Warwick University have made plans to open a campus in Cali-fornia which will hold 6,000 stu-dents by 2031.

This follows on from the Busi-ness School’s campus expansion to the Shard in London in 2014.

Plans for a new overseas campus were recommended by the Uni-versity Senate and approved by the University Council on Feb 12.

The project will start with de-veloping the University’s teaching presence with a small number of postgraduate courses. Students on these courses will be offered inter-im accommodation.

Warwick hopes to develop ded-icated teaching facilities that will also eventually support undergrad-uate students.

Warwick is forming a partner-ship with the University Devel-opment Trust in order to build its campus in California. The Trust, a

non-profit organisation that claims to be focused on educating the American public, has granted War-wick 600 acres of land for the new campus and funding to take for-ward the initiative.

Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, Co-Chair-man of the University Development Trust, said: “It is thrilling that the University of Warwick, one of the premier world universities, has tak-en the first official step to establish a new campus in our region.

“I am confident that Warwick, which achieved astounding world-class success since its founding in England in 1965, will match that success in vibrant Northern Cali-fornia.”

The new campus will be located in Placer County, which is said to be one of California’s fastest grow-ing counties.

The University’s vice-chancel-lor Sir Nigel Thrift said: “This is a welcome opportunity for staff and students at Warwick which draws on… [the University’s] successful

strategy to develop as a globally networked university.

“A university that exists in many locations, does research in many locations, and produces global-ly-aware students able to thrive wherever in the world they decide to study, research and work.

“The University of Warwick in California will deliver teaching, and ultimately research, of the highest quality, further extending and accelerating Warwick’s global reach and reputation.”

The University’s Provost, Profes-sor Stuart Croft, said: “The Senate and Council have had a series of considered and detailed discus-sions examining this wonderful opportunity, and I am very pleased that they have both given their sup-port for this exciting initiative.

“…of course we have a lot of work ahead in order to create the planned campus, but it is an ex-traordinarily powerful plan and vision.”

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2 theboar.orgNews

Warwick University hosted a ‘Doggy De-stress Day’ in the Stu-dents’ Union (SU) building on Thursday 19 February to raise money and awareness for Guide Dogs UK.

Students were given the chance to pet guide dog puppies within al-located time slots after paying a £1 donation to the charity. The event, which was hosted by a number of organisations including the War-wick Raising and Giving society (RAG), The Lloyd’s Scholars and Warwick SU as well as Guide Dogs UK, took place between 11am and 3pm in the Atrium.

The charity already has affili-ations with The Lloyd’s Scholars, but the idea for this event was in-itially conceived after RAG Vice President, Shannon Taggart, had a discussion with Liz Gilbert, the Community Fund Raiser for the charity’s Leamington Branch.

Discussing the choice, Ms Tag-gart said: “I love the guide dogs charity personally, and sponsor a puppy myself, so was keen to work with the charity - we talked about possible fund raisers and this seemed like the best option (which it has proved to be!). It’s been a great team effort.”

Students were gathered in the Atrium waiting for their names to be called out so they could enter in small groups.

The organisers had also set up an

attraction in the Atrium called the ‘sensory tunnel’, through which any passing or waiting students could walk with their eyes covered, in or-

der to simulate the effects of blind-ness. Nearby, a stall was raising fur-ther funds by selling merchandise related to guide dogs.

To get into the event, students had to sign up online beforehand, after which successful applicants received emails confirming their allocation. Overall, 350 slots were handed out.

The area continued to be busy throughout the day, with extra stu-dents coming in to see what was going on.

Yasmin Khanom, one of the stu-dents who had organised and vol-unteered at the event, was pleased with the number of people who turned up. She stated: “[I’ve] never seen the Atrium this busy before.”

Jenny Wheeler, disabled stu-dents’ officer at the SU and fellow event organiser, added: “I just want to say from a personal point of view that I really enjoyed today and all of the hard work that went into it definitely paid off!”

The event attracted even more interest on social media. By the time the event had actually start-ed, the Facebook page for the event had 1.9k people saying that they were going to attend.

According to Ms Taggart, when they released the pre-booking form, her “screen was running with names immediately and we had hit our quota by 12.01 - overall there were more than 1,300 people who submitted an entry by 12.15”.

As a result of the event’s exces-sive popularity, many students were unable to get a place. Nevertheless, there was still an opportunity to get in on the day by entering a raffle system, as Ms Khanom, an under-

graduate Chemistry student noted: “We’ve had even more people com-ing in, including those who didn’t manage to get a booking, thanks to the raffle system.”

First-year Philosophy student Rachel Hamilton, who attended the event along with some of her flatmates, said: “it was so lovely to be with the dogs - especially as we don’t see animals often on cam-pus... and it was very interesting to talk to the dogs’ owners. The dogs do such an amazing job!”

Indeed, Ms Taggart was pleased with the way that the event has been received: “The response from students has been overwhelming, it’s been incredible to watch the ex-citement for the event grow - there is even talk for putting together a Guide Dogs Society on campus. Since we put the event out on Face-book, there have even been people I don’t know coming up to me and talking about how great the event is.”

When asked about the possibility of the dogs’ return, Ms Taggart was unable to give a definite answer, but remained confident about the pos-sibility: “The event is only poten-tially returning in Week 10 of Term 3, nothing has been finalised yet… however, it is looking promising, so you can expect to see more of us in the future!”

Ms Wheeler added: “I hope that it will be the start of a very positive relationship with the Guide Dogs Centre in Leamington. The interest shown today was phenomenal.”

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‘Doggy De-stress Day’ attracts 1,300 students Joe Lester

» photos: Nick Veitch / Flickr (top), Georgina Miklosz (bottom right), Yasmin Khanom (bottom left)

3 theboar.orgNews

241 workers at Warwick Universi-ty are being paid below the living wage, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Warwick For Free Education (WFFE) has re-vealed.

The University responded by saying they “do not hold the ‘living wage’ as a benchmark for fair pay”.

They also argued that the pay of full-time staff who fall below the living wage are elevated above the threshold through a bonus.

WFFE felt that this was an en-tirely “insufficient measure” which allowed the University to “cheat many workers out of the pay they need to live”.

This has added to a myriad of concerns from WFFE over the way in which the University is man-aged, culminating in student pro-

tests on tuition fees and the wage of vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift.

WFFE held a ‘Pay Day Party’ in January with the aim of highlight-ing how in one day of work, Nigel Thrift earns more than the total annual earnings of the lowest paid university staff member.

The issue of being a ‘living wage employer’, however, is not exclusive to Warwick University. 39 other universities have employed more than 100 staff who do not earn wages which match up to the living wage standard.

Nonetheless, WFFE felt that their demands for the University to change its practices were perfectly reasonable, arguing that there is no solution to the problem except “the immediate and comprehensive raising of all wages paid by the Uni-versity”.

They added: “this shows une-quivocally that the University is en-gaged in the creation of huge wealth

inequality and the impoverishment of essential support staff in order to maximise financial surplus”.

According to WFFE, the Uni-versity’s payment procedures are a “devious calculation” to increase profit.

They cite how full-time and part-time division of contracts al-low for part-time staff to effectively fulfil full-time hours.

241 staff are listed as not be-ing paid the living wage, with the University’s FOI response omit-ting the state of low pay amongst externally contracted employers – this includes cleaning service staff. Teaching staff who are paid on an hourly rate are also not included in this figure.

Teaching staff are not paid for the hours of preparation done in advance of seminars, which WFFE says amounts to a “sub-poverty wage”.

WFFE summarised their stance

on the wage policy by saying: “No bullshit bonuses which cheat staff out of essential pay – we need the living wage for every hour worked.”

However, Peter Dunn, head of Press and Policy, urged: “we did take steps last year to ensure that no member of staff was paid at a rate below that figure.

“We understand that the people who set the living wage figure have chosen to increase it relatively re-cently.

“The University has undertaken once again to review our payment structures, in light of this recent change.”

Mr Dunn also stressed: “My un-derstanding is that even for tempo-rary teaching staff they are paid an hourly rate that is designed to rec-ognise that there may be thought or action required outside the explicit teaching period.”

A Students’ Union (SU) Student Council meeting was closed pre-maturely on Monday 16 February after some members of the coun-cil were left upset due to a heated debate.

An online statement from the chair of SU Council published on Wednesday 18 explained:

“This is not a decision I took lightly, however, I am mandated in my role as chair to ensure a safe space in which to conduct meet-ings.

“As several violations of safe space were reported to me, I felt this could not be guaranteed and with advice from the Democracy Team I made said decision as I be-

lieved it was in the best interests of all parties.

“Immediately following this de-cision the meeting went in-quorate, meaning that the decision could not be overturned.

“I am saddened that such an event happened and I would like to stress that this is unprecedented and not representative of SU de-mocracy.”

The Boar approached SU repre-sentatives for further information, however, they denied to explain further.

Alex Shaw, a second-year Politics and International Studies student, commented: “The SU needs to be accountable to the students, we should be told what is happening.”

It is understood that there was heated debate over the making

of the SU’s ‘honourary members’ where one particularly upset mem-ber left the room.

There was also an argument over whether or not the Student Council was made up of mainly heterosexu-al male members.

The meeting later went in-quorate as members began to leave the room and the meeting had to be closed.

SU president Cat Turhan added to the statement later on: “Given the seriousness of the situation, we have decided that an enquiry with an independent Chair should ex-amine what happened, establish the facts of the situation and make any recommendations necessary for the future successful running of Coun-cil and other such meetings.”

Warwick will hold a summit on protests in the Arts Centre Cinema on March

12. Speakers will include the West Midlands police chief, the regis-trar, a representative from Warwick security as well as vice-chancellor Sir Nigel Thrift and president of the Students’ Union Cat Turhan. Tickets were on offer to both staff and students, however, the event is already fully booked. Staff at the University are currently analysing the 600 replies received in response to the protest survey. A report will be compiled and released a week before the summit.

Three quarters of students struggle to believe that their friends have mental health problems, accord-

ing to a study by the Priory Group. The West Midlands was the second worst region for understanding mental health in the UK; 78 percent of students in the region struggled to believe friends if they claimed to have a mental illness.

R esearchers from Warwick Medical School have sug-gested that there is a link between the use of canna-

bis and the onset of symptoms re-lated to bipolar disorder. The study showed that the use of cannabis worsened symptoms of those pre-viously diagnosed as bipolar.

Students studying at St An-drews will be able to live in alcohol-free flats from Sep-tember 2015. The accommo-

dation is being introduced for stu-dents who have religious or medical reasons which prevent them from drinking alcohol. St Andrews will be the first Scottish university to offer alcohol-free accommodation.

T hree suspects have been charged following alleged violence at Free Education protests in Senate House

last term. The three men will appear in Coventry Magistrates’ Court on March 5. Daniel Dawson, 24, has been charged with obstructing a constable and using threatening words or behaviour. Alistair Rob-inson, 25, is charged with assault by beating and using threatening words or behaviour. The final man, Luke Dukinfield, 19, has received charges of using threatening, in-sulting words or abusive beahviour to provoke unlawful violence.

News in BriefConnor O’Shea

241 members of staff paid less than living wageJacob Badcock

Ann Yip

Ernst and Young (EY) are to offer Warwick University Accounting and Finance students a new As-surance Scholarship, contribut-ing financial aid for degree study alongside work experience with the company.

EY have created 60 places on the scholarship programme which are to be offered to students from War-

wick, Lancaster University and the University of Bath.

The scholarship itself is a highly lucrative offer. Up to £40,000 will be awarded in financial support over a three year degree (£15,000 a year), in addition to the paid sum-mer placement.

An extra £1,000 a year is on offer for students also meeting the crite-ria for expansion of access to high-er education.

In contrast to some scholarships offered to Warwick students, this

programme is particularly exten-sive in what it offers, providing an upfront income for students to as well the promise of work experi-ence with a reputable company.

Professor Mark Taylor, dean of Warwick Business School, com-mented upon the new programme.

He said: “The EY Assurance Scholarship programme provides not only the kind of financial as-sistance that will be a valuable spur for aspiring graduates but also a chance to gain experience at one of the world’s major accounting firms.”

Hywell Bell, managing partner at EY, commented: “Employability skills are essential for today’s grad-uates and work experience is now considered to be prerequisite for many graduate employers.

“Combined with the academic qualifications, skills such as team working, time management and real life client interactions, will help graduates of the EY Assurance Scholarship scheme to stand out in a competitive jobs market.”

Warwick’s Accounting and Fi-

nance degree itself, is already a popular degree, even without the introduction of this scholarship.

According to UNISTATS, 93 percent of students on the course are satisfied, with the 2015 Guard-ian University Guide ranking the department sixth in the UK.

First-year student Fiona Adu re-marked: “I’m really enjoying [the course] - it’s hard at times because I’ve never done any accounting or economics before, but what I enjoy most is that the course is really di-verse.

