, together, they reflect on the topic at hand. He does not think all prejudices are bad, but rather that they are telling about those ideas and questions that have most shaped us.

In this way, prejudices are important tools for understanding.

Where I went:

For my spring break, instead of going home as my mom would have liked, I used p a r t of my travel stipend to visit my friend, Allison, in Ta n z a n i a .

She is working with the Peace Corps teaching in a remote village in Singida, only a 12-hour bus ride from civilization, as we call it. When I arrived, the Tanzanian teacher’s polite but direct questions – “What brings you here to this school?” and “What are your preconceptions of Tanzania?”– ini- tiated further reflection on the meaning of teaching “non-Western” students “Western” prejudices.

Alongside the adventures we had, lazing on the beaches of Zanzibar, hiking the many peaks Illustration: Nicole Slyusareva (and many paths)

of Tanzania’s fourth highest mountain, Mount Hanang, and embarking on day-long bus rides, we had much time for genuine conversations. Allison, like me and probably like many non-profit volunteers, was having doubts on what sort of impact we were truly able to make. Our conversations did not produce real understanding of Tanzania or Western “prejudices” as we might have liked, but they did produce a new understanding, if only between us, on our mutually experienced misgivings and misunderstandings when teaching people from cultures not our own.

This inter-subjective understanding is precisely an example of what Gadamer’s hermeneutics calls the “fusion of horizons.”

The timing for revisiting my old doubts and fusing my horizon to Allison’s could not have been better.

At her school, I was able to converse with the principal and the teachers, greet students at a school assembly with last-minute Swahili lessons from Allison, ask them students questions my former Indian students had sent me, celebrate Allison’s birthday, and, for the most “hermeneutic” experience, I watched as she facilitated a student-led debate under a baobab tree on “whether money brings happiness.” To my surprise, the students overcame the shyness they often have in the classroom, and they debated, argued and really spoke their minds.

Watching this debate reminded me that, regardless of the challenges students face or even whether the head honchos of their schools have their best interests in mind, children are resilient and, indeed, small interventions from good teachers (and dedicated donors) can make a lasting difference.

What I did: I returned to St Andrews encouraged and, with the connections I saw between hermeneutics and education, I wrote a paper envisioning how education systems within the EU might adopt Gadamer’s structure for cross-cultural dialogues aimed at political stability. I submitted it to the London School of Economics (LSE) for a conference of policy experts and young people seeking dialogues on political engagement in the EU, and it was accepted. I took the train down to London and spent a full day debating politics, which included going head to head with former MP Neil Kinnock, who informed me brusquely that “it’s not educational initiatives that matter so much as strengthening political parties.” Needless to say, I experienced serious doubt about my ideas.

When a young delegate replied to him that youth in the EU are statistically less interested in traditional European party systems, he cut him off and almost shouted, “Well they bloody well better get interested!”

I backed down for the rest of the discussion but, to my surprise, was nominated to be the group’s representative, albeit with Neil Kinnock, and was even complimented (I

think) by former French President Valéry Giscard despite my “being American.” The representatives from the participating groups of young delegates and policy experts have drafted together eight preliminary proposals for EU reform (including one of mine!) to be presented in Brussels this year.

Upon returning to St Andrews, I included excerpts of the discussion in my dissertation and reflected on whether they represented Gadamer’s hermeneutic structure for understanding. I concluded that the nature of politics necessitates that its dialectical form rarely be hermeneutic, or aimed towards genuine conversation.

This again, for someone who studies politics and visualizes education reform through politics, is a very grim conclusion. In November I graduated and just this week, I received an offer to complete a PhD degree (at St Andrews!) In short, this past year, like the one before, included highs but also low lows.

When I first met you on Skype, I did not tell you that I was deep inside one of those low lows. The tropical environment of Bangalore and my students’ beautiful songs, faces and testimonials did not reveal my encroaching doubts during our interview: Am I actually making any difference? Does education really set people free? My biggest fear had come true. I was doubting the very optimism that drove me into the field of education.

Of course, I was not required to disclose my darkest feelings in my interview, so why tell you now?

Accounting for the self-doubt I faced in India is quite similar to answering the question of whether I am a deserving scholarship recipient. The truth is, I do not know the answer to these questions. I do know, however, that it is a privilege to get to ask them.

Questioning is the basis of education.

As Gadamer says (and Plato before him), it is the questions that matter most, not the answers, and the ability to go on questioning. Because of the R&A Ransome scholarship, I was able to keep on asking questions. For that, I am deeply grateful.

With this letter, I wish to tell you that the greatest strength of your scholarship is not the money, the prestige or even the (wonderfully) fancy welcome dinner at the President’s home. It is the hope that you revive for students, just when they need it the most.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mary Shiraef P.S. Applications for the R&A Ransome scholarship (for postgraduates studying in the 2016-17) are currently upon until 29 February. To learn more, check out the University’s website.

36 hours in Cambridge

The Saint • 4 February 2016

Features 21

Photo: Christiana Bishop

thesaint-online.com

Christiana Bishop

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ccording to the Economic Impact of Tourist report, every year over five million tourists visit Cambridge, and it is understandable why the historic town is such a tourist hotspot. The 800-yearold University provides a beautiful aesthetic that has been mostly unchanged since the 13th century. The city stays true to the historic traditions and pace set by the University. The constant stream of young students creates the ageless appearance of Cambridge residents and is reflected in the city’s ability to pocket every strand of the community and offer something interesting and vibrant to each of them, successfully interweaving the traditional ‘town’ and ‘gown’ distinctions that are perhaps more apparent in other university towns.

However, I do feel there is more to Cambridge than the traditional tourist attractions, such as floating down the River Cam in a Scudamore punt or lunch at the frequently reviewed Fitzbillies café. Although the latter’s Chelsea buns are famous for a reason!

Therefore, here is a small guide to 36 hours in an alternative Cambridge.

Friday

6pm, Cambridge Blue: After arriving into Cambridge head over to the Cambridge Blue on Gydwir Street for a local ale. Not only does the Cambridge Blue boast a huge selection of international beer (stocking over 110 imported types), but it is also respected for its commitment to locally brewed beers from the surrounding Cambridge area. Owned by two local

residents the pub is brimming with Cambridge charm, making it a trendy community local that not only serves Romsey residents but also some local ‘hipsters.’

8pm, The Sea Tree: After your ale I recommend wandering further down Mill Road for a low-key supper at (in my humble opinion) the best fishand-chip restaurant in Cambridge and one that regularly features highly in national top-ten ratings. Owned by the Farrells, this family-run business prides itself on friendly service and commitment to buying sustainable fish from East Anglia. For those wanting a lighter supper, the Sea Tree also offers alternative fish such as mackerel and calamari and a healthy version of the traditional chips. Truly delicious!

Saturday

Saturday

10am, Kettles Yard Cambridge: Having grown up in Cambridge, you may think that eighteen years’ worth of school trips to the historic sites around the city has diminished my enthusiasm for its cultural heritage. However, Kettles Yard on Castle Hill I could visit again and again. It was originally the home of Jim and Helen Ede, who before moving to Cambridge had both worked in curatorship, Jim working latterly as curator of the Tate Gallery in London.

Over the span of their careers the Edes had amassed a large collection of work, such as paintings from Joan Miro, Christopher Wood and sculptures of Barbara Hepworth. Together, the Edes curated their final masterpiece – their home – transforming their dwelling into a gallery in itself.

The original positioning of each piece of artwork, which includes ceramics

and natural objects, has been left untouched since they were alive. The unchanged harmonic atmosphere that these works creates truly reflects the skill of the Edes curatorship.

In recent times there has been a growing popularity of Scandinavian interior design that celebrates the simplicity of white walls, pale woods and natural stone. This popularity brings into focus the progressive nature of the Edes design vision and the modernity that Kettles Yard still represents today, even though it has been decades since its creation in 1954. My advice would be to try and visit early in the morning, as not only does this avoid the crowds, allowing you to experience the serenity of the house, but it also allows you to witness the flooding of natural light that brings to life the art piece that is their home.

1pm, Lunch at Afternoon Tease: After perusing the Miros of Kettles Yard have a wander down to Kings Street to have lunch at the delicious and tucked-away Afternoon Tease.

After supplying local eateries with her scrumptious homemade goods, baker and blogger Jo Kruncynaska fulfilled her dream of opening her own café in 2014. As the menu changes daily, lunch is always fresh and innovative, and the coffee beans are locally produced from Mill Road’s Hot Numbers roastery.

3pm, Exploring Cobbled Stoned Streets: Cambridge hosts a wide range of wonderful high street shops, from the soft cashmere of Brora to the beautifying cosmetics of Space NK. However, Cambridge is also a hub for local independent businesses, which all offer unique brands, here are two of my favorites: First, Catesby’s: A beautiful home-

wares shop tucked away on Green Street, Catesby’s sells original home ceramics and necessities for a tranquil living space. Local residents Jonathan and Neil own Catesby’s and they are valued for their commitment to sourcing products locally in addition to around the world, from elegant ceramics to striking home furnishings.

The shop also includes in its upstairs area a charming café, where you can sit and peacefully watch the bustle of Green Street below.

And second, Arthur Shepherd: Arguably, one of the most quintessential Cambridge shops, Arthur Shepherd is a family owned business selling high quality clothing, stocking a wide variety of beautiful wares, from tailored dinner suits to Scottish knitwear. Opening over a century ago in its present position at 32 Trinity Street, the shop retains a charming atmosphere of a gentleman’s outfitters of a time gone by while simultaneously embracing the modern, as reflected by its display of Le Chameau boots. Arthur Shepherd has become a landmark in itself next door to Trinity College and has been photographed frequently as a representation of the epitome of all things Cambridge.

Therefore, even if you were not in need of new flat cap or dinner suit I would still recommend a visit.

8pm, Dinner at Smokeworks: After your wander I recommend taking a short walk to Free St Lane to visit a restaurant that was recently included in the Telegraph’s top ten BBQ restaurants. Smokeworks recently opened and is famed for its delicious ‘powerhouse plates,’ where they smoke, pull, brine and season their own barbecued food. If you go with friends, sharing platters are deli-

cious and suit the Southern ethos that the restaurant emulates.

Sunday 11am, Brunch at the Espresso Library: Sunday mornings are best for brunch, and there is nowhere better in Cambridge that Espresso Library, which is housed in the newly renovated Cambridge Fire Station.

The Espresso Library is an innovative café cum art gallery, cycle shop, bar and event space that hosts poetry nights and live music. Set up

by John Gull and Malgo Dzierugo, the husband-and-wife team wished to create a space that reflected their passions, combining arts, music, coffee and food all drawn from the local Cambridge community. The main intention for creating such a diverse use of space was to unify the distinctive creative communities in Cambridge and facilitate a space in which these talents could be showcased and flourish together. I recommend ordering the avocado on sourdough and their strong Americano – the best way to start your Sunday!

12:30pm, All Saints Church, Cambridge: Slightly off the tourist trail is a little cultural secret for art lovers. All Saints Church on Jesus Lane was built by Arts and Crafts architect G. F. Bodley, and the stained glass windows within were designed collaboratively with William Morris.

This incredible showcase of Morris’ work is advertised in such an understated way that many are unaware of its existence, which as a plus as this means there are normally no crowds to block one's view. The perfect, peaceful finale for your weekend in an alternative Cambridge.

Photo: Lindsey Wiercioch

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Photo: Sammi Ciardi

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

Photo: Lorelei Pfeffer

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

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Photo: Lindsey Wiercioch

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22 Photography 6 February 2016 • The Saint

Week in pictures Photos from Rodeo Night, Wiley, Big Narstie, self defence class, and Jack Conman

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Refreshers week 2016: the highs and lows

How bad was Wiley? How good was the Vic? The Saint explores the wins and losses of the week

Emma Galligani Events editor Refreshers week has come to a close, and with that comes the sinking realisation that our wallets are empty, our workload has doubled, and the circles under our eyes have not-so-inconspicuously darkened. The real question to ask, after our first week back, balancing chaotic nights out and lectures, is “was Refreshers really worth the empty wallets, doubled workload and dark circles?”

Refreshers week kicked off on a high, with the Mànran Folk Concert and Ceilidh eclipsing all we love about Scottish culture. Swirling kilts and smiles lead the night into a promising start for Refreshers, with the general consensus being that of a cheery daze and sore muscles, which unfortunately ended in a somewhat less charming scramble for the Vic… on a Monday night. Nevertheless, Monday’s event seemed a great way to start the week, judging from my mild hangover and my ability to get to lectures on time.

I always find it funny how I can thoroughly enjoy my night, then wake up swearing to never drink or go out again (knowing perfectly well the absolute lie I just told myself). Thus, my ultimate low of the week: having to get up. Recalling Freshers memories also recalls the joys of being able to sleep in for an entire week. Unfortunately, that is not what the gods had in store for Refreshers. Though Monday night was not the most “chaotic” of nights,

the thought that I had another five nights of events ahead of me was both thrilling and surreptitiously frightening.

