Shhh... UL's Secrets Revealed
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••• ISION, RTICLES, EVIEWS, TORIES, NFORMATION, HOUGHTS AND WHAT OU WANT TO READ ••• e WEEK Independent Student LENT Newspaper est. 1947 Friday 27th January 2012 Issue No 751 | varsity.co.uk 10 Features: How Warsaw adapted it’s Soviet 12 Listings: My Cambridge Week 16 Film: ArcSoc 18 eatre: Varsity speaks to the cast of Rookie, the Palace for every day life C i n e fi l e all-female sketch show Shhh... UL’s secrets revealed Exclusive: student who rejected Oxford University speaks to Varsity “I originally applied to Cambridge (Emmanuel Investigation: Varsity College) last year. I think Emmanuel’s test system is gets a rare glimpse a reasonably good idea, though I found the interview into the behind-the- process stressful. scenes workings I think people receive their most valuable of Cambridge’s education when they decide they really want University Library to study something. It is inconsequential at what Main Feature: point this happens, although it is far easier to study Warsaw’s Palace of at home pre-university, as GCSEs and A-levels are Culture is put under thoroughly limiting. the microscope e wide-spread interest that my rejection email sparked fascinates me. It’s bizarre that you can make the headlines for laughing at something. Imagine the headline, “student mocks the monarchy”–for some reason, it wouldn’t have the same eff ect. Additionally, the anger that my letter caused was defi nitely most extreme in Oxbridge students/ graduates. I fi nd this quite hilarious, and was taken even further with many claiming, “She can’t criticise it as she’s not a student here, and therefore knows nothing.” To continue the earlier example, imagine if we believed that only the royal family could question the monarchy. Ridiculous.” Elly Nowell ‘The postcard’s MUSIC Neutral Milk Hotel role in the Fighting for a Living Wage BOOKS Ahdaf Soueif by understanding and Colleges aren’t paying a living wage to all employees Sarah Hall dissemination of FILM Asghar Farhadi’s culture is extremely A Separation by Matt Russell, Andrew Griffi n the University, that staff are not being workers fl uctuates throughout the year. important. It is a NEWS CORRESPONDENTS paid living wages with Labour and Some colleges have responded by Green councillors pressuring to make suggesting that the fi gure may not be ART Henri Gaudier- very democratic Almost all Cambridge colleges are not Cambridge City Council a living wage truly reflective because of engage- Brzeska: Vorticist! paying living wages to all of their staff , employer. ment in training and apprenticeship art form’ Freedom of Information requests have Out of the colleges, only Hughes Hall schemes, and also that the term ‘living revealed. were able to state unequivocally that wage’ may not be wholly appropriate in THEATRE e Dumb Waiter, e University itself pays 112 mem- all staff are paid living wage, although that context. Zombie Haiku bers of staff less than the living wage Jesus said that no permanent staff were Another common reason cited by threshold of £7.20 per hour. As well as on less than the living wage, but off ered the bursars contacted by Varsity for all training staff , many employees clas- no such qualifi cation about the casual not paying the living wage to staff , and WEEKEND > sifi ed as Grade 1, the University’s least staff who are not on a fi xed contract particularly casual workers, is the cor- 4 senior staff , are on less than the living with the college. relation between staff costs and student WEATHER 0 wage. Two of the worst off ending colleges charges. In most colleges, staff costs 2 e living wage is a rate of pay that are Homerton and Emmanuel who, account for between 40-50% of what 0 0 allows workers to aff ord the basic essen- at the time of the FOI requests by the students pay. 4 tials in life, such as housing, food and Cambridge University Labour Club Some also pointed towards generous 4 utilities. Outside of London, the rate is (CULC) in October, employed 65 and pension schemes, benefi ts such as free 4 8 calculated by the Centre for Research in 70 people respectively below the living meals and free parking, and the fact 5 7 British photographer Social Policy at Loughborough Univer- wage. that many casual staff are below the age 1 7 sity and is determined annually. Homerton told Varsity that all per- of 20 and therefore often on much more 7 Martin Parr Look out for our new-look website, coming soon to a laptop near you The problem has been identified manent staff are paid above the living than the minimum wage. 9 17 across Cambridge, not just within wage, while the number of casual Continues on page 3 PS. 1CM 1CM 2 EDITORIAL JANUARY 27 2012 — wEEK 2 Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. – Susan Sontag EDITORIAL ...24 pages of words, pictures, facts, opinions, thoughts, clues, statements, Inside conclusions, insinuations and the occasional flashof genius... Cities: Zoom in, DIGITAL CONTENTS NEWS don’t zoom out Online: Interview 5 Tony Benn CUSU disaffiliation 6 his week’s uncovering of the encountered multiple nostalgic The Varsity May Ball guide, keep Robinson and Pembroke vote on weakening ties with CUSU results of the Living Wage accounts from ex-Cambridge checking regularly for more updates! Campaign in Cambridge whippersnappers interviewed in the shocked us; many of us paper, no longer so young and bright- Tmust surely remember the days of eyed, talking of their days here. Podcasts: after-school and weekend jobs, taken Rose-tinted the muddy River Cam SCIENCE up with the glint of a little extra might be upon moving away, but the Alternative Idea of the University: spending-money clear in our sights. realities of cloistered college life, time Grad union president, Liv Watson, To work within specifications of what spent reading in grand libraries (and, on her idea of the university. Rock of the Week 7 is denoted as the national minimum on occasion, in bed, as we attempt wage, only to find that ends simply to soak up a semblance of a Normal My Ear Abroad: This weekVarsity takes a look at the latest in a series of hunks, sandstone aren’t meeting, must be both Student Life of late rising and – Rebecca Bailey, on life and demoralising and utterly alienating. difficult to imagine as it is – ‘Reading on location in Beijing Such an oversight of care for Week’), and being offered a cup of tea workers seems incongruous if by a supervisor is to be valued here Soapbox: FEATURES we look to the stringent policing and now. Felix Danczak on the status of of safety standards at work, with It is important to remember, privacy in the modern-day city employers increasingly afraid even though, that the city extends much 10 to allow a member of staff up a further than college and library walls. The Ink Trail: Palaces of Culture ladder for fear of their safety (and It takes only a short cycle ride to John Kinsella interviewed on his A look at Warsaw’s abandoned people’s palace the lawsuit that would inevitably realise quite how fast the spires fall new poetry journal, ‘This Corner’ follow, to adopt a more cynical line away to flat, green countryside, dusty of thought). It is clear that employers farms, and the odd stile. Escaping www.varsity.co.uk/podcasts look to abide by the rules – and, as the city is integral to relishing our MUSIC evidenced in the majority of colleges inhabitance of it: a pair of our very VarsiTV: examined – strive for nothing more. own small-scale, self-adopted rose- 14 Ultimately, then, it is the rules that tinted glasses. RAG Jailbreak: Blues Funeral urgently need to change, with the Spaces, buildings, and the streets Covering the student stampede Review: Mark Lanegan Band’s newest release ‘Blues Funeral’ current broad and careless strokes we walk along every day build up beyond the bubble of the umbrella minimum wage powerful associations for each of us. adjusted accordingly, shaded in, and This is surely acknowledged in the www.varsitv.co.uk/tv painted more delicately. It is up to inspiration taken from architecture us as students to set such a change in everything from cinema to fashion, FASHION in motion, and follow St John’s as we have explored in this week’s College Oxford, in pushing their issue. Team List (What’s your favourite city?) JCRs to pass the motion insisting Take a look through; most of all, we Gareth Pugh 18 that their college staff are paid the hope that Varsity’s presence in your Editors Madeleine Morley and Louise Benson [email protected] (Austin) Blurring the line between fashion and architecture living, not the minimum, wage. A city library and porter’s lodge can help Business Manager Michael Derringer must be understood as a sum of its to shape your week, and fit into this [email protected] (Salzburg) Senior Arts Editor Zoe Large parts – and the people who interact familiar, fleeting landscape. [email protected] (St Petersburg) with these components should News Editor Matt Russell not become a blur within a much [email protected] (Athens) SPORT larger picture; each worker cannot Online Editor James Vincent [email protected] (York) be whitewashed out with national Science and Theatre Editor Helen Cahill averages. [email protected] (Slough) Blues Lose 24 And so, we should focus more on Perspectives Editor Emily Fitzell [email protected] (Washington) Disappointing post-Varsity loss to Durham this city that we inhabit for these Features Editor Katy Browse three short years.