“We don’t just do finance: we had to do a Dragons’ Den style pro-ject, and are currently undertaking a business law module meaning that we don’t just deal with num-bers.”

The new EY Assurance Schol-arship programme marks the Busi-ness school’s latest asset. Professor Taylor remarked that: “Our BSc Accounting & Finance course is al-ready among the best in the coun-try and this partnership will add something extra.”

Lily Pickard

EY to offer Warwick scholarshiptheboar.org/News | @BoarNews | NEWS 3

SU Council meeting shut down prematurely

» WFFE protests on December 3. Photo: Ann Yip

» EY will offer 60 students a scholarship. Photo: reynermedia / Flickr

4 theboar.orgNews

A lecturer at the University of Bristol has recently been sacked due to not securing enough grant monies, according to the Univer-sity College Union (UCU).

Dr Alison Hayman, a Veterinary Sciences lecturer, lost her job in Autumn 2014.

Her dismissal has sparked a cam-paign against the decision. ‘Rein-state Alison Hayman!’ was started

by a group of lecturers and is led by Bristol UCU’s vice-president Dr Jamie Melrose.

A petition gathered 200 signa-tures in 24 hours.

The dismissal arose around a time where staff at Warwick Med-ical School were faced with plans that if they did not secure £9000 worth of funding, they too could be made redundant.

The campaign has called Dr Hayman’s dismissal, “spurious and one-sided”.

She added that the decision to sack her does not take into account “the fact that she is described as having made a considerable Re-search Excellence Framework con-tribution”.

In 2007 the University required staff to aim for higher academic po-sitions and with this, staff required to become senior lecturers also needed to secure large amounts of external grant money.

Hayman, however, did not meet these criteria and so was placed on

‘capability’, meaning that she had to attend regular meetings and submit evidence proving that she was able to secure grants.

Hayman found this, “demoral-ising and paralysing” rather than supportive as was initially the idea behind the meetings.

Dr Hayman was eventually sub-ject to a Stage 3 hearing in July 2014 and was given three months’ no-tice and sacked after failing to gain funding.

Prior to this, Hayman was put on

Stage 2 Warning in 2013, meaning that she had another five months to prove that she could secure fund-ing.

She called the process an ordeal: “I have found the capability process to be an extremely stressful and harassing process.”

Dr Hayman noted how she was “described as being a former em-ployee on the University of Bristol website back in August 2014 long before my final date of employment in October 2014”.

A new platform created and run by Warwick students called Kie-star has had its first performance after selecting their first on-cam-pus star, Lilli Chel.

Kiestar is a new internet start-up that selects a new star every month, and describes itself as “the social network of talent”.

Launched in 2015, the compa-ny aims to promote an individual every month through various me-dia and performances.

The business was started by Warwick students Christian Hin-nenburg, a third-year business stu-dent, and Sami Idris, a first-year economics student, as a way to al-

low new talent to gain publicity and repute.

According to Rasti Rasool, pub-lic relations officer of Kiestar the creators felt that, “talented people are simply not getting the attention they deserve”.

The project is based online and is integrated with a variety of social networking systems, for example, potential stars and users can cre-ate their profiles quickly by logging into the system through their Face-book profile.

The business is named after the French phrase ‘Qui est la star?’ meaning ‘Who is the star?’.

A new star will be selected on the website via a voting system every month. Potential stars can set up a profile on the website, showcasing

their talent. Other users can then vote on

which star’s performance they think is the best, with the act with the most points at the end of the month winning.

The selected star will then be promoted by the company with a performance and a variety of pub-licity through various social media and platforms.

On January 27 the start-up had their first performance with their first star and singer, Lilli Chel. The event took place in the Students’ Union Atrium. There was a large turnout of Warwick students.

Mr Rasool commented that the experience of starting up a business was, “very fulfilling as you see your idea come to fruition”.

Kiestar will have their second performance announcing their new star on March 5 in the Students’ Union and have already begun ex-panding their business.

In March the company will

branch out to Coventry University, and in April to Birmingham. The founders also hope to eventually expand the project on a national scale.

theboar.org/News | @BoarNews | NEWS 4

Sophie Smith

Student-run talent website gets off to flying start

» Kiestar will aim to raise talent awareness. Photo: Rusty Sheriff / Flickr

Alex Ball

Bristol University sacks lecturer over failure to secure grant

Parliamentary figures visited Warwick Sport on Monday 16 February to discuss ways to in-

volve young people in the com-munity.

The political figures were Cov-entry MEP Dan Dalton and Coven-try South parliamentary candidate Gary Ridley.

This visit was made in conjunc-tion with a visit to Wasps RFC, who have moved to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry this season.

The two organisations are keen to focus on the role of sport in com-munity engagement.

The talks also come at a similar time to the development of new campus sport facilities and when Warwick Sport are increasingly collaborating with regional and na-tional sporting bodies.

Director of Warwick Sport Lisa Dodd-Mayne commented: “We en-joy a really positive dialogue with our local community partners, including the Coventry sport net-work, about opportunities that can

add value to our student experienc-es.”

She asserted that: “adding value to the student experience is at the core of any engagement we take part in” and suggested that all the new initiatives and programmes are working towards this aim.

Mr Ridley made reference to Warwick Sport’s continuing work with local schools, clubs and char-ities, saying: “Both organisations have a good track record of getting involved in the community”.

He has also described Warwick Sport as having “first class facili-ties… that have hosted the Interna-tional Children’s Games and acted as an Olympic training venue”.

Mr Dalton, a key player in the discussions, saw the work with Warwick Sport as an opportunity to build on the legacy of the Olym-pic Games and a way to get young people more involved in the com-munity.

Before turning towards a politi-cal career, Mr Dalton used to play cricket for various county teams, including Warwickshire, and he firmly believes in the empowering value of sport in the community.

Regarding sport’s benefits he stated: “It can help get [young peo-ple] more involved in the commu-nity giving them the opportunity to meet new people, develop new skills and become more confident”.

Warwick Sport welcomes visit from British politiciansMatt Barker

» Parliamentary figures at Warwick Sport. Photo: Warwick Sport

» The decision to sack Dr Alison Hayman highlights the growing pressure university academics now face to secure financial grants for their departments. Photo: Wikipedia

5 theboar.orgNews

RaW 1251 AM left the studio for 100 hours last week to raise mon-ey in support of Scope, a disability awareness charity.

Radio Warwick broadcasted live from 11am on Monday 16 February until 3pm on Friday 20 February as a 100-hour MaRaWthon to raise money for charity.

Scope is a disability awareness charity based in the UK, which aims to increase the opportunities available to disabled people. They provide information, advice and support to disabled people and their families.

Arnold Thornton Rice, first-year Film and Literature student and presenter at RaW, said that the experience was “more on-edge” as the team was constantly “battling the elements”.

Arnold T. Rice presents on the Throwback Film show on Wednes-days. During their live broadcast the team faced strong winds which damaged their technical connec-tions; luckily RaW had technical supervisors on hand at all times to

ensure the broadcast continued.Despite the cold, presenters

enjoyed the experience, with pre-senter and executive member Amy-Louise Duffel commenting on the “great atmosphere”. Lucy Parker, a second-year Philosophy and Psychology student also de-scribed the experience as “great” despite some of the “strange looks” from passersby.

Both presenters and equipment made the move outside to the cen-

tral piazza of the University in or-der to broadcast live and against the elements (albeit sheltered by a gazebo) for the full 100 hours.

Alongside the radio’s standard schedule of talk, music and sports shows, there was additional content between 11pm and 8am to cover the overnight shifts.

Last year, RaW held a ‘MaRaW-thon Strikes Back’ event which raised over £1500 for the Cystic Fi-brosis Trust. The student radio sta-

tion aimed to raise even more this year for Scope, a charity voted for by the members of the society, with donations being taken via their website and texts.

Second-year Literature under-graduate Alex Hesketh told the Boar about his experence present-ing through the night: “As one member of the heroic post-POP! overnight shift, new highs (and lows) were reached in student radio quality.

“Musicals about our acting sta-tion manager were composed, erotic fiction starring Liam Nee-son recited, and a fetching pair of turquoise undergarments were recovered in the ‘Campus Treaure Hunt’, all in the aid of fundraising for SCOPE.

“Thanks and congratulations to all who have taken part and do-nated in this wonderful, sleep-de-prived, marathon of madness. Roll on MaRawthon 2016!”

Staff and students protested in the piazza against the University’s cur-rent investments in the fossil fuel industry on February 13.

The protesters also submitted an open letter, with the signatures of 100 members of staff, to university management. The open letter calls for the University to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry and reinvest in clean energies.

The online petition addressed to vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift has over 1,330 signatures. It calls on the University to remove fossil fuel pro-viders from its investment portfolio and support a clean energy future.

The petition also takes issue with the honorary degrees the Uni-versity has given to fossil fuel in-dustry CEOs, and the acceptance of sponsorship and advertising from fossil fuel companies.

The majority of the coal, gas and oil reserves left in the world are held by 200 publicly-traded companies. These providers are the ones protesters are pressuring insti-tutions to stop supporting.

Across the UK, the Fossil Fuel Campaign has been progressing successfully, with Glasgow and Bedfordshire committing to fossil fuel divestment.

The protest and petition at War-wick formed part of Global Divest-ment day, which saw 300 events in 48 countries.

In the UK, 31 towns and cities participated, including 22 univer-

sities. Miriam Wilson, Fossil Free Campaign coordinator at People and Planet said: “UK universities invest an estimated £5.2 billion in fossil fuels, including in some of the worst offending companies in the world, such as BP and Shell.

“Today, students are saying it’s time to ditch this technology of the past and start re-investing in a live-able future.”

Three members of staff made speeches at the rally: Mike Niblett (Centre for Caribbean Studies)

Jonathan Skinner (English) and Jonathan Menary (Life Sciences). SU president, Cat Turhan, also at-tended and pledged her support to the campaign.

Dan Goss, a final-year Maths student, stated: “Our universi-ty continues to produce research demonstrating that climate change needs to be taken seriously, and yet we offer financial and social back-ing to the key polluters. Warwick should be leading the way in with-drawing that support.”

Warwick University has recent-ly made individual grants of £10,000 available to postgraduate students, amid ever-rising living costs and tuition fees.

The funding for this is part-ly provided by the University and partly by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

In all, 125 scholarships will be handed out from a fund totalling £1.2 million.

More often than not, postgrad-uates are expected to rely on their own funds. For those lucky enough, grants and scholarships can be at-tained under the Warwick Taught Masters Scholarship Scheme.

In 2014, the University allocat-ed over £28 million in scholarship funding to postgraduate students, which aimed to help a wide range of people.

These grants are available to those from low-income back-

grounds, as well as to those who have other financial commitments, such as paying bills and supporting families.

First-year Politics student, Vic-tor Beaume, was positive about the extra funding. He told the Boar that it was “a good way of helping ma-ture students get back into educa-tion”.

But the decision has raised ques-tions among undergraduates as to why more grants are not available for their living costs.

Rusika Chohdha, a first-year Modern Languages student, said: “It’s good that they [postgraduates] are being helped, although I would like more support as an undergrad-uate; maybe they should charge us less, then it wouldn’t be such a big issue.”

Even so, undergraduates are en-titled to tuition fee loans and a min-imum living cost loan of £3,610.

In addition, several grants are available for undergraduate stu-dents from both the University it-self and HEFCE.

Roshan Chopra

100-hour charity MaRaWthon hits piazza againtheboar.org/News | @BoarNews | NEWS 5

Staff and students protest University’s fossil fuel investment

“New highs (and lows) were reached in student radio quality.”

Alex Hesketh

Megan Bower

Warwick introduces postgraduate grants

» Fossil Free campaigners. Photo: Fossil Free Warwick» 125 scholarships will be handed out. Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Sophie Smith

» For one week, broadcasts from Radio Warwick took place outside on the piazza. Photo: Radio Warwick

6 theboar.orgNews

Ibrahim Khalid

theboar.org/News | @BoarNews | NEWS 6

“Construction indus-try often overlooked”

A leading business insurance website in the UK has revealed that the construction industry prioritises passionate and enthu-siastic young people for their ap-prenticeships, according to the results of a survey carried out on employers working in various ar-eas of the construction industry.

In order to determine exactly what kinds of skills and attributes apprentices would need to forge a career within the construction in-dustry, the Construct a Quote team polled a total of 956 individuals.

All respondents were asked to disclose what they determine to be the most important attributes which should be held by anyone looking to forge a career in the con-struction industry.

61 percent of respondents placed a passion for industry as their highest priority when considering applicants. Willing and eagerness to learn new skills ranked second, with 47 percent.

Other skills the industry ranked highly were the ability to stay calm under pressure and with tight deadlines, previous knowledge or experience of the industry and communication ability.

All of those polled currently own

or work in a senior position at a construction company. The em-ployers worked in fields including builders, electricians, bricklayers, carpenters and welders.