If there was one 80’s band whose lyrics have been perpetually ingrained in several generations’ heads, we all know the winner would be ABBA. Whether you’re a Mamma Mia enthusiast, closet ABBA fan, or simply born in the twentieth century, you are sure to know at least one ABBA song, and could easily pick up on at least another five. With that in mind, the ABBA concert marked the Union’s second success of the week, with dancing queens lining our town’s streets deep into the night. Though the event might not have appealed to all, the town generally proved to be in high spirits, with pubs crawling and the Vic’s beats pounding down Market Street.

Though I didn’t venture into Ma Bells, I’m sure it didn’t fail to disappoint, with its classic wall of sweat greeting all, and the crowded feeling of a flat party reigning throughout the night. After a week of spending infinite amounts on events and Vic entries, free entry to Ma Bells was, if you could endure the place long enough to enjoy this, a perk.

Though I’ve established my relationship with Ma Bells to be a somewhat unpleasant one, I often find myself conflicted in a love-hate relationship with the Vic, and I can never quite decide whether it reveals itself to be a high or a low. After a slightly bumper-car-like experience in the line

for BYOV on Monday (resulting in an unexpectedly early departure on my behalf), I was curious to see how the rest of the Vic’s Refreshers nights would unravel. Unfortunately, Vic entry fees were not readily greeted, and, after my second £5 Pablo, the Union generally seemed to be the place for me (and many other bumper-car-like individuals) throughout the week, turning the Vic into a definite low on my radar.

I’m not exactly sure when being tossed around, tipsy, on a machine, in cowboy hats was deemed a good idea, or who thought the Union was the perfect place to plant one of those machines, but it proved to be a crowd-pleasing idea, transforming the Union into a dynamic Rodeo and sending Wednesday off with a high.

Wednesday night also seemed to be one for flat parties, resulting in a mass movement of students gathering their way to the Union at midnight for another crowded night.

A smaller event, which was the cause of some frustration in the Union, the Battle of the Bands Launch was subject to mixed opinions. For those who had no particular interest in the event, charging entry to Sandy’s was less than ideal, and resulted in an unpleasantly quiet atmosphere for the event. Though Sandy’s remained calm, after a “raging” (in St Andrean terms) Wednesday night spent on a mechanical bull, I was surprised to see students’ seemingly undying Refreshers flare lighting up the

Union’s main bar yet again.

Low and behold the Refreshers’ colossal low – Wiley. Saying that Wiley was a disappointment is probably the biggest understatement of the week.

After Wiley’s grossly late entrance and subsequent downfall of a night, Yik Yak was flying with all sorts of rumours concerning the singer’s unfortunate performance, beset by his blatant disrespect for the crowd. A unanimous low for the week and a setback for the Union’s events, Wiley is sure to steer clear of St Andrews in the future.

After Friday’s catastrophe, the Union managed to end the week on a high, with DJ Narstie bringing Refreshers to a close and R A G week to a n auspi-

cious start. So after a week, were the empty wallets, doubled workload and dark circles really worth the hype of Refreshers? Though the week may have been expensive and though we may be cursing ourselves now, Refreshers week did not fail to meet my expectations. With a hint of Freshers memories and the excitement of reuniting with friends, the week opened its doors to the comi n g semester.

Photo by: Sammi Ciardi

Valentine’s day 2016: One Billion Rising

A Valentine’s day revolution: the feminist society host the V-Day campaign’s inspiring event Nora Stai On 14 February, the University’s feminist society will be hosting One Billion Rising Revolution as will several other universities in the United Kingdom.

One Billion Rising Revolution stems from the yearly V-Day campaign to end violence against women. The

One in three women will be beaten or raped campaign was originally launched on Valentine’s Day in 1998. Responding to the horrifying statistic that one in three women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime, the event seeks to raise awareness for the injustices occurring against women, as well as to promote an end to

these type of crimes. Past events have focused largely on justice for survivors of domestic violence, particularly highlighting the impunity that often occurs “at the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the environment, capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy.”

The theme for last year’s campaign, “revolution,” echoes past events, while simultaneously calling for an escalated response to injustices.

This year’s event is a continuation of last year’s, extending its perimeters to focus particularly on marginalised women. With activists hosting V-Day in over two hundred different countries this year, women

from all over the world will be calling for a change to the current paradigm.

According to the One Billion Rising campaign, they will be “demanding

also include information on how to support rape-survivors. In the past, the St Andrews feminist society has organised a multitude of successful events and V-Day is predicted to be no exception to this trend. Collaborating with a string of female-oriented charities, such as Amina (The Muslim Woman’s Resource Centre), Broken Rainbow, Rape Crises Scotland, and the White Ribbon campaign. The event will provide an intersectional focus: the variety of repPhoto by: One Billion Rising resentatives present accountability, justice and systematic will provide an inchange.” credible range of different positions This year’s St Andrews event will on the subject, encompassing perspecinclude multiple talks and worktives from the LGBT community, the shops, all aimed at raising awareness UK’s Islamic community, as well from of domestic violence. The event will predominantly male charities.

The event will be taking place in conjunction with a performance of The Vagina Monologues. With this production exploring feminine experiences “from the damn-right hilarious, to truly moving and shocking” this year’s Valentine’s Day will encompass a manifold of female-oriented events.

The play’s focus on non-consensual sexual encounters echoes sentiments associated with the V-Day campaign.

Regarded as a cornerstone of the VDay movement, universities all around the world will be staging similar productions of the The Vagina Monologues this month. All proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to charity.

Ultimately, this event demonstrates the University community’s dedication to the promotion of women’s rights, reiterating the sentiments expressed by the numerous student-run organisations. By exhibiting such a diverse range of perspectives on the matter of violence against women, V-Day will certainly be a feat for both the feminist society, as well as for the St Andrews community itself.

The Saint • 4 February 2016

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Events 25

DRAG Walk 2016: RAG’s glistening jewel Natasha Franks

As February approaches, Saints LGBT prepares itself for a mammoth week of celebrating all things rainbow. An official subcommittee of the Students’ Association, the society hosts a range of Union-based events throughout the year, with the majority of them taking place during the onset of LGBT History Month in February. Known as Queer Fest, this week long celebration of LGBT arts and culture begins with the most renowned event of them all: dRAG Walk.

Also contemporaneous with RAG Week, dRAG Walk encapsulates one of the largest aspects of LGBT history: Pride. On Friday 5 February, ten drag queens will once again take to the runway, boldly competing for the title of Fife’s drag superstar. Such an ostentatious affair has consistently caught the interest of the entire student body, drawing in massive crowds and establishing enough popular demand to continue the show year after year. This popularity may be

owed to the powerful message that the event seeks to spread: dRAG Walk is a proclamation of self-worth, as the participating individuals flaunt their personalities as much as their appearances, providing their inner spirits

sive show. Current contestants include Lacy Rain, a Mothertucker girl and “Queen of the Eccentric,” whose past experience with dRAG Walk makes her a noteworthy competitor.

Also performing at dRAG Walk 2016

boasts the title of Mother of the Haus of Jazzle and finalist of RuPaul’s Drag Race Ambassador.

Even when the show itself comes to a close, the party will remain in full swing as Club 601 is transformed

Illustration by: Flo McQuibban

A mammoth week of celebrating all things rainbow

with a physical manifestation on one fabulous runway.

The lineup, which has gradually been released in the days leading up to the event, foreshadows an impres-

is the legendary Rujazzle, who will host the night’s festivities with the aid of her extensive background on the drag scene. Having travelled across both Scotland and North America, she

into the brightest drag club that St Andrews has ever seen. Featuring appearances from national drag talent, the performances have been promoted as being of impeccable standards,

accompanied by music to dazzle your ears and veritable revolutions in the Terpsichorean club scene.

Essentially, dRAG Walk provides us with more than just an evening of entertainment; it allows us to witness history as it is made, to experience a St Andrean night unlike any other.

As a Union event, the price points will further cement the inclusive nature of the show: At £5.50 for the show and afterparty and £2 for the afterparty, the night welcomes everyone and anyone to come both as they are and as they would like to be. The proceeds from each ticket sold will be donated to the Scottish Trans Alliance, an organisation that works to improve gender identity and gender reassignment equality, rights, and inclusion in Scotland.

Described as “the shining jewel in the crown of this year’s RAG,” dRAG Walk will unquestionably take St Andrews by storm in the final throes of RAG Week. The event celebrates not only the freedom of its participating Queens, but also of its guests.

High fashion, low fashion, street style or experimental grunge, Club 601 will be welcome to all.

Sexuality and personality come together to present a night free from judgement, establishing a safe space for any aspiring Queens or for those who simply wish to let their freak flag fly.

Bursting the Bubble: the truth about events From Ma Bells to the Bop, The Saint delves into the reality of nights out and events in St Andrews

As I unlocked my ice cold flat after a month away, visions of a new semester and new experiences started whizzing through my mind, “new”, being the key word ringing in my ears. So how come, after only a week back, I already feel like I’ve been going in circles?

Every time I go home, I’m plagued by a plethora of questions, including the prize-winning “have you met your prince?” question, and the dreary “does St Andrews actually have a night life?” question. After less than a moment’s thought, I usually jump into an almost defensive speech on the many ways St Andreans create their own fun. I tell my interrogators about our balls, the Union, flat parties, about our many nights spent scrambling the floors of the Vic and Ma Bells, and even slip in the occasional trip to our infamous “night club”, the Lizard, ending with the invigorating revelation that our community is what truly makes St Andrean events memorable.

Though this sometimes feels like a repetitive slur, I know I’m not lying.

My answer is definitive; defensive solely on the basis that I wish others would understand the bizarre magic lying in the streets of this town. But after a year and a half in the Bubble,

though I wouldn’t give up my life here for anything, I cannot deny the feeling that I just keep going in circles.

So after a week back, what have my dreams of a new semester and new experiences brought me? Not much.

With Refreshers week bringing back hazy memories of Freshers (both this year’s and last), I felt myself falling

The truth is, I think we rely on tradition back into an all too familiar rhythm: Tuesdays at Ma Bells, Wednesdays at the Union, Thursdays at the Vic, Fridays at the Union, and Saturdays — wherever. At this point, what really is so special about our town’s events? Every week, the Vic advertises its usual line-up of events, which are in turn commemorated in a suite of almost identical photos, bearing identical

people in an identical drunken assemblage. Every month, on a Wednesday, the Union opens its doors to a crowd resembling a Halloween rampage.

Every year, we are faced with buying tickets to the same balls, events and fashion shows, hosted by the same people, and never really changing much from their predecessors.

Our life in this town is made up of an endless continuum of circles, including everything from friend groups to daily routines, from semesters and years, to night-long events.

Is this then, my most honest answer? Am I really that bored with my circular routine of identical nights out? Why do we really go to the same events, with the same people to take identical pictures in an identical drunken assemblage? Because its become tradition.

The truth is, I

think we rely on tradition; our university is steeped in it, and though we might occasionally roll our eyes at it, we usually tend to revel in tradition, and our events are merely a part of what makes this university unique.

From gowns and PHs, to Tuesdays at Ma Bells and the Bop, our repetitive nature is what enhances our illusion of the Bubble, and truly, I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

Photo: Taylor Almeraz

Emma Galligani Events editor

Illustration by: Valeria Duca

26 Events

4 February 2016 • The Saint

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Fashion shows of 2016: The Saint’s ranking

Natasha Franks

As London comes alive with passels of models, designers and aspiring journalists, the St Andrews sartorial scene takes noticeable strides to emulate the legendary London Fashion Week.

Beginning with CATWALK and culminating in Sitara*, our University’s fashion season presents no shortage of choices. Between high ticket prices and a scarcity of show-worthy outfits, you would be hard-pressed to locate an individual intent on attending every show in a single year. For those of you still debating on which wristband to wear and which to sell, The Saint presents a definitive ranking of our town’s four largest fashion shows - from the best, to the worst.

1. DONT WALK: 27 February Enigmatic and evasive, DONT WALK stands a step above the rest solely for its spectacular transformation over the years. Since its inception, the Kinkell-based show has evolve d

entire civilisation, the night is wrought Throughout the 2015-2016 school with an unforgettable beauty that could year, the committee has been masnot be seen in any other St Andrean terfully night out. A bolsterstory is told ing their on this runelite repway, a careutation fully designed w i t h concatenation launch of dance and events fashion that w o r will surely thy of a fascinate any brandand all in i n g attendance. masterOne need mind: a Photo by: Davis McCutcheon only to look at p r i va t e this year’s ind i n troductory photoshoot, “My Mahal,” to ner at Forgans, discreet drinks at the glimpse the quality of Sitara* 2016. Often Adamson, and regular nights out at overlooked, it deserves a higher ranking the Vic. Professional and innovative, position in our local lexicon.

