30 113 £1000 1900 2003

Sport The Edge tells you why Your guide to News girls can be the local music Features reveals the football scene with the looks at gender gap in fans too latest gig guide achieving 40% course choices 1st May 2009 Since 1936 Students Censored Civil Engineering students outraged at budget cuts, after members of staff given iPhones Emmeline Curtis Civil Engineering: In Figures Students from the School of Civil Engineering and the Environment were recently outraged to learn that senior members of staff had 30 received a free iPhone, at the same time as The number of academic staff at the School money problems and budget cutbacks were of Civil Engineering and the Environment, all being blamed for new policies that removed likely to have received a new iPhone. the PGR (Postgraduate Research) students’ conference budget. This budget previously allowed PGR stu- 113 dents to be funded to attend conferences, but The number of PGR students in the School of this has now been discontinued following at- Civil Engineering and the Environment. tempts by the School over the last three years to change its policy on PGR student demon- strator work. In consultation with student representa- £1000 tives, the School recently put together a new The figure at which PGR sudents’ confer- policy whereby students working in roles such ence allowance would be capped at under as invigilating and teaching would put their the new payment scheme. hours towards building a conference budget, instead of receiving the payment that is cus- tomary in most other Schools at the Univer- sity. The School later announced that for all 1900 those in the scheme the allowance would be The year in which John Eustice was appoint- capped at £1000, often resulting in students ed the first ever Professor of Engineering at receiving a lower amount than they would Hartley University College, which went on have earned had they been paid. On the other to become the University of Southampton. hand, those who made the decision to opt out of this scheme would not have received an allowance at all, meaning it would be extremely 2003 difficult for them to attend any conference The year in which the University’s new man- necessary to their work. agement and academic structures were im- Many students were confused and upset plemented, joining the School of Environ- by this policy, especially when it emerged that mental Science to Civil Engineering. members of staff had been given brand new iPhones on a monthly contract. The School de- fended the move by stating that the phones this disapproval known, but were quietly taken were necessary in order for staff to be more down the next day, a move one student has organised, and also make them easily reach- labelled “a disgusting and appalling act of cen- able by students when away. sorship”. Student representatives were also Although some students were pleased that informed that if those who had put the post- they would now hopefully get an instantaneous ers up continued to protest, their candidature response from lecturers and supervisors, oth- would then be terminated. ers were outraged at what they saw as their unjust treatment by the Department. Continued on page 2 Anonymous posters were produced to make Marathon Team page 3 G20 Protests page 6/7 Hillsborough page 9 New Social Ideas page 23 Inter-railing page 17 www.wessexscene.co.uk The Wessex Scene team have no tans from putting this issue together! Page 2 News School of Civil Engineering Welsh Nationals’ University Fee Grant Scrapped censors student Grants offered to Welsh nationals at University abolished to create a ‘more level playing field’ for UK students protests Emmeline Curtis The tuition fee grants offered to all Welsh na- Continued from front page tionals studying at Welsh Universities are to be phased out by September 2010, it was re- Attempts are currently being made to resolve cently announced. the situation through meetings between staff Welsh students currently receive a grant of and students. The Wessex Scene also took the £1,940, regardless of their background, to off- students’ issues to Joe Leigh, VP Education set the cost of university fees. Scrapping this and Representation, once it was brought to our will bring Wales into line with the rest of Britain attention. He says: and close the ‘fee gap’ between them. Those “Following a meeting with the students and currently studying at a Welsh university will their reps, which I was allowed to attend, I am continue to be entitled to the tuition fee grant confident that this issue is being addressed by until the end of their studies, but the major- the reps with School staff. ity of students going into Higher Education will At present I am yet to receive communi- be incurring more debt than they would previously have expected. The Education Minister, Jane Hutt, has said that instead of the tuition fee grant for all Welsh nationals more help will be given to students coming into Higher Education from lower income backgrounds. There are plans for £44 million to be put into increasing the Assembly Learning Grant, a means-tested grant of between £2,906 and £5,000 given to students to help towards living costs, similar to the grant currently offered to students in England. Plans were also announced to write off student loan debts of up to £1,500 from 2010, and for a new scheme encouraging university graduates to look for employment in Wales. Jane Hutt claims that Higher Education in- stitutions will benefit immediately from these New Research Shows Gender Divide Still Strong Statistics for 2009 have revealed a continuing gap between the sexes in Higher Education course choices Charlotte Woods Oxford, whilst female English Literature stu- The Civil Engineering building dents were repeatedly less successful than Research compiled annually by the Office for male students in the Oxford finals exams. cation from the School regarding this matter, National Statistics has this year revealed that The Gender Equality Scheme for the Uni- and so I am contacting the Head of School to the trend of men and women studying subjects versity of Southampton states that: establish the School’s stance, who made the seen as respectively masculine or feminine in threat of termination, on what grounds they Higher Education has yet to be bucked. It also felt able to make this threat, and to ensure revealed that women outnumber men on uni- that these circumstances are avoided in the versity undergraduate courses by 143,000. ‘‘ Student responses dem- future. The report indicates that degree programmes onstrated that students ex- Should other students experience any prob- with the highest intake of male students were perienced less discrimination lems with their programme, I would urge you those related to business and administrative or were less aware of any to raise them with your student reps before studies, closely followed by courses related to gender bias in the course of taking action into your own hands. This way engineering, both traditionally ‘male’ subjects. their studies. ’’ staff/student conflicts can be avoided, and is- Engineering courses account for 11.7% of all sues can be resolved much quicker.” male students in the U.K, whereas women There is a marked split in student opinion, studying engineering make up only 1.7% of as the posters displayed did not represent the the U.K’s female student population. Reassurance then that the imbalance of views of all; a small group of students were The data also demonstrates female domi- male and female students studying certain taking matters upon themselves. Although nance in subjects allied to medicine and educa- courses does not give rise to unfair treatment those students did not express their displeas- tion; broadly including midwifery, nursing, and or unequal opportunities amongst male and ure in the right way by not making their com- school teaching, all subjects considered as tra- female students. plaints known to their student representatives ditionally feminine studies. The findings would It would perhaps be deemed obsolete to or even directly to the School, they should suggest that women are drawn towards study- even consider the idea that university courses surely be allowed the freedom to say how they ing subjects at University that include inher- are still very much engendered through tra- felt without such drastic threats of termination ently nurturing aspects, whilst men have more dition and popular practice, but the statistics made against them. interest in practical and business skills, an idea demonstrating this very notion are impossible often thought outdated. to ignore. In a time when gender equality is Students were confused Additional statistics within the report indi- considered so important in all aspects of so- and upset by the new policy, cate that the number of girls in further edu- ciety, it is easy to forget that traditions are especially when it emerged cation (A-Levels or equivalent) exceeded the not easily broken; that it will take consider- that staff had been given a number of boys by 16,000 nationally. These able time for there to be an equal gender ratio new iPhone on contract. figures however, are not reflected in university amongst engineering students for example, or finals results, or indeed, in university employ- as many men as women interested in nursing. Give us your opinion... ment trends. Data published by Oxford Univer- What this report has made clear is that the sity in 2005 indicated that women made up Stereotypical female teacher gender gap in university courses is not an is- email [email protected] only 10% of those employed as Professors at sue to be eliminated in the near future.

Load more