The findings were compiled in order to help school leavers and young Britons considering a future career in the construction industry.Lyndon Wood, CEO and creator of Construct a Quote, said: “Con-struction is somewhat of an over-looked industry when it comes to the opportunities it can offer young school leavers in the form of re-warding and valuable apprentice-ship schemes.

Emma Moylan

Still looking for housing? Students give the Boar their recommendations

While many Warwick Universi-ty students have already secured their off-campus accommoda-tion for next year, many still find themselves struggling to find the right place.

With numerous student letting agencies available for students to choose from, the Boar asked which the most popular are among War-wick students.

First-year student Olivia Gillard said of her house hunting experi-ence: “Warwick Accommodation was our first resort to look for ac-commodation off-campus as they have different let lengths. This is really helpful for students as there is no deposit required which is a definite financial benefit.”

Warwick Accommodation han-dles over 400 different sized prop-erties in Coventry, Leamington Spa and Kenilworth, including proper-ties housing up to 12 people. New properties are still being added to their website for students still struggling to find a place to live off-campus.

The Warwick Student Accom-modation website states “All of the properties are furnished to meet the needs of our students’ with ben-efits such as no deposit, hidden fees

or signing fees, and no rent to pay until the start of the tenancy.”

Tara & Co also feature amongst the most popular student letting companies, with houses available in Leamington Spa and Warwick. Their website states that they offer “a straightforward and jargon-free service.”

First-year student Jack Williams told the Boar: “I secured my house for next year through Tara & Co and it was really easy.

“Everything could be done through email, including the con-

tract, which meant that we didn’t have to try and organise when we were all available to go.”

Another company recommend-ed by students is Langley Student Accommodation for its useful web-site for finding off-campus accom-modation.

On the website you can search for properties in Coventry, Canley, Earlsdon and Kenilworth with up to seven bedrooms. One month’s deposit is required which is return-able at the end of the tenancy.

» Photo: veggiefrog / Flickr » Photo: Elliott Brown / Flickr

For many of us here at War-wick, May will be the first time we have ever voted in a general election. It’s an in-

credibly important election, with smaller parties taking up more of

the limelight than ever before and no majority looking certain any time soon.

This issue marks the beginning of the Boar’s #IVOTE campaign to ensure students are registered to vote and their voices are heard. Registration closes on April 20, so there’s now less than two months to make sure your vote is counted.

Since the way we register to vote

has changed, students are no longer automatically registered in halls residences, and reports suggest that up to one million votes from young people could be lost in this May’s general election. According to the Electoral Commission, around 30 percent of 18-24 year olds have not yet registered to vote.

With over 197 seats across the country with an MP who has a

majority of ten percent or less, our votes matter more than ever before.

We are the generation sitting in debt, with dwindling proper-ty prospects, entering a brutal job market, uncertain of our futures. We may be quick to complain, but we cannot do so unless we make an effort to make our voices heard.

Young votes are crucial. We mat-ter – our futures are the future of

this country, and we must be re-sponsible for that.

Registering to vote takes roughly two minutes; all you need is your national insurance number. Head to www.gov.uk/register-to-vote to ensure your voice is heard come May.

Two minutes to stand up and be counted. Two minutes to make a change. Register to vote.

Rebecca Myers Editor-in-Chief

#IVOTE: Are you registered to vote in the General Election?

Unleash your potential at WBSAll Warwick students who gain a place with WBS for September 2015 will receive a 25% WBS Scholarship, with outstanding students receiving 50%. Take a look at our Masters courses today or contact us for more information at masters@wbs.ac.uk

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Come and meet our Masters Team on Wednesday 18 March at the WBS Postgraduate Open Day

T (0)24 7615 0333E masters@wbs.ac.ukW wbs.ac.uk/go/boar11

8 theboar.org

8

Editors’ Letters

Nour Rose ChehabDeputy Comment Editor

“Good grief ”

COMMENTEditor: Hiran Adhia

Comment@theboar.org Twitter @BoarComment

fb.com/groups/BoarComment

READERS’ RESPONSE

Will Tucker

“The road to nowhere”

Unless you’ve been living in the Tora Bora caves, or Coventry, for the last few

weeks, you may have noticed there have been a few roadworks around campus. Whilst the university’s aim to constantly expand into new ter-ritory with Putinesque bellicosity is almost quite breathtaking, the digging up of already-built parts of campus is causing some consterna-tion.

The roadworks were supposed to be finished by the start of term. No, not after Christmas; before term one had started. To say that this represents a small cock-up on behalf of the university, council and building companies is probably a bit like saying the Vice-Chancellor is a universally loved figure.

In first term I was happy, but that was before my life had been bedevilled by my two least favour-ite words in the English language: Academic Loop.

Hundreds of Leam-dwellers stumbling round the muddy field behind Maths and Stats may have been amusing to onlookers, but it wasn’t very funny to experience. Also, what’s the point of bus-stops in the middle of nowhere? The post-Pop! stagger to the bus stop is bad enough without needing to read a campus map as well.

Yes, the decision to undertake what looks like open-cast mining near the SU (apparently because they only put down a temporary road surface, which was exhausted because of delays) has led to a bus service that does neither of its two jobs: get you to campus on time or in the right place. Leamington’s not much more than ten miles from campus, but journey times of forty minutes make it seem like another planet.

I don’t blame the drivers, or the builders, who are doing a difficult job with even less information than we have – and crowd-controlling hungry, mutinous students during rush-hour can’t be easy – but the management of the work who don’t appear to have planned ahead. Combined with roadworks at the top of Kenilworth Road, sometimes I feel like I may as well hike.

Despite this, I still don’t regret living in Leamington: I’m very fond of the town, and I like the decom-pression time a commute gives you – I just wish it wasn’t quite that long. It also feels like a bit of a dou-ble whammy after the plumbing works last year meant getting off at Pizza Express and walking all the way into South Leam, which was hardly convenient.

With no end in sight we could always try the Bowater solution of destroying Kenilworth, but I fear the red tape involved. Mono-rail, anyone? It worked so well in Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.

Sponsored by:

Ife AkinroyejePhotography Editor

On Sunday the first of Febru-ary, I lost a friend. One min-ute she was skiing, she was

happy and alive, and the next, she was gone.

There are several stages of grief and everyone deals with it differ-ently. For me, it started with denial: no, it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be pos-sible, it was a joke, a mistake, and she was going to wake up soon.

This stage was rapidly replaced by pain: the pain of never seeing her again, of never fixing what was broken. The pain for her family, her friends. The pain of knowing that she will not have a tomorrow to look forward to.

Then followed anger. I was angry at the world, angry at God, angry at the ski resort that was not se-cure enough, at the hospital, at the doctors that couldn’t save her. I was also angry with the government for not putting a hospital closer to the slopes, for not regulating the stock of blood available in hospitals, for not increasing the quality of ERs located outside the capital.

The last stage is acceptance. I have accepted that nothing I can say can lessen the pain of the peo-ple that loved her. I have accepted that nothing I can do can bring her back. I have accepted that life is un-fair but that it goes on.

Even if, at that moment, I felt like life could not keep going on as usu-al, the sun went down like it always

had, and went back up like it did every other day. The days went by and life continued ordinarily.

However, I have come out changed from this. I have learned that everything can shift in a sec-ond. All my worries, my little prob-lems, that seemed so important back then, now feel obsolete and irrelevant compared to the immen-sity of life and death.

I have learned to cherish the good in my life instead of focus-ing on the bad. I have learned to put things into perspective. I am sorry that it took such a great loss to realise that life is short and that we should live everyday like it’s our last. I know this sounds cliché but it is true.

Have no regrets, leave no situa-tions hanging and don’t wait for “later” to do what you want to do and to say what you want to say. You and your loved ones might not have a “later”. So don’t be scared to act and to voice your feelings while you s t i l l can.

“A week without a smart phone”

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss

it.”Yeah, good old Ferris Bueller

taught me that, and I thought I was pretty good at appreciating my world around me. However, since the decline in my smartphone’s health finally reached its culmina-tion and it departed my company for a better place (the repair cen-tre), I finally realised that there is a whole world out there which I have been ignoring.

My life relied on my phone. I’m the type of person to have 100 things going on at once, so I am constantly responding to emails, whilst Facebooking, Whatsapping, paying my latest bills and taking photos of cats. However, in using

my phone as a mini-laptop, bank account and

all-around life saver, I constant-ly resorted to it in place of actual

conversation. So of-ten I would use my

phone when talking to other people, when pre-

drinks grew a bit dull or to stop myself falling asleep in

lectures.But now, here I am. Day

seven. My phone and I have officially parted company for the

foreseeable future, and it’s a whole

new world. My experience so far has not been easy; I have returned to my brick phone, like if Justin got back with Britney in ‘02. But a brick phone is not the same, it is not the Britney to my JT. In place of Goog-le Maps, I’ve had to try my hand at cartography and begin hand draw-ing maps and directions. I couldn’t resort to my phone in awkward or boring situations, forcing me to not mindlessly scroll through my newsfeed, but to talk to people or appreciate things around me. On those long and arduous bus rides I actually started getting work done.

The hardest thing was the fact I had to start using an actual alarm clock!

The adjustment has been hard, but I’ve learnt a lot about myself, as well as about society now. As I was phoneless, I’ve had to observe oth-ers constantly using theirs instead.

The world we live in is filled by the hashtag warriors and avid Snapchatters. Those who would rather take a quick picture of art in a gallery and move on, rather than stand, observe and appreciate it.

However, if we keep burying ourselves in our phones we miss the opportunity to talk to the peo-ple we always see but never speak to. Or actually appreciate world around us.

So maybe it’s time to put down your phone and stop to look around once in a while.

» Cartoon: Rosie Hiscock

» Photo: jan-itors / Flickr

9 theboar.org

Villains or victims: Muslims in the mediaNick Buxey on #muslimlivesmatter and the media response to the Chapel Hill murders

The tragic murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina is a devastating act

of violence that will scar the com-munity engulfed in the aftermath for weeks to come. Although we’ll never be sure of the motivations for the murders, it seems to be a park-ing dispute that triggered them.

That was undoubtedly a pa-thetic reason for ending the lives of three people, and it disregard-ed religious motivation, and the importance the staunch atheism of Craig Hicks. Many friends and family were unsatisfied with an an-swer that attempts to distract from the differences between the victims and suspect. But the murder has also sparked a discussion over the paltry weight Muslim lives carry in today’s Western media.

Although it may be impossible to wonder now, the immediate af-termath of the incident painted a very different picture. In Britain, only three news outlets respon ded – AP, the Independent and Al-Jazeera. In the USA, the situa-

tion was similar. Many major news networks apparently didn’t see the importance of what had happened, but murder is murder, no matter how you frame it. It was only after Twitter users started responding with the hashtag #muslimlivesmat-ter that other outlets picked it up,

frantically covering one of the most horrific events of the month.

And you have to ask – what does this say to the thousands of Mus-lims living in both countries? I would bet that it sends the message that actually, they don’t matter. An incident like this should have seen

widespread press coverage. People should have been outraged. Every-one should be calling for atheist “leaders” to justify atheism. But they weren’t.

It’s not that people who fail to be outraged are callous – they’re just ignorant. A generation has grown

up amidst the “War on Terror”, being essentially taught that white Christians are good, and anyone else? Probably bad. And the media is just as guilty. Although the Char-lie Hebdo attacks were reprehensi-ble, the world seems to have forgot-ten the shared distaste felt when the

magazine posted a picture of the Prophet (a basic violation of Islam-ic law, as depictions of him are for-bidden). I’m not here to justify the people who carried out the attacks. What I’m asking is that we stop tarring all Muslims with the same brush, and remember that Charlie Hebdo was not entirely guiltless.

We need to change our atti-tudes, and fast. Society always seems to need a scapegoat, and the current target is undoubtedly Muslims. Why do we always have to get reassurances from “commu-nity leaders”? Why can’t we accept that the people who carry out such violent attacks are usually ex-tremists, not representative of the whole community? And why is it so difficult to accord everyone the same level of respect, irrespective of religion?

We have become a society that is happy to paint Muslims as villains, but becomes unnervingly quiet when the same community become victims of the murderers we so ve-hemently condemn. That needs to change.

9|

Cartoon Corner

» “#StudentProblems” Cartoon by Freya Verlander

In 2000, world leaders pledged to get every child into school by 2015, but progress has

stalled and today 58 million chil-dren of primary school age are not receiving an education. They are forced out of school for many rea-sons including forced labour, child marriage, gender discrimination, and attacks on schools. A lack of education then aggravates these problems, but by making sure every child goes to school, we can end this vicious circle.

Young people hold the key to in-ternational development through their education in so many ways. Education can redefine the next generation, shaping them into peo-ple who can form their own opin-ions and are at less risk of being duped by corrupt governments or intolerant fundamentalists. It can provide developing countries with skilled engineers, medical profes-sionals and teachers to bring en-tire nations forward. In terms of modern slavery which has been so prominent in the media re-cently, staying in school is vitally important in protecting children. Education gives them hope and potential for the future, and can help them break out of the cycle of poverty which traps so many into forced labour, providing them with prospects for finding skilled work and the awareness needed to see through smooth-talking traffick-ers.