DONT WALK has consistently proven itself to be worthy of its exclusive 3. CATWALK: 6 February image.

Although the show itself is invitation-only, the afterparty will be open to the public at £40 a ticket. Headlined

by Otto Knows and expertly organised by an accomplished committee, the afterparty may be the one event this February that absolutely no one should miss.

2. SITARA*: 1 April

presence on social media, particularly with a round of inspired snapchats over Christmas break, CATWALK continues to struggle with establishing a solid identity - “the one that’s for charity” does not offer much product differentiation amongst our other three charity fashion shows.

Fortunately, a sold-out show suggests a healthy amount of interest in the revival of the Union’s runway event. At £25 for standard tickets, the wristbands are a steal. Even cheaper are the £5 tickets to the afterparty, an opportunity to schmooze with the models in the wake of the show. Helmed by a spirited committee and residing in the home of legendarily cheap alcohol, the show has the benefit of being lowrisk: for a relatively meagre sum, you will receive, if nothing else, an entertaining night inside Club 601.

Ultimately, CATWALK will be an inexpensive evening of innocuous fun. Not as sensational as DONT WALK, not as unique as SITARA*, and not as big as FS, the show’s only flaw is its position in the middle of the road. If you aren’t the sort of person who would normally attend a fashion show, CATWALK is the event for you.

into a breathtaking exhibition of fashion and talent, establishing itself as more of an electrifying performance than a simple series of walks.

If “exclusive” defines DONT WALK, then “authentic” defines Sitara*. A celebration of Asian culture, the night prides itself on exhibiting all aspects of the East, from Japan to India, in the form of fashion, dance, art and acting. The committee’s dedication can be seen year by year in the seamless choreography and the intricate decorations (sourced directly from India for the 2016 show), all cooperating to create a self-described “night like no other.”

Although typically viewed as being a step below the two largest shows, Sitara* is owed more accolades as it delivers an event that can barely be described as a fashion show. Acting as a showcase of an

The official fashion show of RAG Week suffered from its noticeable absence from last year’s events circuit, a result of the refurbishment of Venue 1. Although maintaining a steady

Previously regarded as the quintessential St Andrews fashion show, the aptly-named FS has been losing its edge. Although last year’s show came equipped with a spectacular soundtrack courtesy of DJ Joe Jones, the dream-themed event devolved into a nightmare with an afterparty that could best be described as “nonexist-

Hamlet Studio Prince of54 Denmark

Rule Relaunch

Brunch Party

White Tie Reeling Ball

Photo by: DONT WALK

A

fter a successful event last semester, the Global Investment Group is back, on Thursday 4 February, to transform the Lizard into Studio 54.

Lights, glitz and glamour will ensure a night of dream-like bling tempting all to venture into a different epoque, and explore their superstar alter ego.

Tickets are available for £15 on Fixr.

O

Beach Clean

n Sunday 7 February, Environment and Ethics St Andrews will be hosting its first beach clean-up of 2016. Not your typical St Andrean event, it’s a great opportunity to get involved in the community and kick off 2016 with a positive start. The clean-up will begin at 10am on East Sands, where litter pickers, bags and gloves will be provided.

T

he Rule is back, on Friday 5 February, to welcome us all into its refurbished walls. Known for its cheap cocktails and welcoming atmosphere, the beloved pub has yet to reveal its new additions. Whether you’re in the mood for a cocktail or a pint, the new Rule is the place to start your night this Friday.

F

Superbowl

or those Americans missing home, and for all those interested in staying up late to experience it, the Superbowl 50 will be streamed on Sunday 7 February at the Vic. Licensed till 4am, the Vic will be the perfect place to cheer throughout the night, along with enjoying nachos, hot dogs and curly fries galore.

4. FS: 13 February

Photo by: CATWALK

W

ho doesn’t love pretending they’ve jumped into Upper East Side Manhattan along the elitist ranks of those whose definition of ‘brunch’ actually means champagne?

On Saturday 6 February, the WNTD Crowd will be hosting a Brunch Party at the Vic, complete with our favourite Vic food, music, and of course, champagne.

T

Bute Ball

his coming Friday 12 February, Kinkell Byre will once again be transformed into a mystical land. This year’s Bute Ball presents “Grimms’ Fairy Tales”, recalling our most magical and most frightening childhood stories. With sold out tickets, the ball is guaranteed to be an enchanting success for all.

ent.” The possibility of redemption was then squandered at this year’s launch event, Starfields, a plaintive attempt at a music festival that lacked the most basic semblance of organisation. One could not help but wonder if the organisers, in their admirable focus on ensuring a beautifully decorated Lower College Lawn, forgot that actual human beings would be present in the meretricious venue.

Complacency seems to have affected what is technically the largest show in St Andrews, as they adhere to the s a m e methods utilised by their p r e d ecessors: Starfields, a foam sale and, to be honest, not Photo by: FS much else.

O t h e r than a lacklustre introductory photoshoot, FS has kept a low profile throughout the year, a stark contrast to DONT WALK’s regular appearances on our newsfeeds. The committee’s predictability, too, places it at odds with the innovators of DONT WALK, who possess the ability to challenge themselves, rather than follow the blueprints of previous years.

With all this in mind: FS will not be bad. FS is never bad. The lucky few who emerged victorious from the table ballot may be content in the knowledge that they will receive their money’s worth. If you find yourself faced with a choice, however, between our two rival fashion shows... Well, it can’t be considered much of a choice at all.

(The auction does look quite good, though. Anyone want to go halfsies on the trip to Milan?)

F

or those who have been practising in their flats, and for those who have had to deal with listening to the endless thumping, the time has come to don your finest white tie and head to this year’s White Tie Reeling Ball on Saturday 6 February. Set in a beautiful Scottish castle, the ball promises a night of finest elegance, and high-spirited fun. If you didn’t get a ticket for this year’s event, there’s always another chance for next year’s.

F

Fashion Shows 2016

eatured in The Saint’s Fashion Shows of 2016 article, this year’s lineup is not one to miss.

CATWALK will introduce the season on 6 February, followed by FS on 13 February, DONT WALK on 27 February and ending with Sitara* on 1 April. Whether it be the shows or the afterparties, with a large range of prices, there will be an event guaranteed for everyone.

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Featured artist, Alexandra Zagaynova’s work is discussed Page 33

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4 February 2016 • The Saint

Photo credit: Canal Studios

28 Arts & Culture

The Lobster: a dark and subtle world criticism

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Caitlin Lewis Arts and culture editor The Lobster is the first English film by the award winning Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. The film takes place in a dystopian ‘other’ world which is kooky and amusing, despite the ever encroaching sense of fear and dread. It tells the tale of David (played

by Colin Farrell in one of his least handsomely brooding roles) a widower who is transported to the mysterious Hotel, where single people go to find a new partner.

But there’s a twist; if you fail to find love during your stay, you are turned into an animal, because being a different species gives you a new chance to find a mate. In the world of the Hotel, a match is found when two people have some minimal quality in common, for example being prone to nose bleeds or enjoying skiing.

This gimmicky, quirky premise soon

gives way to darker undertones when David realises he cannot love any of his fellow guests. He flees his dystopian rehabilitation centre and runs to the forest, a world inhabited by The Loners, a gang of misfits who are the only people in society without partners. The Loners are a counter society, a parody of The Hotel where the community is free to exist, but forbidden to fall in love. When David meets a short sighted women, played to perfection by Rachel Weisz, they begin to explore a forbidden relationship under the backdrop of a fast approaching threat from their own community.

The film is a blurring of genres, aesthetics and storytelling techniques, almost to the point of confusion.

However it manages to keep all its numerous separate themes separate without negating each other, much to the credit of the director. The storybook anti-realism of the plot in which humans can be plausibly turned into animals is never explained, the audience are simply expected to buy into

it. And this amusing and endearing premise attracts audience attention as much as the encroaching climate of fear.

Rather than separating the kooky and the dystopian, Lanthimos rather entwines them. The seemingly charm-

ing world of The Hotel subtly intertwines some disturbing undertones, like when one guest has his hand forced into a toaster and burnt as a punishment for masturbating, one of

The Hotel’s forbidden activities.

The same can be said for the Forest; the Loners speak in the same stilted, childlike way in which conversation becomes a collection of statements rather than a progressive flow. Even they, those who form the antithesis of the ordered world of The Hotel, believe that the common ground of short sightedness is enough of a connection between David and the short sighted woman for it to threaten their society.

What would be a life-saving connection in the Hotel becomes a threat in the Forest.

So instead of being seen as a messy mush of contradicting genres, The Lobster uses its varied groups and themes to complement each other through their disconnect, and thereby create a sense of continuity between the film’s two halves.

The Lobster is both dystopian and satirical, with Lathimos playing on the films irregularities to make an allegorical comment on the world of dating.

A world where being single so unde-

sirable that it is criminalized? A world where having one, static common interest makes you a perfect match?

Conversation is forsaken for clichéd statements, civilization preoccupies itself with following its ideal relationship type and making matches.

Maybe Lanthimos uses his antirealism to show how modern dating has become ridiculous and impersonal to the point of being unrealistic. Anyone who has been asked if they have ‘found their prince’ for the thousand times knows how criminalizing those pitying looks make being single.

The Lobster is a fascinating satire, an unobtrusive allegory that subtly criticises the world. This is a far cry from the loud in your face ranting and raving of many other forms of satire found today.

Lathimos has made a film that has redefined satire at its core, that confuses then explains, that mixes, mashes and flips upside down all perceptions. The Lobster comes highly recommended.

troduced by Gerda’s character, who flips gender roles by being a female artist painting male sitters, reversing the objectifying gaze normally held by the male.

By providing the couple’s income with the success of her paintings after Lili abandons her own painting career, Gerda takes on the traditionally male role of breadwinner. She confidently takes control of situations, an example being the way she instigates relations with her husband—he admits that “she propositioned me”.

Alongside Gerda’s remarkable strength of character, despite the hardships she endures in losing her husband, there is a sense of ambiguity created over which of the film’s two strong leads is the “girl” referred to in the title.

As Lili gazes at herself in the mirror, we see her true reflection, Gerda’s artistic depcition of Lili, on the canvas next to her. Perhaps the film was never intended to be a political pioneer, but instead a true and beautiful memoir of an artist and icon. With

its stunning visuals—which include exquisite contemporary costumes, sequences of scenery which provided subject matter for Wegener’s paintings, and striking mise-en-scene like that of The King’s Speech—the execution of the film presents beauty and artistic flair appropriate to the lives of its characters.

Both as beautiful and as timid as Lili is on her debut outing to the Artist’s Ball, The Danish Girl turns heads of appreciation despite its late arrival to the party.

The idea that humans can be plausibly turned into animals is never explained

Sarah Jack

Had it been released a year or so ago, Tom Hooper’s moving biopic depicting the transformation of Danish painter Einar Wegener into Lili Elbe would have been ground-breaking.

Unfortunately, the release of The Danish Girl instead falls a little flat at the end of a victory year for transgender rights.

Hung in 2015’s great exhibition of transgender movement magna opera alongside Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover, Amazon’s Golden Globe-winning series Transparent, and Britain’s first ever first-ever parliamentary inquiry into transgender equality, the film’s rose-tinted representation of the artist’s life appears a little … pastel.

The film follows the transformative journey of its leading character, Lili Elbe, as she struggles to come to terms with her female identity and the obstacles she must overcome in order to become “entirely herself”. Initially seemingly secure in his masculinity, Wegener undergoes a sudden wakeup call to his feminine self whilst trying on wife Gerda’s stockings as he poses for her painting. The couple together then laughingly create Lili, perhaps using the persona as a substitute for the child they had been trying to conceive, an idea later tearfully recalled by Lili when she promotes marriage in stating that it “creates

someone else, more than just the two of you”.

The stark contrast between the masculine, sexualised Einar to the elegant and girlish Lili and lack of indication toward feminine tendencies in his character at the start of the film makes for a somewhat unconvincing moment of revelation during the dress up scene.

Once decided in her gender identity however, it is immediately obvious that Lili is undoubtedly female. Her new emphasised “prettiness” attracts the attention of many, both in real life and through Gerda’s paintings of her,

There is a sense of ambiguity as to which of the film’s lead in the “girl” referred to in the title which are enormously successful, allowing Lili’s transformation to be a breakthrough moment not only for herself but also for Gerda.

A theme of gender fluidity is in-

Photo credit: Working Title Films

Eddie Redmayne tries for his second oscar

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The Saint • 4 February 2016

The best up and coming artists of 2016 Flora Rowe Music editor 2016 is set to be a cracking year for music, with various huge artists planning album releases and comebacks; the battle for fame is increasingly tough. Despite the competition, a new squad is breaking onto the scene in full force with original sounds and high anticipation surrounding them.

These 11 artists appear to be the cream of the crop, expect them to make an immense impact in music this year.

The Beach

Zane Lowe brought this Clapham based singer-songwriter’s music fame when claiming it to be the ‘Next Hype’. The Beach’s sound is intensely intimate and troubadour-esque while being laced with quavering vocals, this ambiguous vibe is what everyone is raving about. Their Facebook doesn’t really solve their mystery, it simply states that jumping in headfirst, allows your imagination to run its full course.

A prime example of this is their debut single, ‘Thieves’ with its ever-mounting emotion. After supporting artists such as Of Monsters and Men, Kodaline and Seafret, The Beach seems to be leaping from strength to strength with raw and heartfelt music, which keeps drawing in the listeners. Fun fact, The Beach literally jump started his career when he kicked a football into his future producers back garden.

Unmissable track: Thieves Compared to: Hozier, Rhodes, Tom Odell Chance of Fame: 6/10

Loyle Carner

Weathered, Breathe Life (The list goes on) Compared to: Jesse Ware, Honne, James Bay, Disclosure Chance of Fame 10/10

Izzy Bizu

Loyle Carner’s music can only be described as fine tuned grime, influenced by rap with scatterings of his personal life. He leaves space for your empathy as he embraces confronting his biggest issues, family and dealing with adulthood. Carner manages to pen honest music yet without creating a gloomy vibe. “Everybody says I’m fuckin’ sad/ Of course I’m fuckin’ sad, I miss my fuckin’ dad”. Frequently compared with Little Simz, this pair has been paving a name for British rap worldwide. With his jazzy instrumentals, pauses filled with street side sounds and rolling percussion, Carner has really got his own feel, which has a welcome place in the UK rap scene and beyond.

Unmissable track: Ain’t Nothing Changed Compared to: Raury, Chance the Rapper, Little Simz Chance of Fame: 8/10

Izzy Bizu’s soulful silky vocals and invigorating beats are bringing something incredibly fresh to the table. Scouted at an open-mic night, she had a whirlwind rise to fame, not only was her EP ‘Coolbeanz’ an instant hit, she also supported Sam Smith on tour and starred on the BBC’s segment at Glastonbury. Reigning from a souljazz-funk background, Bizu is truly unique and after being nominated for the Brit’s Critics choice award, 2016 really could be the year for fame.

Expect serious festival appearances as her smooth revitalizing sound has a certain summery ring to it.

Unmissable track: Diamond Compared to: James Hersey, Lianne La Havas Chance of Fame: 9/10

Caravan Palace

Jack Garratt Garratt is the ginger bearded, ultra talented 24 year-old ‘hipster’ who is taking over the radio waves. Before releasing his first album, he was already selling out shows and is winner of the Critic’s Choice award 2016.

While the critics were not immediately kind, Garratt’s unpredictable style keeps everyone listening. It’s near impossible to compare him to others, he’s as similar to James Bay as he is to Disclosure but this magic combination of snappy guitar riffs and sultry sensuality gives us great hope for his future.

Unmissable track(s): Worry,

Mix together Retro rhythms and futuristic melodies and you get Caravan Palace. This Paris based seven-piece band picked up fame in mainland Europe in 2008 with their self-titled album, they’ve seriously shaken up attention since then featuring on the Jonathan Ross show and Later With Jools at the end of 2015 with their album < I°_°I >. They have set themselves aside from similar artists by exploiting gramophone filters which gives nostalgic 1920’s vibes.

Their brass filed, percussion-laden sound challenges you to keep your

feet still and with electro-swing currently hitting the club scene hard, they could really make a name for themselves.

Unmissable track: Lone Digger Compared to: Yolanda Be Cool, Parov Stelar Chance of Fame: 8/10

DNCE

and dark pop feels have been bringing in serious attention such as being nominated for BBC sound of 2016.

While Dua Lipa is forced onto our radar, she brings a great vibe to daytime radio, a real breath of fresh pop air.

Unmissable track: New Love Compared to: Lana Del Ray (due to sharing a manager), Nelly Furtado Chance of Fame: 7/10

The Lake Poets

Joe Jonas is back (without his brothers) to try and take on the pop world with his new boy band DNCE. This American group formed in 2015 and describe themselves as ‘Your new favourite band’, which is highly unlikely considering their irritating energy and honestly horrific lyrics.

Take “When you’re standing there in your underwear and my t-shirt from the night before, With your messed up hair and your feet still bare, Would you mind closing the bedroom door?” it gets worse. From listening to their debut single “Cake By The Ocean”, it’s clear their only chance of success is due to the former Disney star fronting the band.

Unmissable track: None of them Compared to: The Jonas Brothers Chance of Fame: 7/10

Dua Lipa Breezy, effortlessly poppy singer-songwriter Dua Lipa is back in force with her highly anticipated single ‘Be The One’, with a new hypnotic sound, this track is standing out against the crowd. Although she has been closely compared to other British female artists (Florence Welch, Lily Allen) her dynamically smoky voice

Delicate vocals, melancholy instrumentals and tear jerking vocals are what identify the ethereal music of Martin Longstaff (aka. The Lake Poets). His latest album, produced in Nashville by old friend Dave Stewart, stands on Longstaff’s intensely personal song writing and tenderly beautiful melodies. Growing up in Sunderland he draws influence from the miner’s strikes and his Geordie accent is clear in his music. With the world embracing folk music, The Lake Poets with their atmospheric fiddles and captivating lyrics, could really make an impact, certainly fitting into the most anticipated category.

Unmissable track: Your Face Compared to: Passenger, Daughter, Stu Larsen Chance of Fame: 6/10 Overall, 2016 promises to be the year when many artists will finally get their much sought after big break.

For the music scene in general, we also predict Justin Bieber becoming a grime artist, an Elton John and Lady Gaga feud and an number one single of a One Direction and Skrillex collaboration!

PLAYING IN ST ANDREWS

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inemagoers in St Andrews are hardly spoilt for choice when it comes to venues but can take solace in the fact that the town’s sole theatre, the New Picture House at 117 North Street, offers an excellent viewing experience and a varied selection of quality movies across its three screens.

So whether you’re into rom-coms, dramas or good old-fashioned action flicks, here you’ll find what’s on at NPH this week.

Dirty Grandpa

La Traviata

Room

The Big Short

Zac Efron stars as a soon-to-be-married aspiring lawyer who is tricked into spending a raucous spring break with his foulmouthed grandfather.

Fans of trainwrecks will not want to miss Robert De Niro hit a new career low. The man has won an Oscar, for heaven’s sake.

Want to satisfy your Verdi fix?

Happily, you can watch the Royal Opera’s live performance of La Traviata right here in the Bubble, tonight only at 18:45. Take a break from weeping over coursework to weep over the heartbreaks of a Parisian courtesan instead.

Emma Donoghue’s novel, told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy whose whole life has been spent in the underground room where his mother is held prisoner, became an international best-seller. Donoghue adapted her own chilling story for the screen, and the result is just as unnerving.

What’s so funny about collateralised debt obligations, hedge funds and subprime loans? You don’t need a degree in economics to understand this adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book about the real-life 2007 financial crisis—but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Christian Bale and Steve Carrell star.

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4 February 2016 • The Saint

Photo credit: FOX

30 Arts & Culture

Scream Queens and the rise of the anti-hero TELEVISION

Caitlin Lewis Arts and culture editor 2015 saw the introduction of E4’s latest dark comedy, Scream Queens, the pastel pink, fabulously fluffy murder mystery set in a sorority. I know what you’re thinking; another Revenge spinoff that desperately tries to engage with a teenage audience. And in many ways, you would be right.

Scream Queens could be written off as the awkward forcing together of Gossip Girl or 90210’s glamourous aesthetic while channelling the popularity of revenge dramas. But the reason it is different, and ultimately more successful, than the depressing list of recent flop E4 sitcoms (The New Normal, Happy Endings, Accidentally on Purpose are but a few of the sitcoms that never really got off the ground) is that plot and genre are secondary to the overall ‘mood’ of the show.

The ridiculous yet engulfing world of Scream Queens fits no genre, so much so that it uses its unrealistic nature as part of its allure.

The pastel pink, faux fur world of Scream Queens revolves around the

dark deeds going on behind closed doors at Kappa Kappa Tau sorority at the failing Wallis University. The infamous sorority, led by the tyrannical matriarch, Chanel (played to perfection by Emma Roberts) has hit a brick wall.

Due to its fearsome reputation, Jamie Lee Curtis’s fierce feminist Dean Munsch has demanded that the sorority must accept any student who applies. Cue a clichéd list of typecast undesirables including ‘neck brace’, ‘deaf Taylor Swift’, and ‘predatory lez’ that call the show’s moral compass into question despite their comic value. But Kappa House is more than just fake tan and designed gowns; the house conceals a dangerous secret. Burdened by the dark legacy of the mysterious death of a young girl many years ago, the house conceals numerous murders under its bitchy elitist exterior. It is up to Grace, the good girl heroine and her mind numbing journalist boyfriend Pete to find the killer and save the house!

It seems fitting that a show that ridicules the elite sells itself to such an extent on its own star power. Scream Queens is littered with big names.

Emma Roberts stars as Queen Bee

Chanel, doing what she does best by playing a quintessential teen brat, but with more blood on her hands.

Lea Michelle of Glee fame also stars as Hester (better known as neck brace), a loser desperate for social acceptance by her hero Chanel. So basically Rachel Berry but 100 times more shrill (and without the singing). Abigail Breslin plays Chanel No. 5, one of Chanel’s nameless minions, Jamie Lee Curtis does her thing as the sassy badass Dean of Wallis University, and Skyler Samuels is the downtrodden weak moral compass, Grace, the only student in Kappa House without a list of atrocities to her name. Throw in some So-Hot-Right-Now teen pop stars Ariana Grande as Chanel No. 2, another slightly more powerful minion, and Nick Jonas as Boon the frat boy and you have the perfect concoction of star quality to engage a teen audience.

However, big names are not enough to keep a show running.

Scream Queens differs itself from other teenage sitcoms through the dark undertones of its murder plot. Yet despite the centrality of the murder plot to the storyline of the show, it is often downplayed and trivialised

to the point that it frequently gets overlooked. But I do not see this as a failing, more a deliberate choice of the directors, and a key feature of the show’s aesthetic. The overlooking of the plot could simply be because drama is downplayed through comedy.

It could be because ‘the good guys’ in the programme are so very bland that anything they do blends into obscurity. Or, the most likely explanation in my eyes is that the world of Scream Queens is a world exaggerated to the point of ridicule, where morality and normality are non-existent, so any rational plotline seems a little out of sync with the rest of the show. In fact, more is brushed over in the show than actually explained. The audience is expected to overlook how unphased a group of teenage girls are by murder and how lax and reluctant the authorities are about the serial killer on campus. They are directed to laugh in the face of the constant elitism and classism of Chanel and turn a blind eye to the subtle racist undertones that make up a significant proportion of the humour. Using shock value for humour is nothing that hasn’t been done before. Elitism is increasingly employed by the TV villains we love to hate; the

difference is that its usually negated with a strong hero character who is the antithesis of the villain’s awful values.

It is safe to say that the whiny, clinched Grace fails miserably at this role. Her irritating sweetness does absolutely nothing to quell the storm of Chanel’s self-obsessed snobbery.

It is simply that the show relies on bitchiness and snobbery for most of its comic value, so there is no need for it to be toned down by the forces of good. Instead, the audience pardons the show’s questionable morals because of how exaggerated they are, so much so that they simply cannot be taken seriously. Chanel calling her maid ‘white mami’ is extremely racist and unfunny; Chanel burning her maid’s face off in the fat fryer is too ridiculous to actually cause offence.

So Scream Queens creates a world too ridiculously exaggerated to be anything but hilarious, negating the need for a heroine.

By focusing on the anti-hero, Scream Queens both celebrates and criticises its own elitist aesthetic. It certainly has all the ingredients to stand out from the blurry forgettable list of E4 failures.

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Marina Carnwath Arts and culture editor The third instalment of J.K. Rowling’s series, published under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, reunites the reader with the war veteran turned private detective, Cormoron Strike, and his ambitious, conflicted assistant, Robin. Continuing pretty directly from where the last book, The

Rowling’s work plays as an inversion of Agatha Christie’s Silkworm finished, Career of Evil opens with the duo wrestling with the same issues that plagued them through

the predecessors: for Strike, coming to terms with his family history and how it’s shaped him, and for Robin, whether or not to marry her obnoxiously pathetic fiancé. Both problems are compelling to survive this length of continuation, as Rowling ensures that they are there simply provide a rich backdrop for the real meat of the story.

The essentials of the plot are that Robin receives a delivery at work which turns out to be a severed leg.

This is made all the more unsettling by the fact that Strike himself is missing a leg, following an explosion while on deployment in Afghanistan.

From there the story follows their search to find the body to which the leg belongs, and the perpetrator of the crime – all relatively standard detective story material.