This year we have the opportuni-ty to put pressure on political lead-ers to remember the promise made 15 years ago. A World at School, a coalition of charities, has put to-gether the #UpForSchool petition in order to do just that. The peti-tion is aiming for 24 million signa-tures to make it the biggest in histo-ry. The current world record for the biggest ever petition is held by the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which led to the cancellation of unjust debt owed by 35 of the poorest coun-tries, and resulted in thousands of children going to school for the first time. World leaders will meet at the UN General Assembly this September, and this petition is the perfect way to put education at the top of their agenda. If the world’s citizens take education seriously, so must their leaders.

Warwick Hub is launching the petition here at Warwick in Week 8, so keep an eye out for stalls around campus. There will also be an event offering the opportunity to sign in Week 9, on Monday 2 March at 5pm in S0.20, with a guest speaker from Tearfund speaking on ‘Mod-

ern Slavery and Education’.

Elisa Pike

“#UpForSchool”

“Why is it so difficult to accord everyone the same

level of respect regardless of religion?”

“ Many major news networks apparantly didn’t see the importance of what had happened, but murder is

murder, no matter how you frame it”

» Photo: joegaza / Flickr

Want to see your cartoons here? Email comment@theboar.org

COLLABORATION WITHWARWICK HUB

7 theboar.org

10 |

Sabbatical elections are upon us, bringing a whole host of familiar sights associated

with this week to campus. People giving you flyers outside the li-brary, Facebook feeds filled with campaign posters and - of course - mountains of cardboard as far as the eye can see. Yet for all its faults it is a very crucial part of univer-sity life, and this is why we, as a student body, should vote in them.

Sabbs provide an important role: they are the face of the Stu-dents’ Union (SU) and actually have a lot of power in helping to shape the way in which the SU and also the University are run. Sabbs are there for the ordinary student.

It’s not a glamorous job, but it has to be done and it’s far better done by somebody whose name and face you know, rather than by some nameless bureaucrat. We each have a vision for our Univer-sity, yet if we don’t vote our voices - unique as they are - will not be heard.

Having been involved in Sabb campaigns in the last two years, I can say from experience that there is a huge amount of passion invested by the candidates. This isn’t something that you’ve done as a laugh (usually) as it takes time and commitment to be a successful Sabb candidate. Not only do you have to get material,

come up with policies and a cam-paign but you’re willing and able to commit a whole year of your life to improving the lives of Warwick students. This isn’t something that can be rushed. There are policies on a range of topics and unique ideas that could truly help the SU. The fact that information is easily available so that you can find out about policies, means you don’t have any excuses.

As a student, you have a duty to vote in elections because we all want a better student experience. We also want to remind the Uni-versity that as a student body, we are passionate about moving for-ward and the only way to do that is to vote. The SU is made for and by students, and if they aren’t in-volved, what’s the point?

Sabbs are able to make a core difference for the Union beyond talking to local organisations and businesses. Surely you want some-one dedicated and, above all, trust-worthy to make these decisions, rather than a completely random individual?

Democracy is one of the core tenets of this privileged society and if you don’t use it, you could lose it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a General Election or some-thing a little closer to home. I hope you all will vote and be proud of your commitment to the demo-cratic tradition.

Halimah Manan

Yet another tragedy: Talibans’ newest attack on Peshawar

I remember the days of school councils. At my tiny compre-hensive in the North West, one

would gain access to this fabled in-stitution by performing a 10-second speech in front of peers. A delight-ful manifesto was always postulat-ed; ‘no more maths!’ was a sure-fire way to win any election! In retro-spect, it was all so terribly naïve.

Honestly, though, in three years here I haven’t seen much difference between the antics of secondary school power grabbers and pro-spective Sabb officers.

I inherently disagree with the idea of student politicians; they all aspire to a type of false power, all the while eschewing realistic manifestos. I always thought the intention of a governmental body of students was to represent the students, but apparently this isn’t the case. Instead, we have a series of officers who hypothetically stand for us but in reality just write blog posts and smile smugly down at us from those pictures in the SU. They follow their own agenda, and it’s not an agenda which benefits their electors.

Case in point; Warwick SU re-leased a statement, now missing from the website, refusing to con-demn the UCU boycotts. Whatever your politics, nobody could deny that marking boycotts are bad for students because, you know, they don’t get their work marked.

Yet the SU and its officers refused to condemn the boycotts, instead waiting to see what the NUS and other SU’s were saying. I’d prefer my SU to make a decision by itself, and to have the integrity to speak in favour of its students.

But this, just like the desire to rid my delightful high school of math-ematics, is a naïve wish.

The potential officers always seem to be the same set of point-less demi-politicians, whose man-ifestos are never completed when they enter their meaningless office. And when they win, those candi-dates, year after year, run an SU whose only real achievements lie in the fields of futile boycotts of companies which could immensely benefit students, and the passing of motions which do little more than morally judge anyone who disa-grees with them.

It is pointless to care about these elections. The results are always the same; the officers, past and present, could form into one homogenous super student politician, disingen-uous and patronising. The only worthwhile candidates are the joke ones. At least they’re funny.

Undermining our crooked po-litical caste by refusing to engage with their risible system will cause a crisis of legitimisation that can no longer be ignored; only then can the calls for us to build a fairer sys-tem attain any credence.

Milo Barnett says YES Mike Wrench says NO

Anushae Fecto

On February 17, David Cam-eron announced a new policy intended to curb

unemployment for young people, should Conservatives be re-elect-ed in May. He suggested a new criteria for claimants of the Job-seekers’ Allowance (JSA) to fulfil six months’ mandatory unpaid community service before grant-ing them benefits.

Although this is sold as a prac-tical solution to supplying young people the jobs they desperately need, Cameron’s policy lacks one key feature. The promise of paid work.

Young people are expected to fare on their own, but as long as they are not claiming benefits, it does not seem to matter to the current Prime Minister.

In rhetoric, Cameron main-tains that their unemployment results from their own neglect to find work.

Instead of giving young people support to allow them to dedicate their time to searching for jobs, the Conservatives intend to bur-den them with voluntary work which will not necessary help them fare better in the job market.

At the same time, they want to disadvantage young people by forcing them to live on a Youth Al-lowance which, at £57.35 per week, can hardly be expected to enable them to survive beyond basic ne-cessities.

By placing the burden of find-ing jobs on young people, the Conservatives only alienate them further. Instead, they should be acknowledging that the problem is borne of government policies which largely ignore young people.

However, all they succeed in do-ing is oversimplifying the issue of benefits claims without truly solv-ing the causes – the lack of paid work with living wages available – and only contribute to an un-fair narrative of apathetic and lazy young people.

So, if not young people, who is this policy really aimed at?

The answer is simple: tax-pay-ers. In his assertion that young people should be prepared to “play their part and make an effort”, Cameron heavily implies that they are claiming benefits under false pretences of searching for a job.

As tax-payers pay for benefits, it only makes sense that they, as voters, would want to see strict cri-teria restrict access and the Con-servatives are only too happy to provide them.

In short, Cameron’s proposed policy only serves to stigmatise and blame young people, who live on benefits, for their unemploy-ment.

Cameron’s new

plan for unem-

ployed youth

What do you think of David Cameron’s policy?

As I opened my Facebook news feed a few hours ago I felt the familiar plunge of

my heart falling. More sad news of tragedy - yet another bomb blast in Peshawar.

A few short months ago Pe-shawar, a Taliban infested city in Pakistan, faced a terrible tragedy. The Taliban massacred around 200 school children at an army school. Today 20 people have been killed during Friday prayers at a mosque and 50 others severely injured.

News of my homeland, Paki-stan, always depresses me, which is why I try to avoid following it. This news was especially slow to reach people.

I just informed my parents of this attack after I found out on Facebook - they actually had no idea. They just turned on the news and even had to flip through a bunch of Pakistani news channels to find out what had happened, as many channels were busy cover-ing other political news, obviously losing sight of the more important matter at hand.

It seems like everyone, even those in Pakistan, have become somewhat numbed and immune to tragic news like this. We can no longer generate the same emo-tions of grief, because these oc-

currences are just so common. This is not to say we do not feel

the pain, but that if we felt intense pain at every tragic instance we would not be able to move on with our lives at all.

The news channels all presented slightly different accounts of what had happened, how many had died, and what motives the Taliban had for this heinous attack.

Some stated that it was an act of vengeance against the govern-ment and civilians; others claimed it was due to the ongoing violence between religious sects. The exact motive is not important because clearly the act was generated out of

pure stupidity, ignorance and hate.While the media often paints

a black and white picture of Is-lamist militants who are at war with the West, the reality is much more complicated. The truth is the majority of people who die at the hands of these evil killers are in-nocent Muslim civilians in mainly Muslim countries.

While the Taliban are Islamist Extremists, they are not really Is-lamic at all, and a clear example of this is that mosques tend to be one of the most susceptible places where a bomb can fall.

There is something uncannily ridiculous about religious Islam-

ic extremists bombing a mosque. It just contradicts itself. Clearly these people are not actually prac-ticing Muslims (though they claim to be) and Islam should not be blamed for these abhorrent crimes - the religion strictly condemns killing and does not condone such behavior in any way.

The Taliban are the most cruel, ridiculous group of militants who bomb and kill senselessly, not even caring for their own lives. This is all done for absolutely no reason.

The real reason for these evil attacks has nothing to do with re-ligion but is just plain ignorance and stupidity coupled with evil intentions and carried out by truly cruel and callous individuals filled with hatred.

It is a sad reality that innocent civilians are killed everyday in countries where there live so many brainwashed and violent people. Schools, mosques, and churches, which are the most sacred of plac-es, are no longer safe. I hate to end on a desolate note, but there is not much that can be done to stop this madness.

All I can really do is spread this sad news and cry with Peshawar, perhaps drawing more attention to such unacknowledged trage-dies, and try to shed some light on the true cause of this insanity.

» Photo: Kashif Haque / Wikimedia

10 theboar.org

A huge difference exists at Warwick between mon-ey spent and the facilities available for some sub-

jects in contrast to others. At a uni-versity that now ranks as highly in arts subjects as it does in Maths-re-lated subjects, why do students studying the former have such a comparatively lower quality study environment compared to students of the latter?

Be it Balls or buildings, some so-cieties and subjects receive much less money and therefore lower quality amenities compared to oth-ers. This is evident just by looking at the figures for current and recent developments on campus. Warwick Business School’s current four-sto-rey extension has a price tag of £30 million.

The story of the Mathematics buildings at Warwick could be the basis of a case study, that’s how long its history is. Starting in Decem-ber 2003 with the construction of the £15 million Zeeman Building, which the university website notes is shared with Statistics (gener-ous!), the department continued to expand with a £3 million exten-sion opening in 2008. Also proud-ly mentioned in the website is that ‘further expansion is planned for coming years.’

As a first-year undergraduate studying French and History I find it very disappointing that I have to go the Zeeman Building, home to

the Maths and Stats Departments, for almost half of my lectures. There is not even a lecture theatre to accommodate the 300 students studying History.

What is surprising is how often students studying non-humanities subjects frequent the Humanities Building. Shreya Shah, first year Chemistry undergraduate says: “Most of my sem-inars actually take place in the Hu-manities Build-ing!” The build-ing is used by students from so many fac-ulties that it seems ridic-ulous that it has not been updated. What is even more sur-prising is that the number of students studying Chemistry at undergraduate level is nearly half the num-ber of those studying History.

To put it simply, there is one building for all the languages, these being French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Rus-sian, Portuguese and Arabic, as well as History, English, Classical Civilisation, and Politics. All under one roof. Georgia Smith, first-year History undergraduate points out that: “Now the university ranks so highly in other subjects, they should really consider these more

and broaden out a little bit at least.” According to The Complete Uni-versity Guide, both Economics and French rank fourth in UK universi-ties. This reinforces the point that the university no longer specialises in Maths-related subjects alone.

Roshan Chopra, first-year Mod-ern Languages under-

graduate explains how it is a ne-

cessity to modernise

certain as-pects that r e c e i v e l i t t l e f u n d -i n g : “ T h e univer-sity has

blatantly spent a lot

of time and money on

the Engineer-ing Building while the Hu-manities one lags behind.” He

continues, saying: “Some teaching rooms don’t even have proper ta-bles. We have chairs with pull out “desks”. A laptop or book can bare-ly fit on these, so what’s the point? The Humanities Building is notori-ous for its dated look outside, and it isn’t all that great on the inside either!” This sums up that it is not simply a lack of space to study in, but also the quality of the facilities that arts students have that is poor.