Rowling’s structure of plot, and the emphasis on the journey, rather than the reveal, makes her work seem oddly like a direct inversion of Agatha Christie’s conventional style. With Christie’s books, the narrative is often given momentum by the reader’s de-

Photo credit: Sphere Books

J.K. Rowling takes her detective novels to darker places

sire to discover the identity of the murderer, and more importantly the hows and whys of the deed. This implies a certain faith that the concluding explanation is sufficiently satisfying as to make the journey feel worthwhile.

Three books into Rowling’s series, it has become abundantly apparent that

the reveal of the murderer and their reasons is never particularly creative or adequate. Indeed, she herself appears to have recognised this, setting out and sticking to just three suspects at the start of Career of Evil, instead of trying to weave something more complex.

Instead Rowling’s strengths lie in Christie’s arguable weakness. The story of Strike and Robin’s discovery of clues, meticulous investigative procedures, and personal problems is enormously compelling. This is a book unlikely to last more than two days, such is its page turning capacity. The same has been true of the previous two instalments: as long as you’re there for the journey, not the finish line, these are fantastically entertaining novels.

Rowling does take an interesting turn with this book, though not one she convincingly needed to take. Her determination to publish The Casual Vacancy and all of its dark, miserable themes as her immediate follow up to Harry Potter betrayed a desire to distance herself from the world of children’s literature as brutally as pos-

sible, and in Career of Evil, this again rises. This latest book contains themes surrounding amputees, trans-abled people (people that are able bodied but feel so innately that they’re meant to be disabled that they seek to gravely injure themselves), child abuse, drug abuse, domestic abuse, and probably many more abuses that I’m forgetting.

Honestly it just seems a little unnecessary for a story teller this good to be resorting to what appears to be shock tactics to maintain the reader’s attention, however effective it may be.

Ultimately, Career of Evil and the rest of the Comoron Strike series are seriously good holiday reads. They’re not anywhere near trashy enough to be embarrassing to read, but are easy and compelling enough to make them feel like entertainment rather than work. The darker themes of this book might leave a slightly sour taste in the mouth, but I guess that’s what you get for buying a novel that has the delivery of a severed limb as the opening line of its blurb. Fundamentally, Rowling’s talent as an author remains as obvious as ever.

Theatre & the dramatics of emotion Past the Fourth Wall

Jolie Tran “The theatre is so endlessly fascinating because it’s so accidental. It’s so much like life,” said Arthur Miller.

And just like in life, the emotions felt within the theatre are very real indeed. Theatre section writer, Jolie Tran, was inspired through her work on both sides of ‘the fourth wall’ and takes this opportunity to share her thoughts with readers of The Saint. By drawing on her experiences watching plays, acting, and working on production teams, she talks us through an evening at the theatre.

Fifteen minutes before the door opens.

The actors: The last round of rehearsal was a success, and yet, that feeling of having butterflies in their stomachs is only intensifying as the night proceeds. They put on their costumes and makeup while chewing the last bites of their sandwiches. “Ten minutes”, the usher says. The directors encourage the cast with some pep talks. Yet, the directors are the ones who need to be comforted more. Long before the cast was chosen, they spent weeks studying the script, filling out proposal forms for Mermaids. The idea of this play came from a casual conversation.

Who knew that this idea was bizarre enough to aspire the directors to bring it to life? The play is rather odd; its plot is convoluted. Will the cast’s performance be simple enough for the audience to understand, yet complex enough to stay true to the structure that the script demands? They are about to find out.

The audience: A trio is smiling triumphantly as they collected the last tickets. The waiting room is already packed with groups of people. Some are chatting away, some are sipping on their hot drinks. By the door, one can see a few people with flowers, excited to see their friends on stage, to get to know them in a different light. What an intriguing night. Words got out that this is gonna be a different type of play. The

directors are some of the most dedicated. The group of characters is diverse - they come from many walks of life.

One can already witness the chemistry of the cast by looking at the posters. The trailer, which was produced a couple of days ago, was odd enough to amuse the minds of the curious, yet human enough to invite them to come. What a scene!

The doors open.

The actors: Backstage, one is reading through her script for the final time. One is glancing through the curtains, wondering if they got a full house for their opening night. Some actors are looking at each other, murmuring, “Break a leg.”

The experienced are calm, they have been in this position multiple times.

The first timers are a bit more anxious.

Some look at the floor, some eye around to reassure that their props are at the right place. After all, they have worked on this play for months. The first time they read the script, they pondered how on earth would they interpret this play, let alone perform it. Now that a few months have gone by, they know the play by heart. They approached the script sincerely with a learning attitude, and then transformed it with their own uniquely personal interpretation. As actors, they have grown. As a group, they have become a team. They are ready to portray their efforts from the last few months on stage, but deep down inside, they understand that the following days are going to feel empty at their usual rehearsal time.

The audience: Finally, they can walk inside. The stage’s lighting radiates just enough heat to welcome the audience to its home. They quickly find seats. Some read through the brochures to make the most out of what they are about to see.

Some look at the set on stage. What is it?

Is it supposed to be a park, a town hall?

Others simply sit and wait. They wait for the seats to be occupied, for the stage to darken, for the characters to come out and fulfill their fantasy.

The music begins. Whispers fade.

All eyes on the stage.

The actors: It’s their cue to come out. Shouting. They shout from the top of their lungs, they shout like they will never get to shout again. Shouting gives way to silence. Silence gives way to monologues. At first, some actors were a little distracted - they could not refrain from looking through the audience.

Gradually, the emotions set in, they return more truthfully to their characters, ones that they have discovered as they built them from scratch.

The audience: This is rather a startling and violent start. The characters are in symbolic costumes. Why is that man wearing red? Why is that girl barefoot? Why are they moaning?

Instantaneously, the audience has established a blurry impression for each of the characters. It seems like the man in blue has some dark secrets to him. It seems like the girl in black is an antagonist. What about that girl in yellow?

Who is she? All these predictions are still up in the air. It’s been only a few minutes.

The actors: They find themselves getting more passionate as the play proceeds. They have received a few laughs from the audience here and there. Some of them were expected; some were actually what the actors would consider to be inappropriate. Granted, those laughs have given them more energy.

One of them forgot a line; it’s all taken care of. Their fellow actors have got their back. The act continues. The climax is reached. The lighting changes. The music kicks in.

The audience: Are they supposed to laugh at this? It seems like a humorous scene, but they are ambivalent. They now have got the basic idea to the play.

There are still a lot of questions at stake.

They wonder if the other attendees in the crowd have got the same impressions. Sometimes, what seems to be a simplistic scene can offer such contradictory interpretations.

Intermission.

The actors: Half way through! The

first half went differently than what they had imagined. They have performed it numerous times. And yet, somehow, with the energy of the crowd, the performance felt more lively and complete.

They hope that the audience felt it also.

Now it’s time to prepare for the second half. This is going to be an entertaining scene - one that the cast has had much fun practicing. Hopefully this time they can resist the temptation of laughing.

“Keep it together,” they whisper.

The audience: They probably walked in not being prepared enough for what they have just seen. There’s ambiguity to be solved. Some discuss. Some ponder by themselves.

The second half.

The actors: The stage is ready. The colors are vibrant. This time, waiting behind the curtains, the actors are not as anxious anymore. This scene is what they have been looking forward to. It’s the last act that they are worried about.

The audience: Immediately after a few seconds of the third act, the audience has been mesmerized by what’s going on onstage. A few laughs for the creativity, a few for the sense of humour, a few for the irony. Life has come to show, however, that irony is usually followed by a mind-triggering tail.

What is about to unfold? What can be even more enthralling than this? What are they about to learn?

The final act.

The actors: They are about to perform what they have not experienced, and yet they feel emotionally related to somehow. They think about the times they have failed, the roads they have not taken, the feelings that they could not describe with words. Suddenly, they realise how much they have been through. They have not recalled all the critical times in life at once until now.

Their hearts ache. They shiver. They feel emotions. Emotions that words cannot speak, emotions that can only be shown with tears. They feel tears dripping from the corner of their eyelids. The theatre of hundreds now disappears. At this

Photo credit:Klaus Frahm

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The Saint • 4 February 2016

moment, they are fragile and alone.

There’s only one light ahead, one light that sparks through solitude. A light that comforts them in their fragile state.

The audience: They hold their breath. They were touched by something that they do not yet know how to fathom. Their minds, which just a few seconds ago, were still trying to keep up with the plot, now freeze to empathize with the actors. What is in front of them is real. Somewhere in the audience, the directors stopped murmuring the lines along with the actors on stage.

They stopped being directors. The play that they have directed for so long now seems unfamiliar. They, too, are like any other attendees. The ending that they just witnessed is not the ending that they have gone over during the last rehearsal, or any rehearsal for the matter.

This ending opened their eyes to a new chapter, one that puts a smile on their faces. Curtain call.

The actors: Standing in front of the audience, waving as a team, the cast are still trying to catch their breath from what just took place. They look into each other’s eyes. In midst of the noise of the crowd, of the clapping and cheering, they connect with each other without speaking a word. They probably are not aware that after the performance, the memories go on.

The audience: Shouting. They shout from the top of the lungs. Yes, it’s true that they are very confused by the whole play. They need more time to process the entire performance. They need to sleep on it to decide what to make of it. For now, it’s going to be a strange show, but that’s not necessarily a negative thing. Being strange is admirable in its own way. The directors probably agree. At this point, it’s up to the audience to determine whether they enjoyed the show. As for the directors, they have done their best, they have had fun. A successful play, to them, is a play that captures their vision in a way that will communicate it well to the audience. As for the cast, the feeling is mutual, and

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4 February 2016• The Saint

All illustrations: Nicole Slyusareva

32 Arts & Culture

Be inspired by London Mens Collection AW2016 Natalie Correa Fashion editor London Collections Men is an event that gives both British and global menswear brands the opportunity to showcase their season collections.

With sponsors such as GQ, MercedesBenz, TOPMAN, and Victoria House Swatch, LCM’S Autumn/Winter 16 collections were nothing short of luxurious and timeless British men’s fashion. For those of many fashion forward students here at university, here are a few highlights from London’s event of the season that you may incorporate in your style and become inspired by this term.

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A common theme among TOPMAN’s Autumn/Winter 16 collection was denim. Male models cat walked effortlessly down the runway with light washed hues and black & white sneakers. A popular trend among the models’ outfits was denim paired with light grey and/or white shirts and sweaters. If you want to get ahead of the game, start flaunting some light washed blue jeans with a grey sweatshirt paired with a light jean jacket! You can find great finds on Market Street’s H&M for £30 or less.

Who doesn’t love wearing a cosy Barbour coat in St Andrews?

Particularly striking is Barbour’s new mustard yellow coat. The rural colour pairs well with a brown and rust orange – the rich colours would look amazing and stand out in the sun, especially alongside Scotland’s many extraordinary landscapes. Since a mustard yellow coat is hard to find at St Andrews, why not reverse the colour scheme? You can find a Tan Bonded Jacket for £29.99 at New Look and couple it with dark yellow trousers of your preference.

According to the Financial Times, it has been a year since Stuart Vevers, creative director at Coach, showcased his first men’s collection for Coach. Last year’s men’s collection was a great success, which made the creative director confident in this year’s pieces. Like Vevers, the collection is confident and bold; these characteristics are especially seen in the collection’s oversized, light brown fur coat, which was combined with an ensemble that was “all black everything.” You can find a similar faux fur coat called

the River Island Faux Fur Winter Coat on asos.com for £120.00. If you’re looking for a coat that isn’t so heavy, Coach also featured an eye-catching navy trench coat with large buttons. If you want this look now, Zara has a similar Navy Coat for £129.99.

Who says you can’t start making Autumn/Winter 16 start trending this spring (especially in cold and rainy Scotland)? Go for something bright, bold and brash to evade the boring and make yourself stand out!

Start trending these styles now and start looking for these fashion finds today!

How to become a master of Soundcloud Flora Rowe Music editor

Soundcloud is the Berlin-based music platform that claims 12 hours of audio uploaded every minute, so in theory, it should have a lot to offer. The idea branched from the founders wanting somewhere for upcoming musicians to share music but now works as a place to share and listen to originals, covers and masterfully selected playlists.

With their unique features including timed comments and unlimited length uploads, Soundcloud is attracting quite the audience, but with the open doors policy comes a lot of bad music so ‘what is worth listening to?’

I hear you ask.

With the abundance of unsigned singer songwriters floating about, there must be some worth the listen, one being St. Andrews alumnus, Josh Fuchs. Hailing from Edinburgh, he plays ‘browbeaten cosmopolitan folk’ which is reminiscent of Jackson C Frank, with heartbreakingly honest qualities. His frequent appearances at open mic’s before his graduation last year were highly anticipated due to his captivating performances, which

are expertly transferred to organic recordings (featured on his account).

Fuchs is a prime example of soundcloud staging incredible talent, which would otherwise be hidden away. Soundcloud sneakily links similar accounts leading you from one artist to another via auto-play, meaning that you can be taken from your favourite artist to a new and unexpectedly wonderful cover. This feature was the cause of the discovery of The Cold Weather Company, an independent Alternative Folk band from New Jersey. This band plays an array of solo and group, covers and originals, which have a certain endearing simplicity to them. Their cover of Coldplay’s Adventure of a Lifetime is a perfect example of this and by following their account you’re bound to not miss any of their incredible new tracks.

With their community feel, Soundcloud allows easy sharing, comments and playlists to be made, allowing easy sharing and therefore musicians can make a name for themselves. It is not only hidden gems that soundcloud prides itself on; signed artists have been lining up to get on this platform to take advantage of the

wider audience. South African loop artist Jeremy Loops has a flourishing account, which stages his booming city rhythms and lilting folk. He releases his tracks in high quality and his 22,500 followers are kept up to date with his charity work, which includes teaching underprivileged school children across Africa and activist work against deforestation.

Loops is an all-round nice raconteur who composes music that reflects a blend between his South African roots and catchy pop, an account that will keep giving. While Soundcloud was primarily founded to help new musicians, accounts are being created to solely share playlists of certain genres of music. IncontroL is the electro swing station that provides antique remixes and vintage rhythms.

This upcoming genre is bringing beard clad, beanie wearing groups swarming into clubs, while this may be criticised, the refreshing melodies are toe tapping ready and pleasantly upbeat. IncontroL has taken advantage of the use of playlists to create collections of music to grip you into the expanding world of electro swing.

You may want a bit more of a chilled ambiance than electro swing and then

vibewithit is a channel worth a listen, think Majestic Casual just less lame.

Collecting house music and remix’s, vibewithit seems truly passionate about their music and therefore, pure talent is brought to our attention.

They exemplify that music can be made and it can be shared and both can be equally glorious, and soundcloud provides the perfect place to appreciate this. While it seems a little less polished than Youtube and Spotify, Soundcloud is spacing the

gap and allowing musicians to produce high quality audios and getting another profile into the music world.

The best part is once you get started, you get completely consumed! By choosing one song that catches your eye, a whole catalogue of new music will play afterwards untill you get to the point when you have discovered 20 new unusual songs in the space of a day!

Educate yourself and up your music game!

The Saint • 4 February 2016

Arts & Culture 33

thesaint-online.com

Jack Conman opens Coffee House Sessions for the new year

Student spotlight artist: Alexandra Zagaynova

Flora Rowe Music editor Jack Conman is the first Coffee House Sessions artist to brace St. Andrews in 2016 after his whirlwind tour of the UK’s universities. He answered a few questions about his music and hopes for the future after his show this Friday.

Conman began his musical career in percussion before starting to play to guitar. He soon realized that his forte was singing and song writing. He believes that the percussive route with which he began to do music is what helped him create his melodic, sporadic sound which combines guitar chords and melodies with percussive slaps and strums. He believes that this combination has given him a new and unique take on music that other acoustic artists don’t have.

Flattered by the turn out and his fans greeting him post performance, Conman claimed St. Andrews as a great venue alongside Leeds and Huddersfield. His set was mellow yet engaging, his unrehearsed chatty interludes were well received and

his original tracks gained his EP great attention.

Jack Conman discussed his musical inspirations, which are rather eclectic. He thinks that Keaton Henson and Matt Corby have mastered the art knowing how they want to be perceived by their audience, something that he is fascinated by in his own music. He also greatly admires Bob Marley, stating that he is fully aware of his public image and how he wants the audience to view both him and his music.

He flicked through his phone to show what kind of music he’s been listening to recently “Alt-J, Jamie T, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Myself.”

While this may appear that he is a little egoistical, his music is honest and possesses raw emotions.

One of Conman’s main focuses as an artist is audience stimulation. He aims to combine a number of stimulus in his music so that the audience can appreciate the many facets of his musical person. He combines foot tapping rhythm, fast complex strumming, physical movement and audience engagement to create a whole new appeal before you even consider

his music and lyrics. However he isn’t gimmicky; he stresses that his fast paced, frantic stimulation of the audience would be nothing if it wasn’t backed up by solid chords and good music.

Heroin Strings is the opening track on his EP. This, he explained, is based upon the things you love being taken from you, and what the right and wrong emotions to feel are. Comparing having your family taken from you may feel like coming of heroin but should we have to feel like this? Deep, however it is refreshing to have a musician who isn’t mourning over relationships lost, but instead exploring metaphors amongst his captivating finger pickering and rustic vocals.

His new single Misty Central is now available on iTunes. Conman hopes 2016 will hold a series of new tracks and his Euphoria Strings tour will take place throughout 2016. For more information about Jack Conman (and his latest video), visit his Facebook page.

Next week, catch Coffee House Sessions as they bring us the ultra talented Bella Figura.

Caitlin Lewis Arts and culture editor Alexandra Zagaynova is a Russian artist and St. Andrews student with a passion for drawing and painting.

Her love of art has been the work of a life time; she has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Her mother would frequently come home to her house in St Petersburg to find her drawing pictures of princesses and castles all over the bathroom walls. This pursuit of the visually beautiful has stayed with Alex her whole life. Some of the ideas for art come from her imagination, but often she draws inspiration from beautiful images that she sees around her and things that inspire her. Her work is intensely emotional; she has an ability to read the emotion of any everyday scene and seeks inspiration from her surroundings. She thrives in new and exciting environments, travelling and exploring other cultures to discover new ways to express her creative pas-

sion. Her art itself becomes emotion, with pieces expressing wonder, love, longing and sadness.

Alex’s artistic inspirations are plentiful. She has always been fascinated by Van Gough’s landscapes and how he uses the natural world to express sadness and wistfulness, especially at the end of his life. In Amsterdam she even cried when she saw Almond Blossom, her favourite work by Van Gough. Her other favourite works include the pastel paintings of Edgar Degas, the season series of Alfonse Mucha, and the works of Gustav Klimt. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is the picture on her phone case, if you ask her about it, she will simply tell you that she loves his use of light.

Alex’s passion for art is evident in every aspect of her life. To find out more about her, or to see some of her works, contact her on Facebook. If you are a student artist in St Andrews interested in having your work featured contact us at art@thesaint-online.com.

Zayn takes a new direction Flora Rowe Music editor Zayn Malik has released his highly anticipated solo single Pillowtalk just under a year after leaving one direction. Malik has taken his music away from his previous boy band style with his new R&B influence track. His sultry vocals work harmoniously with his new highly sexualised vibe, which he describes as “so pure, so dirty and raw”. The track is complimented by his sensual video with model girlfriend Gigi Hadid, which is intense and nowhere near a PG rating. While the song is anything but subtle, it is extremely catchy and it’s a joy to see Malik taking a step away from 1D and having a slightly more grown up aspect to his music. Malik has by no means sugar coated that this is purely about sex. . His move away from the generic work of his bandmates is unexpected but in interviews he claims that this is what he has always wanted to do and that the band was just a convenience. The new 17-track

album is due to be out in March and it is completely solo work, wanting to prove that he can do this alone.

Crowned as Malik’s producer, James ‘Malay’ Ho is working wonders for the debut album, from his previous work with artists such as Frank Ocean and Pharrell Williams; we can see the direction (excuse the pun) that Malik is headi n g in and that will certainly keep the fans happy.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Photo credits: Lorelei Pfeffer

The percussionist turned guitarist discusses his sound

34 Arts & Culture

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4 February 2016• The Saint

The Saint

PLAYLIST Postiljonen - Atlantis RHODES - Breathe The Twin Shadow - To the top

The miraculous renaissance of Justin Bieber

Class Actress - Journal of ardency

How the world’s most hated teen brat achieved the impossible: becoming cool

Music took a rather bizarre turn in 2015. Adele made a grand comeback, we couldn’t seem to shake The Weeknd out the top ten and we were treated to the modern dance phenomenon, Silento’s Watch Me. But possibly the most surprising was the complete reinvention of Justin Bieber’s music career. Before 2015, Justin Bieber was probably best known as the bratty, whiny, washed out teeny bopper whose attempt to be edgy massively backfired. But in a turn of events that can only be described as miraculous, 2015 saw the return of Bieber to the charts. Was his return to mainstream popularity due to growing up and maturing? Was it that after years of ridicule, he had finally paid his dues? Or was it simply that his music was better?

Throughout his career, Justin Bieber tried and failed to shake off the title of teen heart throb. His career began in 2008 when he was signed by Usher’s label, Raymond Braun Media Group, as his protégé. His debut album My World flew straight into the gushing hearts of preteens all over the world, who frantically sung every word to his hit single ‘One Time’ and dedicated their lives to becoming the woman he sung about in the rather soppy track, ‘One Less Lonely Girl’. His fans are one of the reasons he became so infamous; thousands of teens, mainly young girls, became ‘Beliebers’, hard-core disciples of Justin with an incredibly vocal presence on social media. Justin released numerous hits as a teeny bopper heart throb when he was still very younghis song ‘Baby’, which was probably his most famous hit before 2015, was released when he was just 16.

Justin was pretty secure in his heartthrob position; his troubles came when he attempted to shed the title that made him famous. In 2012, Justin Bieber released the album Believe, which had a more hiphop and dance sound to fit in with his newfound ‘maturity’. His songs

‘Boyfreind’ and ‘Beauty and A Beat’ were somewhat successful, but overall the album failed to attract mainstream attention, despite its newer, more relevant sound. The relative flop of Bieber’s attempted self-reinvention seemed to be less to do with the music and more to do with his increasingly poor public image. Justin had always been somewhat mocked in the public eye, mainly due to his status as teen heart throb and the incredible borderline manic obsession with which his ‘Beliebers’ defended him on social media. But jibes calling him a little girl and mocking his haircut were elevated to full on mass loathing after a string of bad press that spanned 2013 and 2014. In what many saw as an attempt to assert himself as an adult, Justin began posting picture on social media of himself smoking weed and drinking. This attempted edginess was incredibly shocking to his young fans, so much so that they sparked an Instagram campaign where they self-harmed with the tag ‘#cutforBieber’ in order to stop the singer using illegal drugs. The sick campaign rightly caused a whole new surge of loathing for Bieber, who was blamed for encouraging the harmful trend.

Bieber’s so-called rebellion continued into 2014. He was arrested in January for Driving Under the Influence, and a video of his police interrogation was leaked where he arrogantly blamed everyone but himself for his indiscretions. His public image hit an all-time low when a petition was released to deport Justin Bieber back to his homeland Canada and out of America, and amassed 275,000 signatures. 2014 ended with Justin holding a criminal record, a shattered public image and only semblances of a career. So how did this broken former teen heartthrob become a record breaking chart topper just a year later?

A change in the winds came in 2015. A string of changes that gave Bieber a much needed musical makeover kicked off when he was featured in Skrillex and Diplo’s electronic and popular house mix track ‘Where Are U Now’. The song was widely ac-

claimed and it introduced Bieber to an older audience than the target market of his previous teen pop style. The success of Biebers vocals on the track led to a string of other pop/house blend tracks that featured on his number one album Purpose, released in November 2015. The singles ‘What Do You Mean’, ‘Sorry’ and ‘Love Yourself’ all reached the number one spot in five countries. Bieber broke records for having the most simultaneous entries in the UKTop40 by any living artist. His 2016 Purpose Tour sold out in ten minutes. His PR did a complete 180 as well; his appearance co-hosting The Late Late Show with James Corden was widely acclaimed and he also received praise for supporting the NHS Chior’s Christmas single ‘A Bridge Over You’ and stating that he hoped it beat his song ‘Love Yourself’ to became Christmas number one. The boy who just a year previously had been the subject of memes that said ‘Give us back Kurt Cobain

and we will give you Justin Bieber’ was now breaking the charts.

This complete reinvention makes you wonder what it was that made the public give Justin another chance.

Collaborating with Skrillex and Diplo gave him the validation with an ‘edgier’ strand of the music world, which his previous 2012 comeback had failed to achieve. Potentially, the main factor that allowed Bieber to become a respected artist was that he had no further to fall. It may have helped that the hiatus of One Direction that was announced earlier in 2015 marked the end of the teeny-bopper era that made Bieber famous. The end of the genre may have allowed Bieber to shed his title within it.

2015 was the year that Justin Bieber transformed from a name that was greeted at best with condemning laughter into a legitimate artist. He did the impossible and let’s hope for music’s sake that this fortunate reinvention continues!

Flyte - Light me up Caribou - Silver Oh Wonder - Drive

Flume - Insane Troye Sivan - YOUTH Kagu - Human Beck - Turn away The Do - Trustful hands (The Gravity remix)

Photo credit: Def Jam Records

Caitlin Lewis Arts and culture editor

Beach House - Space song

The Very Best - Let go Arcade Fire - Get right

The Saint â&#x20AC;˘ 4 February 2016

thesaint-online.com

35

S PORT

Promotion a reality for multiple Saints football sides

thesaint-online.com/sport

Andrew’s Write fromcolumn the Off First paragraphs are like this. They have a 4mm indent in the first line.