From my own personal experi-ence, when I came here for an open day the Transnational Resources Centre (TRC) was shown off to me as if it was a diamond in a crown. I was very pleased to think I could potentially be attending a univer-sity that really thought about the needs of language students. But after coming to university it is now very clear to me that this is com-pletely inadequate.

The TRC has a capacity of around 20 people, which is not enough to accommodate language students. Also the space can be-come very noisy. The alternative is a small computer room in the Lan-guage Centre where some comput-ers do not even work. The Zeeman Building has an undergraduate workroom with a capacity of about 150 students, as well as separate su-pervised rooms.

The university must acknowl-edge this difference. The continued creation of new buildings unrelat-ed to the arts, huge investment in maths and science and a lack of sat-isfactory facilities will only enhance the disparity between arts and sci-ence/maths students at a university where both are now equally impor-tant.

Where is the investment for languages students?

This year has been a relative-ly good one for women in the film industry. The gen-der gap in Oscar and BAF-

TA nominations aside, 2014-15 has seen women grappling with more diverse, complex and effectual roles than ever before. So why do me-dia pundits still insist on treating talented, smart actresses like show ponies or beauty pageant hopefuls? And more importantly why, in our increasingly gender-conscious so-ciety, do we still seem to find this acceptable?

Impressed at Julianne Moore’s BAFTA acceptance speech as Best Actress for her role in the incisive Still Alice, in which she thanked the strong women of her family for their love and support, I set about Googling the actress in hopes of finding out more about her career and previous successes. It saddened me that the first article I could find, from the Daily Mail, was one which lauded her choice of outfit and abil-ity to still seem acceptable to the reporter at the age of 54. The head-line reaffirmed the disheartening truth that the most important thing about these intelligent, successful

women is their appearance, their age, and their appearance relative to their age.

It’s not just at the BAFTAS where reductive and tacky reporting has belittled the achievements of our generation’s finest actresses. At the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Moore, along with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, refused to parade her hands in front of E! Entertainment’s notorious “Mani-Cam”- a kind of box with a camera and red carpet inside, intended to serve as a mini-catwalk for the be-jewelled and manicured fingers of Hollywood starlets. Whilst the re-jection of this ridiculous gimmick by such a powerful triumvirate of actresses is encouraging, its very existence serves as a reminder that the striking achievements of these women will never exempt them from such undignified treatment by the press.

At last year’s Oscars, Cate Blan-chett berated a camera operator examining the length of her dress, crouching down and asking “Do you do that to the guys?” Blanchett’s response here sums it all up. Wom-en at awards ceremonies are scruti-nised and patronised by the media. The most common utterance of red carpet journalists is “who are you wearing?” By contrast, men are asked thoughtful questions about their experiences and influences. To illustrate, at the 2014 Academy Awards, Kerry Washington was probed over her baby weight and maternity style, whilst Matthew McConaughey was asked about his childhood role models. Reacting to the same trend at this year’s BAF-TAs, film reviewer, Mark Kermode jibed on Twitter “In case anyone’s interested, I’m wearing Marks and Spencers washable.”

Attempting to redress the im-balance, the Representation Pro-ject has launched its #AskHer-More campaign. The project seeks to change the way the media talks to women on the red carpet. Sup-porters are asked to tweet direct questions of a more profession-

al, analytical quality to reporters such as E!’s Ryan Seacrest, so that actresses might have the chance to share their experiences of acting and the film industry. Last year the campaign gained considerable mo-mentum as media figures including Melissa McCarthy and Amy Poe-hler challenged reporters to “ask better questions”.

I hope that next year’s awards ceremonies will feature more nom-inations for actresses starring in challenging and substantial roles, with reporters asking questions more relevant to their careers and achievements.

Although it seems unlikely that the belittling and sexist tendencies of the media will change overnight, or even in the next year, awards ceremonies are set to see more ac-tresses, and more members of pub-lic, calling out reporters for their unjust behaviour.

Do you think some deparments are underfunded?

Tweet: @BoarComment

Prianka Chotai

» Photo: thinkpanama / Flickr

BAFTAs reduce women to glorified clothes horsesErin Page reveals the necessity for more initiatives like the #AskHerMore campaign

If you’re a vegetarian, you’ll know what I mean when I talk about the feeling of seeing the vegetarian sign on a restaurant

menu; involuntary choir of angels singing in your head and all that. If it’s got a (v), it’s vegetarian. You’re safe.

Except that doesn’t always seem to be the case. An extremely com-mon example is parmesan cheese, which isn’t vegetarian. This is a relatively unknown fact, partly because restaurants have dishes which contain parmesan yet have the vegetarian sign next to them. It’s easy to find. Warwick SU outlet Xananas put the following on their menu for Pancake Day and marked it as vegetarian: asparagus, spin-ach, parmesan and hollandaise.

The Vegetarian Society say: “In order to be called ‘parmesan’ this has to be produced according to traditional methods which use calf rennet.” Being called parmesan and being vegetarian are, then, mutual-ly exclusive. Animal free rennet is a thing, but uncommon, plus tech-nically means if that is used, the cheese shouldn’t be called parme-san.

If Xananas are using an animal free rennet, it isn’t really correct of them to call it parmesan. Punctilio perhaps, but necessary. If it is veg-etarian, simply write “cheese” or “vegetarian parmesan”. By writing “parmesan”, when it isn’t actual-ly parmesan (by virtue of it being vegetarian), there’s a confusion over whether it’s vegetarian or not.

Having been to restaurants and asking if the dish is vegetarian

even though it contains parmesan, waiters look bemused. After press-ing them to check, they come back and say it is traditional parmesan. Translation: it is not vegetarian. Being in the business of food, one would expect a certain base lev-el standard of knowledge. If they can’t get their facts right, do we really want to trust them with our meal?

By specifying the cheese as “an-imal rennet free”, it’s easy to avoid the entire mess and force restau-rants to know exactly what is vege-tarian and what isn’t. It’s just as an important distinction to be made as those made regarding allergies or any other dietary requirements.

Putting a (v) sign alongside the word parmesan is wrong, no matter what. If it is true parmesan, it isn’t vegetarian. If it’s made with animal free rennet, it shouldn’t technically be called parmesan, and so needs to be labelled as such. Without making this distinction, there’s a blurring of that line between veg-etarian and not, allowing restau-rants to think there isn’t a distinc-tion to be made. This blurred line means vegetarians could be eating something they shouldn’t be with-out knowing it, and is completely unacceptable.

Karishma Jobanputra

“Parmesan isn’t

vegetarian, Xananas”

» Photo: redtouchmedia / Flickr

“ Cate Blanchett: Do you do that to the guys?”

“the most important thing about these intelligent,

successful women, is their appearance... ”

Have you felt duped by food outlets?

Comment online:theboar.org/comment

10 theboar.org

You have probably heard of blood diamonds and their impact on people in war-

torn Sierra Leone, but have you heard of conflict minerals? This is a term which refers to the illicit trade of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold which funds the atrocities that are being committed in eastern Congo.

So what role do you play in this deadly supply chain? Conflict minerals are used to make elec-tronic goods, so if you own a lap-top, phone or iPod, you are more than likely to have helped sponsor the humanitarian crisis. It is likely that the University of Warwick also makes sizable annual investments, when they buy computers, printers and television screens, which could be full of minerals mined in Congo which help to fund the militias and their deadly campaign.

The money from this trade fuels the deadliest conflict since World War II, in an area with the high-est rate of sexual violence in the world, so the question is, is there a possibiity that our tuition fees are being used to indirectly fund geno-cide and the use of rape? And what can we do about it? Mines in Congo are effectively controlled by armed groups who also control routes used to smug-gle the minerals to neighbouring states, particularly Uganda and Rwanda. ‘Taxation’ of the resources by the militia raises millions of dol-lars which are used to buy arms and continue the violence, the primary weapon of which is rape. Once the minerals leave Africa, they are sent to Asia to smelting corpo-rations in India, China, Thailand and Malaysia where they are mixed with minerals from legitimate

sources. This means that it is dif-ficult - though not impossible - to know their source. The minerals are then shipped all over the world to be made into components for the electronic goods we use every day.

The trade in conflict minerals, like many systems, has a dispropor-tionately large negative impact on the lives of women. As previously mentioned, the primary weapon used by Congolese militia is rape and sexual assault. They use it to intimidate and ‘punish’ popula-tions whom they deem to support the wrong cause, as well as those uninvolved in the conflict’s poli-tics. Congo is considered the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman, and the fact that we and our University might actually con-tribute to its funding makes it even more troubling.

As an institution that is a large consumer of electronic goods, the University and other universities in the UK may serve as significant sponsors of the violence in Congo, buying up vast amounts of conflict minerals in the form of technol-ogy found around campus. What is shocking, however, is that at pre-sent, there is no system in place to prevent our money being spent in this way, and no visible efforts have been made to responsibly source products from alternative, more ethical manufacturers.

But we can’t pin all the blame on the University when we as a student body also represent a sig-nificant purchasing power. Think of all the technology you own per-sonally - a laptop, a phone, a tablet, a music player, a games console, a television, a camera… How many minerals are in your gadgets? How

much have you contributed to the crisis?

So what can we do?We are part of the problem, but

the good news is that we can also be part of the solution. This is a market-based issue which means that we, as consumers, exert a great deal of influence over it. By creat-ing demand for conflict-free tech-nology and making that demand heard by institutions like Warwick and electronics manufacturers, we can restrict the funding and thus the power of the perpetrators of atrocities in Congo.

As an individual, you can begin to responsibly source products by researching manufacturers’ efforts to ensure that their materials are clean. The Enough Project, a US-based group which campaigns against human rights violations, has compiled a list of company rankings based on how much of their mineral supplies they can trace back to a legitimate source, which can give guidance when pur-chasing new electronic goods. As well as this, there is also the oppor-tunity to sign a letter to manufac-turers advocating greater scrutiny of their supply chain.

As for the University’s role in the trade, putting pressure on Warwick to sign Raise Hope For Congo’s ‘Conflict-Free Campus’ agreement to use ethically trustworthy elec-

tronics is a big step in withdraw-ing sponsorship of human rights violations. While many American schools and institutions have signed this agreement, the United Kingdom remains disappointingly under-represented in the move-ment. Pressuring the University into becoming one of the first would not only mean that we don’t take the risk of our tuition fees possibly being used to finance war, but also that Warwick University could become a flagship for the UK-based movement.

Activism like this has already had an astonishing impact on the revenues generated by the militias. By 2012, the pressure generated by the movement meant that armed groups were only able to generate around 35 percent of what they had been making two years previously. It has become increasingly difficult for them to sell the minerals on to the smelting firms now that manu-facturers insist on greater transpar-ency.

Universities and colleges have been credited with being one of the main driving forces behind this change.

The issue of conflict minerals is not one which makes headlines every day, and it’s understandable. Technology has become so central to our lives that we are reluctant to admit that perhaps it is not all as wonderful as it first appears and manufacturers are happy to respond to the increasing demand, whatever the human cost. If they are aware of the illicit trade at all, it is considered little more than a moral inconvenience which sizable profits can more than compensate for. Lack of awareness has helped

this corrupt system to continue for as long as it has.

But this is no longer the case.Now that you understand the

link between your electronics and the sustained campaign of rape, murder and oppression that they sponsor, there is no excuse to overlook it. Put pressure on the University to change its spending patterns and commit to a respon-sible policy. And with regards to your personal buying habits, whilst it would be pointless to discard your existing technology, think twice before you buy replacements. Many of us at Warwick are in the privileged position of being able to choose which electronics we buy, many of us aren’t limited to a great extent by money when it comes to buying new electronics. So use that privilege and do the research on the manufacturers. Create the demand for conflict-free. Cut off the mili-tias’ funding.

With awareness of the problem, there is no excuse to continue to remain passive. We have the power to financially support human rights atrocities, but we also have the power to withdraw that support.

12 FEATURESEditor: Rami Abusamra

Features@theboar.org Twitter @BoarFeatures

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Interested in writing for a section that shits on

capitalism? Email us at:

features@theboar.org

» Photos: Moyan Brenn / Flickr, (From left to right) Flickr: Steve Evans, Paul Townsend, André Thiel, Dominik Bartsch, André Thiel

Our accidental evilAnna Wilson reveals exactly where the money you paid for your phone really goes

To find our more about conflict materials, and how you can help to combat the circulation of con-flict materials, visit these web-sites:

www.enoughproject.orgwww.raisehopeforcongo.org

Technology has become so central to our lives that we are reluctant to admit that perhaps it is not all as wonderful as it first appears

Want to write for Features? Let us know! E-mail features@theboar.org to pitch your ideas

Funding fun things with crowdfunding

Recently, the Boar had the chance to interview Henry Jinman, a Warwick alum-

ni who started a business called Crowdfund Campus.

Boar Features: What is Crowd-fund Campus, and how does it differ from normal Crowdfund-ing websites?