Everything else in the article is like this, without the 4mm indent.

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My resolution for the year was simple; seize this opportunity with both hands and be the best editor I can be. This is something I aim to do by giving as much coverage to all the different sports clubs at the university. My main interests are football, rugby union and MMA, but I want every club here to get coverage and show the vast array of opportunities that students are offered.

Last week saw the BUCS campaigns get back into the swing of things, with many of the teams in action, looking to build on largely successful starts to the campaign last time round. That came on the back of intense pre-seasons, something that is sure to put them in good stead after two months away from the grind.

Practice and preparation is hardly more apparent at the moment with two notable sporting events on the horizon; the beginning of the 6 Nations Rugby tournament and Superbowl 50. Both of these require such intense practice and preparation and that is a great pointer for those in teams here; that practice improves performance and improved performances mean improved success, ultimately meaning promotion and testing yourselves against the best.

As we get into the spring semester, the action will begin to come thick and fast and this represents

Editor: Andrew Sinclair Deputy editors: Alex Hayes, Alison Hendry, Charlie Wood

Sports Centre exhibits great new developments

@saint_sport

sport@thesaint-online.com

Football club going from strength to strength under guidance of Stuart Milne

I

your opportunity to get involved.

This can be through any one of the 60+ sports clubs on offer at the University or through supporting the Saints teams in action.

This semester purportedly whizzes by much faster than its predecessor, undoubtedly assisted by the two week spring break in March. With the weather beginning to improve again and days getting longer the opportunities will continue to increase, with games and exams having to be fitted in to an already intense schedule of practice.

It is undoubtedly a great time of year for all sports, with many seasons drawing to a close and many just resuming. The finishing of campaigns sees games and events mean that bit more and produce those higher quality performances, whilst the beginning of a campaign offers teams the chance to show the improvements they have made since last season.

The summer will bring forth two major sporting events on the world stage, first in June/July with the European Football Championships hosted by France (for the first time in three decades), featuring 24 nations including Northern Ireland, Wales, the Republic of Ireland and England. Then in August we have the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which will feature rugby sevens and golf for the first time, the latter of which being so central to this town.

Whilst Rio was successful in its bid to host the games after beating Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid, there still seems a lot of construction and preparation work left for them to do.

It does not seem four years ago that the Olympics took place in my home city, but time has flown by and Team GB will be looking to improve on their stunning performance in 2012, where they came away with a 65 medal haul that included 29 golds.

With regards to the Saint, I hope that the mix of sports we have covered in this issue is an indication of the University’s commitment to Sport, and my own passion for it as the new sports editor. I hope you will all join me in wishing the Saints teams the best of luck for the semester ahead as they look forward to a bright future!

Photo: Sammi Ciardi

Andrew Sinclair

The basics are vital to achieving success and that is something that head coach Stuart Milne has insisted on since 2011 Alex Hayes Deputy sport editor Since his appointment in 2011 as the Director of Football, Stuart Milne has headed the University football programme, and transformed the clubs structure.

He speaks with pride about this growth, stating: “When I was appointed, there were three mens teams and one womens team. Now we have 200 registered players across six mens teams and three womens teams”. This increase in the number of the teams has come with an improved coaching and training regime.

Mr. Milne claims “the football club has the makings of a professional club sporting experience, with its 1st class facilities, experienced coaches and dynamic training programme. We now have one of the best university football organisations in the UK.” To have nine competitive teams across both genders is no mean feat and is a testament to the hard work put in

by Mr. Milne and his colleagues in the past few years.

The statistics back up Mr. Milne’s bold claims, as the women’s 1st team have won two Scottish Conference Cups and five promotions have been achieved among the teams in the past five years. Mr. Milne proudly attributes this success to the commitment of the players; “they understand that football is an extracurricular activity, but few players ever miss training.”

With six trainings a week, plus weekly matches, this means that players in the top men’s and women’s teams have to commit a lot of time to the programme, which Mr. Milne

sees as a necessary payoff in the form of positive results.

This semester he is aiming for continued progress across the whole programme. “Our men’s 1sts and 2nds are targeting promotion, while the women’s 1sts want to do as well as possible in the two cup competitions they are still in. We want the rest of the teams to pick up as many points as possible and continue to improve.”

The mens 1sts currently sit atop the Scottish 2A division, four points clear of nearest challengers Glasgow with

The football club has the makings of a professional club sporting experience with its 1st class facilities, experienced coaches and dynamic training programme

the 2nds also top of their division, the Scottish 4B. However, their margin over the 2nd placed side is narrower, with Abertay just one point behind them going into the second half of the season.

For the longer term, Mr. Milne seeks consolidation rather than expansion: “We are now at capacity in the number of teams we have. It will be our aim to improve the existing teams.” This expansion has brought unexpected success, as demonstrated by the fact that the newest men’s team, the 6s, currently sit above the men’s 5th team in the league table.

The 6s impressed last time out, beating the University of the Highlands and Islands 6-1 to move up to 4th.

One of the ways he plans on improving the long term quality of the club is through “working with the admissions department to bring in top, global football talent to the programme, at home and abroad.” This ambitious plan (which includes a promotional trip to Vancouver) seeks to attract top footballers to the club, thus ensuring its long-term success. This international approach is certainly a new theme in University football but should provide a great opportunity to develop the football team.

Closer to home, Mr. Milne anticipates the building of an additional 3G pitch to cope with the “ever increasing demand for the use of the floodlit, all-weather 3G pitch.” Mr. Milne believes it is the “top-class facilities we are afforded at this university which gives us the tools for success.”

What is certain is that the future is bright for the the football club with the lofty ambitions of Milne.

The Saint February 2016 2014 The Saint •418 September

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Sport Sport37 33

In the second before the Super Bowl, executives will be sitting in skyscrapers monitoring social media’s reaction to their advertisements, which cost millions of dollars to buy space for (last year it was $4.5million for just 30 seconds) and even more to produce. Other executives in other skyscrapers will be nervously waiting to see their massive investment in the sport to be finally exhibited to hundreds of millions of homes all over America.

In the second before the Super Bowl, Chris Martin will be backstage warming up his vocal chords, as he and the other members of Coldplay rehearse for a 12-minute performance that will be placed under greater scrutiny than almost anything else they’ve ever done.

Producers, directors, and logistics people will be running around, trying to perfect the final details of the operation, planned with a military level of detail, which will transform a sporting venue into a concert arena and back again within half an hour. They also have to coordinate performances from Beyonce and Bruno Mars into the set, as if matters weren’t complex enough.

In the second before the Super Bowl, a small army of commentators will prepare their notes and compose themselves to commentate on the game in 25 languages, from Spanish to Russian to Mandarin Chinese.

Behind the scenes, producers, directors, cameramen and engineers

will work to make sure that all of the hundreds of millions of people expecting to see the Super Bowl in High Definition from every conceivable angle receive the perfect experience.

In the seconds before the Super Bowl begins, nervous players will patrol the sidelines, trying to stay loose and remember the intricately designed gameplans their coaches have drawn up. If they are unlucky enough to be injured for the game, such as the Panthers’ Wide Receiver Kelvin Benjamin or the Bronco’s Offensive Tackle Ryan Clady, then they will try to talk to the other players, making sure they remain focused and upbeat throughout.

In the second before the Super Bowl, the kicker for one of the two teams will prepare himself.

He will go through his stretches and adjust his shoes (which are two sizes too small, for tightness) and prepare to execute the kick his special-teams co-ordinator has planned.

Running through the back of the kickers’ head will be the knowledge that, in addition to his duties on kickoffs and extra-points, there is a real chance that, in four hours’ time, the entire game, and one team’s entire season, will come down to one kick of his.

That outcome is most terrifying for kickers: They have the chance to write themselves into consideration for the Hall of Fame, as Adam Vinatieri did for the New England patriots in Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVII, or forever define themselves as a failure, as Scott Norwood did

Superbowl 50 takes place on Sunday between the Broncos and the Panthers, leading us to again ask why we do not have a University American football team when sailing his kick wide to the right in Super Bowl XXV. The kickers will know that it could happen to them, and it will weigh on them.

In the second before the Super Bowl, the kick returner will stand alone in the endzone. He will consider the film he watched in the preceding week, where an intern will have cut together every kickoff made by the other team over the entire season.

His special teams co-ordinator, who is employed to watch over only around twenty plays a game, will have then gone through this film with a fine-tooth comb, evaluating where there is likely to be the eight-

een inches of daylight that can lead to a game-breaking touchdown, like the one Percy Harvin scored on a kickoff return in Super Bowl XLVIII. The kickoff returner will wait, he will think about all of this, and he will breathe in.

In the second before the Super Bowl, months of preparation, going back to Organized Team Activities back in the spring, will all come to fruition. The legacy of decade-long careers will be decided, and lifelong reputations forged in the simple words “Super Bowl Champion”.

Getting to that point, that instant before the two teams collide, requires a vast number of resources, from

jerseys and shoulder pads to tablet computers and oxygen tents, not to mention hundreds of thousands of hours of effort from coaches, personal trainers and medical staff.

These resources are provided at all levels, including high schools and colleges, meaning that starting an American Football team, even at somewhere as cosmopolitan as St Andrews, is a massive uphill battle.

The Super Bowl, in that sense, is only the tip of the iceberg: the commitment to the sport goes all the way down. That said, it is worth bearing in mind that American Football has been a registered BUCS sport since 2012 and six other Scottish Universities currently have teams, so maybe it is high time we had one too!

Eventually, though, the moment ends. The ball is kicked off, the hundreds of flashbulbs go off, and the Super Bowl finally begins.

Whoever wins the biggest game in American Football this weekend, be it the Denver Broncos for the third time or the Carolina Panthers for the first time in their history, one thing is certain. The eyes of the world will be watching and it promises to be a fantastic game.

Both sides have played 18 games to make it to Santa Clara on Sunday but it all comes down to this game.

The pressure will be on, the camera’s rolling, the crowds cheering, and the ultimate decider over who wins and who goes home empty handed could very well come down to a matter of seconds, the precious opening seconds of the game.

Photo: David Yeldall

Richard Hunter

Photo: Jim Bahn

A matter of seconds: the breathtaking precision put into the first play of the annual Superbowl showpiece

St Andrews welcomes the opening of a new gym in town The new year has seen the opening of a new business in St Andrews, with the Functional Fitness St Andrews Gym opening on Largo Road.

It first opened its doors on January 9th to the people of the town, taking over the premises formerly used by an auction firm. It has proved a hit with locals, with several joining in its first few weeks.

The owners of the gym, Sam Rowlands, Graham McCann and Jonny Crowe all participate as coaches at the gym as well, which could produce (if carried off well) a pleasant community feel when compared to larger gyms.

Its presence fills a geographic niche in the market, positioning itself directly between East Sands Leisure Centre and the University Sports Centre. Which gym shall prove most popular amongst the students now that a new player has entered the fold remains to be seen.

Their timing of opening could not have been better, with a common New Year’s resolution being to get in shape and Functional Fitness offering the chance to do just that.

With separate areas for working out independently and taking one of

A pleasant community feel when compared to larger gyms their many classes, it is accessible for all the locals and offers an alternative to students (who may not wish to use the Sports Centre whilst it undergoes refurbishment). The number of people who have already signed up highlights that the market for the gym was there and that people are more than prepared to take advantage of its presence.

One of the key features of the gym is that it offers Crossfit, a fitness programme that has become increasingly popular in recent years. Just to give a bit of history on the workoutstyle, Crossfit began in 2000 and was the brainchild of Americans Gregg Glassman and Lauren Jenai. It is a high intensity programe and incorporates interval training, plyometrics, weightlifting and strongman. This eclectic mix supposedly offers a more

well-rounded workout and develops your muscles more comprehensively than other methods.

This is a class that the University Sports Centre does not currently offer, meaning that this gym will be an interest addition to the town’s facilities for students. It also has the potential to improve town and gown relations as student and local interract in the same classes. Of interest to see will be whether students see this as a positive, or whether they prefer the University bubble offered by the Sports Centre (which tends to cater to more students than locals).

Having attended one of their sessions myself I can honestly say that my first impressions of the gym were positive. It was friendly and the staff were helpful, offering detailed and effective workout tips, whilst the gym itself has a clean, community feel to it.

The coaching offered is good and highlights one of the best features of the gym. It is accessible for all ability levels, something that is a positive for many looking to join a gym at this time of year. Many large sports centres are often full of those in amazing shape, already set in their workout patterns.

This is something admirable but can be intimidating for those completely new to it. Functional Fitness however is completely accessible for everyone, regardless of shape, condition or ex-

perience, and those taking part in the session had great camaraderie, team spirit and most importantly looked as though they were enjoying it. That is something undoubtedly produced by the nature of the town and a key reason for the owners wanting to bring a gym to the town.