Henry Jinman: So Crowdfund Campus is a crowdfunding plat-form for university communities. Crowdfunding is when a large group of people give small amounts of money to a cause or a creative project or a business, and we do it within universities. We started off within Warwick and we have helped students, staff and alum-ni. When I say help, we take them through the whole process, through a course of about 15 days, which gets their campaign set up, gives them some workshops and train-ing on marketing, social media, community building, how to run their campaign, raise the money and we hopefully give them a con-nection to their alumni network and to their university communi-ty. We have links and connections with stakeholders such as creative skills, alumni, etc. Hopefully we give them the best chance of getting their ideas funded.

BF: And this is better than most other crowdfunding sites?

HJ: Yes, so Kickstarter is the big-gest one - if you’re on the front page of Kickstarter then great, you’re going to do well. But if you’re not on the front page then it’s as hard as anywhere else to raise money.

BF: What inspired and motivat-ed you to start this business?

HJ: I don’t know, I think there’s a kind of natural predilection to start things like this if you like do-ing entrepreneurial activities. I just thought it was a good idea which would work here [at Warwick], and I would rather take the risk now - of starting a business - than later on when I have other responsibilities. And I got support from the univer-sity.

BF: It can’t have been easy. Have you had many major bumps on the road?

HJ: It is difficult. I’ve just taken on a technical cofounder so it’s re-

ally nice having a second person in the office now; being on your own is lonely. It has been just me for the last year, but a lot of that time has been working out how to do it, and then we launched in October. Hav-ing something to show meant that it was a lot easier to find another person and convince someone else to come on board. Being on your own is the hardest thing. I’m always thinking of the opportunity cost of what I could be earning elsewhere, when I’m making this sacrifice right now. But other things put it in perspective; my first year of uni-versity I was diagnosed with cancer, and so when you compare it to that it’s not much of a challenge at all. Or at least it makes the risk worth taking.

BF: What do you hope for the future of the business? Where do you want to go?

HJ: So at the moment we just op-erate in Warwick, which is home. But I’d like to branch out into other universities, and start to offer equi-ty crowdfunding, when businesses offer shares in return for an in-vestment. That means we can fund much bigger projects - real techni-cal innovations and research that’s coming out of universities. Those are the kind of directions I’d like to take. And one day America! Amer-ica would be great.

BF: If anyone reading this in-terview has a project which they want to get funded, how do they go about it?

HJ: Send me an email! That’s the first thing. So, go onto crowdfund-campus.com and send me an email - the information is up on there. I suppose before you get to that stage you need to have something you want to do, something you want

to make or create, a business you want to start or an event you want to run. It really could be anything. We’ve got guys trying to send rock-ets into space, we’ve got girls doing documentaries, some people doing a software business, a food delivery business. Some departments in the university are running a project soon as well. Your gran’s birthday party; you could even crowdfund that if you wanted to.

BF: But would that be very suc-cessful? What makes a successful campaign?

HJ: Firstly, a community. So if you’ve got people around you - friends, family - they contribute the first 10-20 percent of any campaign. If they don’t help you out, you’re not going anywhere. The main rea-son people contribute to campaigns is that they want to be part of some-thing, or want to make something happen. If you can instill that feel-ing and inspire others to help you then that’s what’s going to make you successful.

BF: As a Warwick graduate, you’ve experienced what it’s like to leave the Warwick bubble and go into the world of work. What has that been like?

HJ: I haven’t gone too far - I’m still in Westwood! When you’re left to study here, you’re responsible for your study. You’re not spoon fed or helped through. So it’s kind of sink or swim - which does prepare you for the outside world. I don’t think I longed for grad jobs, and there is the tendency for everyone to go and apply for law and accounting, business, finance (everyone wants to go into finance). Breaking that status quo was probably more of a mental barrier because you’re do-ing something which no-one else

is. But once I’d taken that leap it did feel like less of a big deal.

BF: And the university support-ed you?

HJ: Yes, so I went into the War-wick Ventures Software Incubator. They take all the technology and spin it out, licence it to try and make a bit of money for the uni-versity, and they set up this incuba-tor which is for students, staff and alumni with software ideas. They support those ideas, so you can be there from eighteen months to three years and get the professional business support you need.

BF: At this time of the year so many students are worried about grad schemes, applications and ultimately, getting a job. From your perspective, what advice would you give them?

HJ: Do something else. Break the status quo and go and…do a cam-paign on Crowdfund Campus, that will give you all the employability skills you need. I think there is a fear of doing something out of the ordinary - I don’t know how you get through that, but some people are more naturally inclined to do something different. But just be-cause everyone else is applying to Morgan Stanley, doesn’t mean you can’t go off and do something else. If you want to be a CEO, you can learn to be a CEO by being a CEO; you don’t have to climb the greasy corporate ladder.

BF: But nowadays it’s all about experience. And you need experi-ence to get experience…

HJ: But the experience of being a graduate trainee is going to be a lot different to being in middle man-agement, to being at an executive level. So if you surround yourself

(which you have the opportunity to do through things like the software incubator) with mentors who are executives who can train you how to run a company, then there’s noth-ing to say you can’t jump straight to that level, I don’t think.

BM: Your business is founded on the idea that students can have great ideas that can change the world. Do you think that there is an opinion outside of university that students are lazy and drink all the time?

HJ: I don’t think that you could generalise about a whole group like that - that would be obvious. But having had students do work for me as consultants or whatev-er, there are definitely people who have that ‘get up and go’. There’s one guy who I mentioned something to in passing and he came back with a full document giving me all the options, and he was great. So it’s certainly not true that you can gen-eralise like that. Students are great! You can do anything when you’re a student; start anything, give everything a try and there’s no risk.

BF: Lastly, do you remember how much a pint of purple is?

HJ: A pint of purple… was it £2.50?

How many great ideas are first written down on the back of a beer-mat? All of them. Yes. All of them. All ideas start in the pub with some mates and a beermat. Only this time, you could actually win some really great prizes by writing down your idea. Look out for ‘Born from a Beermat’ beermats in the pubs, bars and public areas around cam-pus over the next month and you could win free pizzas, tickets to see Paul Merton, a whole day of busi-ness mentoring on one of Europe’s top Accelerators and other great prizes.

All you have to do is write your idea down and submit it at the bar OR post your idea to http://face-book.com/crowdfundcampus with #BornFromABeermat.

This competition is brought to you by Crowdfund Campus, a crowdfunding platform for Univer-sity of Warwick. See http://crowdfundcampus.com for more information.

Got something big planned? Bethan McGrath shares Henry Jinman’s crowdfunding wisdom with us

theboar.org/features | @BoarFeatures | Features 13

» Capitalism is a corrupt system which inevitably leads to death and poverty. Photo: Henry Jinman

14 theboar.org

Editor: Ellie MayScience@theboar.org

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SCI & TECHEditor: Cayo Sobral

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14

It’s about time you got a smartwatchIs wearable tech the future? Rebecca Myers recounts her on-and-off relationship with technology

My relationship with technolo-gy has, in the past, resembled a shotgun marriage and the slow, painful realisation that, hon-

eymoon period over, you don’t really know each other that well after all.

Quick to lust after iPads; over-keen to jump into contracts with smartphones who break my heart when I break their screens. Realising all-too-soon that I actually don’t know how to “turn it off and on again”. Own-ing an iPad does not a tech geek make.

Content with getting what can only be described as the mere minimum out of the technology in my life, I thought I was happy.

Then I met my Garmin Forerunner 10. It was love at first sight. Slim, slick, sexy. Green. “It can do EVERYTHING!” I gushed to friends, family, complete strangers.

My Forerunner 10, a thinking watch de-signed for – you guessed it – runners, uses GPS to track and map out your run, tracks your pace, distance, calories, and elevation. It is coupled with a slick, easy-to-use online up-loading system which shows you maps, com-pares your stats, introduces you to a network of other Forerunner lovers, and can even train you for marathons.

It would be unjust to say the watch didn’t revolutionise my running. The smart online tracking and training system and the easy

screen gave me incentive to race myself, up my average pace, increase my distances. What’s more, maintenance is minimal. I’ve been on well over 30 runs since we met and I’ve never cleared the memory. I only charge it once around every 10 miles/2 hours of usage and it’s still happy. Two months later, our love is as strong as ever and we go on at least three dates a week.

And yet, like a French-man in a long-distance marriage, infidelity came calling. If this were a mov-ie, and the ferret in Along Came Polly were actually a small smart device made by Motorola, the mov-ie would be called Along Came a Smartwatch, and I would be head over heels.

But it isn’t. Instead, along came a man called Jeremy, and I fell in love with his watch in a way I didn’t know was possible.

Jeremy’s watch is known to techies as the Moto360 – a touchscreen smartwatch re-leased in September 2014, boasting Android Wear technology, speedy search potential, a sexy design, and wireless charging technol-

ogy. The techie reviews are giving it four stars, praising its slick aesthetics and smart initiative. It uses voice control, meaning you can ask it to remind you of things later in the day, just by speaking. It also has a screen

that ‘sleeps’ while you go about your business, saving battery. To light it up and read it, all you have to do is flick your wrist, like you might a jacket sleeve to look at a nor-mal watch. If this doesn’t make you feel like James Bond, I don’t know what will.

Its only down-side appears to be its battery. Battery

is a bit taboo in the world on technological relationships; the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Ap-ple and I have never spoken about the fact that my iPhone barely lasts the 9-5 if used for talking to more than two people or us-ing more than two apps. The tech commu-nity have questioned the battery life of the Moto360, and rightly so. But, realistically, as

long as you charge it every night when you go to sleep – like you would your phone – there are few pitfalls.

Above all, I think I was particularly at-tracted to the Moto360 due to its perceived simplicity. Reading the reviews of the Apple smartwatch, I really failed to get off. While my Forerunner 10 can “DO EVERYTHING”, but within the nice, neat confines of a run-ner’s needs, the Apple Watch seemed to boast to actually be able to do everything EVER.

In practice, critics of the Apple Watch have claimed it offers little that the Moto360 doesn’t offer already. But, from my short, in-teractive session with it, the Motorola smart-watch seemed to me to strip it all back to offer what a watch really should: basic organ-isation, scheduling, help. Essentially: time-keeping at its finest.

As a person who has never worn an ana-logue watch, my love affair with the smart-watch has struck me as strange. But, in my constant efforts to modernise, and in a world where time has never been so valuable, it seems natural that the progressive step is into the world of wearable tech.

It seems the wearable technology of the smartwatch might just be the spicy, exciting,

» The Garmin Forerunner 10. Photo : Rebecca Myers

Falling in love with the SU President Luke Brown reports on his never-ending quest to find love using the latest scientific findings

After my date decided to follow the Leamington-themed relationship advice offered in the last edition of the Boar, I ended up spending

Valentine’s night alone. So I did what all sad, lonely and miserable people do late in the evening, and changed the channel to Chal-lenge. From the sofa of the dirty little lounge of our student house - which makes the dé-cor of your average inner city crack den look like an Ikea showroom personally decorated by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen - I watched endless re-runs of Classic Who Wants to be a Millionaire, with only a four pack of Special Brew and my pathetic sense of self-worth for company.

Things had to change, and luckily I had a plan. Science. And whilst it may not seem like the perfect facilitator of love, it’s really the next logical step, given how popular the use of technology has become in the 21st cen-tury dating game. And since I gave up Tinder for Lent, after a very unfortunate situation involving the complete incompetency of the reception staff at a certain hotel in Rug-by, and a very angry octogenarian singleton called Janet, a change of tact seemed a good idea.

So, the science comes in the form of a study called “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness”, written by world renowned psychologist Dr Arthur Aron. The love doctor basically lists 36 personal questions which you answer with a potential partner, with the shared stories supposedly accelerating feelings of closeness. The ques-tions are divided into three sets, and become increasingly personal as you go on. But that doesn’t seem to have put many people off, and the experiment has become 2015’s ‘must

do’ activity, a bit like the Harlem Shake a cou-ple of years back, only with less hip-thrusting (well initially at least, hur hur).

Most crucial though, is the fact that you need to find someone you’ve never spoken to before for the experiment to really work. I knew this was going to prove tricky, and I quickly abandoned my tactic of asking ran-dom girls on the piazza if they wanted to take part in this adventure of scientific discov-ery because a) it made me look creepier than George Osborne playing the role of the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang whilst softly humming ‘Creep’ by Radiohead to himself and b) I’m rubbish at selling things, es-pecially myself. So I made a plea for a companion on Twit-ter, and luckily Cat Turhan, President of the SU, got in contact to say she was willing to take part.

Is it part of the SU’s con-stitution that the President has to help out any Warwick student with dating problems? Quite possibly. Anyway, I met Cat the next day at a carefully chosen venue that would provide the per-fect romantic atmosphere and best help our kindling love to ignite, an environment that deserved to frame this formative encounter which could well be our first milestone on the way to a shared happy future. Unfortu-nately that place was all booked up, so we settled on The Duck instead.

Cat was really easy to get along with and very cheerful - I think that’s her general per-sonality more than the fact she was meeting me - but the questions are interesting enough that even if you went on a date with someone more awkward than Ed Miliband at a swing-ers party, you’d probably be okay.

The first set weren’t too bad and broached quite general conversational themes, from

our ideal dinner guests (hers was Ste-phen Fry, who I find as boring

as a dinner consisting of only Rich Tea biscuits and water,

but I was trying to fall in love so didn’t complain

too much) to premo-nitions of our own deaths (and Cat said she’s a terrible driv-er and fears it will be in a car crash, so avoid all SU trans-port from here onI say). This first group

was quite funny and revealed that we shared

a fairly similar sense of humour, which is always a

good start. I had hope in my heart, and ‘Believe’ by Cher start-

ed playing in my head.Those first lot of questions also lull you

into a false sense of security though, as the second and third sets were really personal. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and lis-tening to the detailed family history of some-body you’ve only just met feels like quite a privilege, to be honest. And I think it’s this aspect of the experiment, unguardedly re-vealing your personality to another person,

which really fosters the connection; the ques-tions efficiently tease out your real person-ality and opinions, and you can’t help but completely open up. It’s like being on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories only you’re sat opposite somebody you might fall in love with and not a colossal dickhead.

From my experience, though, sometimes it was the really personal questions that op-erated as a bit of a barrier to blossoming love. We both spoke poignantly on several topics and things can get very heavy for first date territory. Plus I think it’s fairly hard to appear cool to a potential gf/bf when describing your relationship with your Mother (question 24).

So despite getting on very well, myself and Cat sadly didn’t fall in love, which was actu-ally a right bummer as I’d already picked out a nice engagement ring for under fifty quid from Argos, and asked the guy who owns Smack how much it would cost to have the reception there. We obviously parted with a variation on the ‘let’s be friends’ line al-though, this time, it actually felt like we both meant it. We’d simply found out so much about one another, whilst having a good laugh too, that it already feels like we’ve been friends for years. Ikr, totes emosh.

And there you are, hard evidence that whilst science may not be able to find you love, it can very much win you a few new friends. Make sure you check back in Week 10, when I’ll be meeting Societies Officer Isaac Leigh to try another scientific theory on how to fall in love, before we watch Titanic together and spoon ourselves to sleep.

» The President and First Gentleman. Photo : Luke Brown

19 theboar.org

R ecently I’ve had a lot of exposure to the strange and mysterious world of particle physics. Like a good student I jumped on the available ‘Intro To

Particle Physics’ module in term two and ac-tually managed to get myself a spot on a trip to CERN – one of the key players in mod-ern particle physics. So what better a time to share with you a little history of the subject and some insight into what these scientists are trying to achieve!

The term ‘atom’ comes from the Greek word atmos which literally translates to ‘in-divisible’. Despite coming up with this use-ful word, the Greeks actually made very lit-tle progress in discovering the structure of matter. In fact, we must skip ahead to 1897 when J.J. Thompson discovered the electron. Through a series of clever experiments with cathode rays he managed to show there ex-isted particles of energy which where 2000 times smaller than anything else known at the time. What followed was a storm of pro-gress: alpha, beta and gamma radiations were all studied, Einstein suggested another radi-cal particle: the light particle or ‘photon’ and then finally in 1911 Rutherford discovered the nucleus, shattering the Greek-inspired indi-visible model of matter.

Once it was clear that atoms could be bro-ken up into these smaller and smaller com-ponents, scientists began to search for ways to see exactly how far they could be broken down. At first much of this kind of research was done looking at cosmic rays which are

produced naturally – such decays allow at least some study into the nature of the fun-damental components of matter, but us phys-

icists need repeatable and on-demand meas-urements and thus the particle accelerator was born.

Generally these colliders fall into two main categories: linear and circular, with most of the current high-energy accelerators being circular. The basics of particle acceleration is actually deceptively simple: using a series

of magnetic and electrical fields, you can steer a beam of interesting particles around your collider and then at the right time and

speed crash them together. The aim of this high-momentum collision is to release the energy contained by the particles and use it to create new massive particles. This transi-tion from energy to mass may seem surpris-ing but it is a logical consequence of Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2.

Apart from the abstract theoretical advan-

tages of building and using such machines, what use do they serve in our everyday lives? After all, particle physics research is notori-ously expensive and requires huge amounts of input from scientists who could theoreti-cally be fixing global warming instead! Par-ticle physics has many promising research benefits – anti-matter in particular is brim-ming with potential in cancer treatments (minimizing cell damage whilst pinpoint-ing cancerous cells) and theoretically as a super-fuel capable of releasing enormous amounts of energy.

So, what does the future hold for particle physics? The current big thing is the study of the Higgs boson which is a particle relat-ed to the process by which other particles gain mass. Its existence was only confirmed experimentally in 2012 and there is great interest in future studies of its properties. There is currently talk of new collider plans to allow physicists to produce higher and higher energy collisions- China is rumoured to be planning an 54-100km collider in the near future, dwarfing CERN’s 27km collider and also a international linear accelerator of length around 30-50km. I suppose only time will tell whether these things are just hearsay or perhaps we could be at the cusp of the next golden age of Particle Physics research.

theboar.org/science-tech | @BoarSciTech | SCI & TECH 15

W eek 7 was the SU’s Go Green Week and, in response to this, Warwick Anti Sexism Society and Warwick Fossil Free col-

laborated to present a talk entitled “Climate Justice: A Feminist Struggle” about the inter-section between ecocide and the patriarchy.

As the talk title may suggest, the impact of climate change on women is particularly notable. In 2014, the UN produced a report which found that “People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institu-tionally or otherwise marginalised are espe-cially vulnerable to climate change” and this was brought into harsh focus by some of the case studies discussed at the WASS meeting. For example, in Bangladesh’s 171 most recent major natural disasters, the death rate among women aged 20-44, was 71 per 1000 com-pared to 15 per 1000 for men. This dispari-ty is attributed to the social expectation that women wait for family members before es-caping to a safer place as well as the fact that far fewer women are taught to swim.

Despite the huge institutional disadvan-tages faced by women all over the world, woman-led action has a huge precedent in the area of climate justice, for example the Chipko movement which started in the ear-

ly 1970s in response to rapid deforestation of many areas of northern India. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, India, acted to prevent the cut-ting of trees and reclaim their traditional for-est rights, which were threatened by the state. The actions of these few brave women have gone onto inspire many similar grassroots ac-tions in the area.

In contrast to the efforts and successes of women in environmental activism, much of the focus of the WASS talk was on the fail-ure of traditional power structures to solve the problems created by climate change. The speakers argued that since capitalism, and the power structures which support it, are re-sponsible for the increased carbon emissions which have characterised the industrial and post-industrial eras, they will never willingly be part of the solution. In the opinion of one

speaker, this link between power relations and the climate struggle means that the only solution to the destruction of our climate is the “dismantling of capitalism as a whole”. The role of science and technology in reduc-ing the effects of climate change were, sadly, entirely ignored; and, when mentioned, were shut down with a hasty “yes but the green en-ergy market is so corrupt anyway”.

This denial of the power of science to aid decarbonisation is, in the opinion of this re-porter, short sighted and ignores the tremen-dous progress made in countries such as Ger-many towards a sustainable energy future. Germany’s Energiewende has had innumer-able successes: perhaps the most significant being their role in making green energy com-petitive in the global energy market through investment and innovation in solar and wind technology. A unique feature of Germany’s Energiewende is the role of grassroots organ-isations such as energy cooperatives. This is important because it reflects an increased re-sponsibility of individuals rather than corpo-rations in energy security. Local ownership of renewables provides great economic payback to investing communities as well as increas-ing energy efficiency and access to renewable energy sources, which together give the poor

a way around higher prices for fossil fuels.Scientists working in industry are also

delivering novel solutions to the problem of carbon emissions. Rather than focusing on decarbonisation, some companies are work-ing on turning the waste carbon dioxide into useful products – a process known as car-bon dioxide utilisation. A German chemical company, BASF, works to capture CO2 from power plants or other waste sources to make polypropylene carbonate which is a plastic that can replace current oil-based plastics in coatings, adhesives, foams and packaging. Another example of effective carbon diox-ide utilisation comes from a Swiss company which uses solar energy to break down car-bon dioxide and water into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which are then turned into jet fuel.

A final scientific effort to reduce the im-pact of our use of fossil fuels is the controver-sial technology of carbon capture and storage (CCS). According to Carbon Capture and Storage Association, CSS “captures CO2 from the burning of coal and gas for power gener-ation… the carbon dioxide is then transport-ed…for safe and permanent underground storage, preventing it from entering the at-mosphere and contributing to anthropogenic climate change.”. If this can be made efficient and safe through further research, it could produce negative carbon emissions and aid our transition from fossil to renewable fuels.

Obviously this matter remains up for de-bate (and my thanks go to WASS and War-wick Fossil Free for bringing it to my at-tention) but, more importantly, this matter requires direct action by us as students and consumers so I encourage you to get involved and check out the work of these two impor-tant student societies.

Climate change: A feminist struggle?Selina-Jane Spencer considers the roles of women and scientists in the climate struggle

The secret world of particle physicsStephen Williams presents an insight into 2500 years of particle physics research.

» A Higgs boson is produced from the collision of two protons. Photo: CERN

“People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or otherwise marginalised are especially vulnerable to climate change”

How do you think science can impact climate change?

Tweet: @BoarSciTech

» Photo : Niekverlaan / Pixabay

Is particle physics worth the investment?

Tweet: @BoarSciTech

14 theboar.org

16 LIFESTYLEEditor: Bethan McGrath

Lifestyle@theboar.org Twitter @BoarLifestyle

fb.com/groups/BoarLifestyle

Save vs

Splurge

Self tanner

Whether we like to ad-mit it or not, many of us girls use fake tan every now and

again. In these winter months it’s common to feel pale and exhausted - something an application of self-tan can quickly fix by giving you a healthy glow. The question is; save or splurge?

SaveSt. Moriz Instant Self

Tanning Mousse: £4.99 Down the other end of the price

spectrum, the cheap and cheerful St. Moriz is a great alternative when you are strapped for cash. It is avail-able in two shades, medium and dark, with the dark being particu-larly prominent so I would suggest no more than one layer. This tan takes longer to dry, so make sure you no longer feel sticky or tacky before wearing clothes again. Like St. Tropez, the mousse is best ap-plied at night and washed off in the morning for the most even results. If perfection is not what you’re in-terested in but desire something merely to brighten up your dull complexion in the winter months, then perhaps opt to try St. Moriz for a confidence boost.

SplurgeSt.Tropez Self Tan

Bronzing Mousse: £30.50This fake tan provides a gorgeous

glow after just one application. It is easy to apply with a fake tan mitt and you are not left haunted with embarrassing streaks. The colour is not too overpowering so there is no worry about being labelled as ‘orange’, and after a few washes the tan naturally wears off without the need to scrub. As a student this may seem like a bank-breaker but it is well worth it for a special occasion, and the bottle lasts a surprisingly long time. If you aren’t the best at applying fake tan then this is the one for you, so spend a few extra pennies to avoid a self-tan disaster!

WinnerSt.Tropez Self Tan Bronzing Mousse

In my critique of my fellow stu-dents’ behaviour in the library I do not intend to attack the staff who work at the library,

who I know are hardworking yet mostly powerless when it comes to the cruel misbehaviours of some of the student body. I asked a wide spectrum of students about their opinions on library misbehaviour; thus the complaints herein en-capsulate the views of a fairly pro-portional spectrum of the student community. There are three themes that appeared to summarise peo-ple’s complaints about lib-iquette (a self-invented word, but I look forward to its entry into the Oxford dictionary): food, noise and desks.

I will begin by discussing the problems of food in the library; I confess I am guilty of a few of the following complaints, as food helps me to study and I love carrots… accept my heartfelt apologies if you are reading this and hating me

from afar. As the lift lady pleasantly reminds us every time we arrive at our destination, floors three to five are for bottled water only; howev-er some particularly hardened re-bels flout these rules to the disgust of their fellow students. A second year maths student despaired par-ticularly at the fact that some an-archic rule-breakers tend to eat strong smelling food in the library; pickled onion-flavoured Monster Munch was an especially offensive stench. As remarked before, I con-fess that I do eat in the library, but in light of the atrocities of which I am about to tell you, I consider my consumption of carrots merely a small misdemeanour.

I shall now review noise as a whole. A fourth-year Sociology stu-dent angrily stated that shockingly, floor two is sometimes used as a rowdy social area which is a huge irritation for those of us wishing to partake in more quiet activities.

Worse is the existence of any social interaction whatsoever on floors three to five. Loud and frankly ob-noxious, whispering is not subtle guys, and the abomination that is people talking loudly by the lifts is infuriating. I don’t know if people think that the lift area is somehow a magical vacuum of sound, or if they forget themselves in the excitement of leaving the library, but this des-picable behaviour must be stopped immediately.