Whilst Functional Fitness may share a name with a gym in Dundee, they are not linked; giving the business located on Largo Road a further sense of independence as it attempts to make its way firmly into the St

Andrews community, and onto the student radar, despite being in its infancy.

Whatever your preferred gym, another place to keep fit in town cannot be a bad thing, and also represents the growth of local business; something that is a pleasant indicator of a growing economy. By providing a great alternative to the Sports Centre for students, all should welcome it even if they do not intend to join, because it will surely free up space in the other gyms located around town.

Photo: David Yeldall

Andrew Sinclair Sport Editor

Crossfit has become a very popular way to keep fit an is very big for Functional

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Sport Page 38 34 34 Sport

February 6 November 2016 The Saint 18 4September 2014 • The Saint

Duke’s Golf Course offers new student coaching scheme

Photo: Duke’s Golf Course

For most students that come to study in St Andrews, the home of golf, the sport does play on their mind. The splendour and prestige of the courses here though can often be intimidating to those who have never held a golf club. That is all set to change.....

At last autumn’s Freshers’ Fair, the Duke’s Golf Club at Craigtoun launched a new coaching programme – and more than 30 students signed up. This semester sees the Club’s second installment for those looking to take their first swing at the game.

PGA Professional, Ayden RobertsJones explains: “Last year was a terrific start and we’re really looking to building on those first steps. Thirtytwo new golfers were born into the game – a great introduction.” Ayden adds: “We have worked closely with the University of St Andrews Men’s Golf Club, designing a programme with the focus on getting all beginner students ‘course ready’ as soon as possible.” Students are picked up from the Pro Shop at the Old Course Hotel before being driven to the course at Craigtoun where there is the full range of activities to build their skill level, from a driving range, to

Photo: Duke’s Golf Course

Simon Baldwin

Last semester saw the scheme’s first set of students on and it was a great success

Another group of students who took part in the scheme’s first iteration last year

pitch and putt and a Par-3 loop.

Sessions are tailored to cover the basic foundations including techniques established on the Duke’s practice areas. Ayden says: “We ensure all understand the key fundamentals of setup and swing. Then it is time to introduce everyone to the playing environment, and we do this

hone them. That includes playing our championship course.”

The coaching team is keen to stress that, although everyone on the programme is learning new skills, the emphasis is around fun and playing in team formats. As much as there will be inevitable competition between those taking part in the scheme, the

on our new par 3 practice holes.”

The coaching also includes elements on scoring, the rules of the game, etiquette and numerous components to make all feel at home on any golf course.

Ayden adds: “Once we’re past the ‘beginners’ stage, we take each golfer’s new found skills and start to

aim is to provide a learning experience where you can make friends and create relationships that may well never happen otherwise.

A new round of beginner lessons starts this semester in mid February.

These are accessible for all and anyone interested should contact Ayden or Callum on dukes@oldcoursehotel.

Men’s Lacrosse provides a unique mix of sporting action Charlie Wood Deputy sport editor

easy to imagine less experienced players learning faster than they would do if they were they trained by a coach.

Granted, those players who have more experience do not receive specialist coaching themselves. But, given how obscure lacrosse is in the UK, it isn’t hard to imagine those more experienced players – largely from Canada and America, according to Max – possessing no less expertise than would specialist coaches from the UK. Indeed, lacrosse is huge in Canada, to the point where many of the Club’s more established players

Photo: Michael Barera

For a club who plays such a demanding, equipment-heavy, and (in the UK at least) little-known sport, the St Andrews Men’s Lacrosse Club seems remarkably laid-back.

Described by Club President, Max, as “social first and competitive second”, it is a club whose easy-going mantra is nevertheless stabilized by a slew of recent success. Even if a fifth consecutive BUCS Scottish Division 1A title isn’t secured this April, rest

assured: there won’t be any Yaya Toure-style sulking.

What is most impressive about this success is that the Club has no coaches, either part-time or full-time.

Instead, the players are self-taught, with new intakes – of which there have been many – required to learn directly from those already at the Club. There are two huge positives to this. For one thing, it ensures that training more closely applies to matches. If those who teach you how to play are also those who will actually play with you on matchday, it is

Shot of Men’s Lacrosse in the United States, where the sport is popular and is a reason for the appeal at St Andrews

have been playing since they were children. In the UK, playing men’s lacrosse at all is a rarity, let alone the idea of playing from a young age.

But in Canada, lacrosse is an official ‘National Sport’ (under the 1994 Canadian National Sport Act, if you’re interested). The history of men’s lacrosse is also distinct from women’s, which has very different rules.

Max tells me that men’s lacrosse originated as a pre-war ritual for Native American Canadians in the 1600s and 1700s, and was played on a truly epic scale. Teams would comprise somewhere between one hundred and one thousand men, on a pitch half a kilometre long and three kilometres wide, over three entire days with no break in play. A set-up which, although only a distant relation to lacrosse as it is played today, makes the St Andrews side’s laid-back approach somewhat ironic.

To return to what marks out modern day men’s lacrosse from women’s.

Max describes the difference as “very big, to the point where it is almost a different sport”. The main difference concerns physical contact. In the men’s game, body-checking is legal, where it isn’t in women’s lacrosse.

Accordingly, and unsurprisingly, the men’s game necessitates far more protective gear. They are required to wear helmets, mouth guards, gloves, shoulder pads, elbow pads, and often ribs pads. As concerns the St Andrews side, this equipment is often self-bought, such is the club’s emphasis on, er, clubbing together.

Indeed, on the topic of clubbing together the Club’s emphasis on self-sustenance, and in particular fundraising, has helped them with a current dilemma. Towards the end

Most impressive about this success is that the club has no coaches of last year, the team were unable to attend a BUCS game, and were fined £750 by BUCS. At the time of writing, the Club are working with the AU to find ways to generate the funds.

More broadly, it is interesting to wonder if such a hefty fine is paid to all BUCS teams who fail to fulfil fixtures. Do bigger clubs, such as football or rugby, receive bigger fines, or do all BUCS sides receive the same fine?

Certainly, anyhow, £750 is hefty for a club as small as Men’s Lacrosse, however self-starting its members may be.

Yet in spite of such challenges, the Club is ever-building. Max tells me some “40%, perhaps nearly half” of the side are freshers, all of whom are “hilarious” and yet wholly buy into the club’s ethos.

The freshers, Max continues, implicitly acknowledge that they must obey orders from older members – solely in virtue of being freshers. Any fresher at a sports club will know this unwritten rule as well as the back of their hands. For the men’s lacrosse club, then, success is sure to stick around much longer.

If any club exemplifies the success story that is St Andrews’ special connection with North America, it is the intense sport of Men’s Lacrosse.

The Saint February 2016 2014 The Saint •418 September

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Sport Sport 39 35

Sports Centre re-opens with phase one of extensive £14.5m redevelopment finished

Andrew Sinclair Sport editor Most returning students will have noticed some dramatic changes to the Sports Centre, with the obvious one being the fact that the entrance has now moved and is now bedecked with a turnstile entrance. That is just one of the many changes that the Athletic Union and the Sports development team have made and are planning to make over the coming year.

The whole plan for Sports Centre renovation and redevelopment is a three phase affair, beginning with the first phase of building the new sports hall with new locker rooms and a new entrance. The second phase will see the construction of a new gym and a new Strength and Conditioning Suite and then the final phase involves the construction of a new elite tennis centre with four fullsize indoor courts.

Obviously most people will be wondering how much all of this work has cost and as it stands they are on budget and on time with the

The new entrance for the sports centre, proving to be accessible and more organised than it was before project. The budget for the whole thing is £14.5m and certainly appears to be well on the way to providing great new resources for the students here.

When finished it will have three times more facilities they had before the work began, whilst both Sports Halls will be available for exams, making it the biggest venue in the

University for examinations. The initial centre was constructed over 30 years ago when the student body was only around 3,000. It is now almost 9,000 and the University has high participation levels, with 55-60% of the students having membership of the gym. Therefore the money gone to redeveloping the centre is not only necessary but brings the facilities into

the 21st century.

Those of you that have been there will have noticed that the gym is now in the hall previously used for examinations and this is an indicator of how things will be in the new gym, due for completion in September.

The open plan nature of it has drawn some positive reaction from students and with 130 stations

planned for the new one, along with brand new equipment, it will cater for the needs of all students. Some criticims has highlighted the lack of privacy that an open plan nature brings however. The placing of rowing machines directly facing the free weights being quite a questionable decision.

Having been there myself and seen all the work that has been done so far, it has an air of professionalism about it and looks far more fit for purpose and appealing. There are no more bare brick walls, with their removal making the whole building seem warmer and a more comfortable place to workout in. The common presence of assistants also makes the Sports Centre seem more organised as the centre can be booked for games and practices more easily. If this is only the beginning, keep your eyes peeled as the rest of the work gets done over the next couple of semesters and make the most of your new Sports Centre. The new Sports Hall will be officially opened with a women’s basketball game between St Andrews and league leaders Robert Gordon in February.

Surfing club enjoys the sunshine in winter Morocco trip It’s a life that we dream about...

Waking up by the ocean, lounging in the warm sun. An interview with several of the St Andrews Surf Club committee, Gabi, Hugh, Ane and Will, confirmed just what we’ve missed out on, as I catch up with them following their recent trip to Morocco.

Maybe you fancy yourself as the next Kelly Slater, or you simply want to catch your first wave. Either way, listen up, because with surfing, there truly is opportunities for everyone.

Since the club was established in 2010, its membership has continually expanded, welcoming new students to the sport and including them in its vibrant social life. Whether you are a complete beginner or an advanced surfer, the club caters for all those willing to learn in the cold water of North Sea or eager to venture to the warmer climates of Morocco in winter.

“Slaves to the swell”, organising weekly sessions can be difficult as it is contingent on external conditions. But as Will comments, when the waves are there, so are they- the club is usually lucky to get three or four days out on the boards each month. For the more seasoned surfers, there is opportunities to participate in the annual BUCS competition in Cornwall, although, unfortunately, it was held over raisin weekend in 2015. Nevertheless, with kit stored on East Sands, as soon as the waves are favourable, the surfers will descend.

Aside from the sport, the club also has charitable intentions, be-

ing a proud supporter of The Wave Project. This UK-based charity aims to improve the lives of young people who are plagued by anxiety and confidence issues through organising their participation in surfing lessons.

This outreach project has proven to

part in a surf life-saving course. This activity helps promote the positive image of the club, spurring its growth and its ability to attract new members. The fact all four of these committee members had no prior experience in the sport before coming to St

class waves and escape the doom and gloom of the northern winter. This year, around eighty people descended on Taghazout for two weeks, ready to embrace the sport, the culture and the experiences that awaited them.

The committee were ecstatic with

Photo: Ane Gundersen

Alison Hendry Deputy sport editor

be successful in reducing each individuals fear, allowing them to have a more positive and calm outlook when approaching the future. Primarily, the club offers support through fundraising activity, for example the Eat, Sleep, Wave, Repeat event at the Vic. However, Gabi also mentions her desire to increase the clubs links with the charity, so that in the future, there may be opportunities to help run these sessions which are so fruitful for the young people involved. There are also beach clean-ups and Hugh, alongside other members, has taken

Andrews, is testament to the progress that can be made. The refreshers fayre offers an excellent opportunity to entice new members to test the waters in this sport and encourage membership within a club that has so much to offer.

Now for the main event. Everyone was very eager to discuss their experiences in Morocco, none more so than Trip Organiser Ane, as the surfing and memories remain engrained in their minds. The annual trip to Morocco remains a popular trip for students both eager to profit from the world

the facilities on offer. Beginners lessons were provided at La Point Surf Camp which allowed impressive progress to be made. People were even able to stand up on their boards following their 5 two-hour lessons each week! For the more advanced, the opportunity to seek out the best waves, allowed for exploration of different beaches along the coast in what turned out to be a very cultural trip!

But it wasn’t all about the surfing.

There were some exciting chances to explore the local town, feast on the local cuisine and find souvenirs

from the local market. One highlight was Paradise Valley, where beautiful rock-pools and waterfalls provided breath-taking scenery away from the water. There was also horse-riding on the beach, bonfires and nights of playing cards and hanging out on the roof terrace.

Morocco is truly the highlight of the club year, and if this trip does not convince you, I don’t know what else will! As the interview drew to a close, all four committee members were keen to emphasise their desire to see some new faces, whether it be out on the water or at socials. If you didn’t have time to visit them at refreshers, have a scroll through the facebook page or drop them an email.

Furthermore, as if the trip to Morocco isn’t tempting enough, the club hints of an exciting project on the horizon yet to be announced.

Online this week Photo Gallery A look at some of the best shots from last week’s football game between St Andrews and Aberdeen.

Adventures in Thailand The Sub-Aqua Club recall an amazing winter break trip diving in Thailand.

BUCS Round-Up Keep up to date with all the BUCS scores from your favourites teams on our website.