Finally, I shall conclude with a grief-stricken report on what I con-sider to be the most shocking breach of lib-iquette: who would have thought that there were so many ways that one could cause anguish with a desk? From the wise lips of a Mechanical Engineering student comes the protest against people using laptops on desks with com-puters on them; this selfish affront must be stopped now. The ultimate evil which causes my heart to break

into a million pieces is when peo-ple leave their personal belongings on a desk to go to lectures/lunch/the pub/deep sea diving for hours. A desk is not a storage area for your stuff; I am tempted to start a busi-ness where I collect left-behind lap-tops and sell them on eBay, which I am sure will earn me more money than my part-time job (this is just a joke, please do not call the police). All in all, desk atrocities are unfor-givable, and, like noise barbarity, should be punished by expulsion… or worse.

I hope that this critique enlight-ens you ne’er-do-wells who are guilty of these crimes to the pain that your fellow students are feel-ing; the library should be an oasis away from the everyday struggles we go through at university, and you are blighting it with your disre-gard for lib-iquette. Thank you.

A critique of library etiquette Alice Cornelius examines the annoyances of library users at an academic level

Like most single girls on Val-entine’s Day, I went to go and see the steamily antici-pated, erotic S&M bestseller

adaptation, Fifty Shades of Grey. Whilst seeing Jamie Dornan get his kit off was definitely a key reason for going to see the film, I eagerly awaited how the film would portray the controversial subjects of BDSM, sexual violence, and the manipula-tion of women.

Unfortunately, the film does not focus on the kink that everyone was hoping for but rather on masculine control and power. There is a piti-ful amount of sex compared to the focus on Grey’s attempts to coerce Ana into sex – showing emotional abuse as something seductive. To be quite frank there is more action in Pop! on a Wednesday than in this film… and despite the fact the film’s author, screenwriter and di-rector are all women, the film does little to break down the portrayal of women as sexual objects and sub-missive to men.

Unsurprisingly, Durex was the first advert that flashed onto the screen before the film started - this, coupled with the opening image of Anastasia riding a lift to Christian’s office at the top of a penis – sorry, building – straightaway set the tone for a film full of not only phallic images but male domination.

The majority of the story is Grey preying on Anastasia and harass-ing her to agree to his contract, in which she – ‘the Submissive’ – must consent to his supremacy, not the sex itself. Disappointingly, Dornan was not the sexy businessman I had hoped for, but a creepy stalker – turning up randomly at Ana’s work place and at a club where Ana is on a night out with her friends.

The depiction of BDSM takes full force in Christian’s red room – filled with rack upon rack of high-end paddles, restraining cuffs and bullwhips to torture the female ‘Submissive’. The room epitomises the extent to which Fifty Shades of Grey emphasises masculine sexu-

al violence and dominance over a weak and subservient women. The image of Anastasia weeping as she is aggressively whipped six times by Grey could be one of the most mi-sogynistic and troubling film clips of the 21st century.

Whilst critics have been quick to slate the film as completely sexist and as glamorising rape culture, I would argue that Anastasia does ac-tually have control over her ‘activi-ties’ with Grey and has the agency to stop whenever she desires. Ana-stasia is no walkover (especially at the end) and in contrast to the book I found that Johnson made Anasta-sia a more intriguing character (as opposed to the quivering mess we find in the book). Most notably in the boardroom meeting, Ana does appear to be in control, and we’re given a brief glimpse of female em-powerment. As she works carefully through the contract from Chris-tian she says: “Find anal fisting, strike it out.” Quite the negotiation I feel. Yet the audience still leaves

with the central message – that it is okay for men to control and ma-nipulate women. I don’t feel that it goes quite as far as promoting rape culture - Ana does consent - but nevertheless, it glamorises male domination.

The fact some women watch-ing Fifty Shades of Grey may in fact be seduced by the romantic depiction of spousal exploitation is to some even extent endanger-ing for women. If women begin to aim for relationships like Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele’s they may find themselves in something which they do not recognise as an abusive relationships, whether it is or not. Through displaying such a controlling relationship in such a romanticised way, the film glorifies abuse in relationships and makes it appear something desirable, seduc-tive and mysterious.

All I can say is what a way to spend Valentines Day – watching a naked woman weep as she is tor-tured by a morose billionaire.

Fifty Shades of (Morally) GreyFeeling kinky? Lucy Jones tells us why Fifty Shades will get you hot under the collar for all the wrong reasons

» Photo: Dineshraj Goomany/ Flickr, OpenPics / Pixabay

15 theboar.orgtheboar.org/Lifestyle | @BoarLifestyle | LIFESTYLE 17

So the other night my part-ner went out to have drinks with a guy she’s sleeping with. She came home just

after midnight and I was still writ-ing an essay. When I think about it like this it seems the most normal thing in the world; the person I love has close friends who she loves to spend time with and I want the per-son I love to be happy. More than that, I want the person I love to do whatever he/she/they wants, rather than acting on some mystical idea of what they think I want, which in my experience has been a dark de-cent into the circular cutesy-voiced demand ‘what do you want to do?’ to which the only reply is ‘whatever you want to do!’ I’m sure we’ve all had that problem, I’m envisaging it tonight over the dinner conversa-tion, five seconds before I rant like I probably will here.

So I’m what some like to call ‘polyamorous’, meaning that I have many lovers. To burst your bub-ble straight away though I’m only sleeping with one person at the moment and that’s the woman I love. But already I think this is a too restricted view of what love is. I could say I love my mother with completely different connotations, that I love my best friend for an-other set of reasons. I think we need this kind of expanded idea of relationships. We’re constantly in a network of relationships that define and help us change into new peo-ple; my relationship with my class-mates can get stronger or weaker just the same as with my current

lover. When we fight I feel like she doesn’t know me at all but when words flow between us without a second thought I couldn’t doubt that I love her and she loves me. It’s from these kinds of experiences of varying relationships (some with-out sex, some with) that I’ve come to think of love not just as a way of feeling toward someone but more like a fragile connection; a moment where you doubt nothing and the world seems overflowing with pos-sibilities.

Polyamory to me stems from this desire to make as many con-nections as possible, and not limit any other person’s desire because of some desire for me to have them all to myself. I often think this comes from the desire to be needed by an-other, because, in all seriousness, the world at the moment is an un-forgiving shithole where it looks like no one gives a shit about any-thing you give a shit about. What I’m searching for, and have been for a while now, are relationships that aren’t shelter from the storm with whoever comes along first, but are real moments of delirium. Being needed seems to some like a natural human desire for compan-ionship, to which I partially agree, but what I think is most depress-ing is the things we suffer through in relationships in the name of love – we think we know what our partner needs and try our hard-est to become that, all so we can say that we’re loved. Then we hide things because of that little bit of fear that says, “What if they think

that’s stupid?” which breaks in and threatens us with the uncertainty of a breakup.

I’m sure many of you have seen bad breakups, either of families or friends. Things quickly turn from love to spite and hate because all of the things that were kept back final-ly come to the surface. I’ve avoided this practice because can I see that, while yes, I don’t share everything with the person I love, so what? She doesn’t care about every sin-gle thought I have and if she did I’d assume she was listening because she thought she should listen, and that’s when images of depressed 1950’s housewives pop into my mind. And I have other people in my life, whose company I enjoy for different reasons. Because of this, the issue of jealousy is less and less something I deal with. I remember when I was 16 my girlfriend was the quirky beautiful one who attracted all kinds of male attention and I couldn’t stand it, now I feel happy for my lover when she’s off flirting and exploring the world.

So you’re probably asking how this even differs from anyone else’s ‘regular’ life? Well it does and it doesn’t. Maybe the only difference at the end of the day is the sex. But in my everyday life it feels different; I’m much more open (on a good day) to new experiences with new people but (on a bad day) I’m just the same old blubbering lost fool we’ve all been.

Andrew Russell shares his unconventional view on relationships

I kept seeing the same image pop up on Instagram – an older lady with porcelain skin wearing big black sunglasses.

Originally thinking it was some forward-thinking artistic shot, I looked past it, but soon realised it must be of some importance. Upon spotting the classy, bold letters of Céline I was pleasantly surprised; it’s about time age should be cele-brated, and with an aging popu-lation it was inevitable sooner or later. The image of the 80-year-old literary legend Joan Didion, shot by Jeurgen Teller, embodies every theme of the new season; under-stated clothing and effortless style, timelessly classic.

So it’s only fitting that a wom-en with such a successful career has been chosen, as we all know by now that it is brains not beau-ty that gets you far. The image has been heralded as one which can “fix the internet”, with its empha-sis on class, which can finally turn everyone’s eyes away from a certain reality star’s magazine cover. Luck-ily, the French fashion house is not the only one to bring the glamour of old-Hollywood back in front of the lens; Dolce and Gabbana have featured older models in their cam-paigns for several past seasons. It seems fashion is not the only facet interested in celebrating wrinkles - even beauty brands are now keen, with the 64-year-old actress Jessica Lange welcomed as the new face of Marc Jacobs Beauty. I’m sure any make-up obsessive will know that the gorgeous Julia Roberts has been the face of Lancôme for years; and

at 47-years-old the campaigns look better and better, emphasising her graceful aging.

Even someone as highly respect-ed as Dame Helen Mirren has been featured in recent L’Oréal images, proudly showcasing her looks at 69-years-old, looking healthy and fresh. On being the new L’Oréal

UK ambassador she says, “I am not gorgeous, I never was, but I was always OK-looking and I’m keen to stay that way. I hope I can in-spire other women towards greater confidence by making the most of their natural good looks. We are all worth it!” And she is right. These women are all from a generation of independent, ambitious and strong women, and they are happy to be photographed in their older years. They relate to the demographic of the products they are advertising – 40-years-old and above - so why not let women in the spotlight en-courage others to celebrate their age? After all, it’s better to be time-less than seasonal.

Polyamory 101

Ageless beautySophie Shaw celebrates Joan Didion as the new face of Céline

“These women are all from a generation of

independent, ambitious and strong women”

Do you have an opinion on food, fashion, beauty, relationships, health or how to live life? Do you want to have your work read all over campus, and featured on a website which garners over 30,000 hits per month? Write for the Lifestyle section to get your opinions heard, share your stories or give advice. You never know who might be

reading…Join the Facebook group ‘Boar Lifestyle Team’ or email lifestyle@theboar.org for more information and to get

involved.

» Photo: Vincent Anderlucci / Flickr, @leanneswardrobe / Twitter

What do you think of Joan? Tweet us

@BoarLifestyle

30 theboar.org

ARTSEditor: Cath LyonArts@theboar.org

Twitter @BoarArtsfb.com/groups/BoarArts

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18

Freshfest 2015: the all-you-can see Student writers and directors present their own work for fellow students to

Freshfest is back! And it is bigger than ever with 11 plays to whet your appetite; the largest number of student-written

plays to be performed at the festival. All of the pieces have been cast, assigned a director and will be performed throughout Week 8 in various locations around campus.

Freshfest is the biggest platform for student writers from all walks of life to exhibit their plays in front of their peers. And with eve-rything from fast food, to Hitler, to “Martian tragicomedy”, this year promises to be full of quirky, funny as well as some deeper, darker moments. Boar Arts has provided a compre-hensive guide of what to expect, told by the writers themselves. So, without further ado, here is what to expect from Freshfest 2015.

How to (Politely) Dispose of One’s Mother - Writer: Jake Benson. Director: Rashmi Perera

Boar Arts: Describe your own play in three words. Jake Benson: Dark. Debauchery. Aristocrats.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playJB: A series of chaotic (and comical) events throw the Mockersby family into upheaval, leading to the logical conclusion that a par-ticularly evil mother...has to go. Immediately.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?JB: Two things really: Python-esque humour along with farce and just wanting to put on a play at Warwick that didn’t have a subtext. Just purely for entertainment. What’s wrong with laughing?BA: How is your writer/director relationship?JB: Rashmi Perera, the director, and I have an incredible understanding. From the off, we were on the same page. It’s incredible to see her and the cast’s work bringing the story to life!BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? JB: Just watching a story I’d worked on for a little while work its way to an actual perfor-mance. It’s been a fantastic honour to work with the cast & crew involved. They’re all he-roes in my book!

Three Monkeys - Collaborators: Billy Barrett, Grace Holme and Ellice Stevens

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Billy Barrett: UKIP. Lambchop. RubbleBA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playBB: Three writer/directors respond to the maxim “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” with three very different dramatic frag-

ments, performed by three talented perform-ers.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?BB: See above! We’ve wanted to work to-gether for a while, and thought this offered a compelling challenge for each of us as writ-ers.BA: How is your writer/director relationship? BB: We are each directing our own fragment, so we’ve had a combination of individual re-hearsals with our cast to work on our own sections and group rehearsals where we ex-plore the connecting themes and strengthen the cast’s bond as an ensemble.BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? BB: Collaborating together and getting to know three new performers and how they like to work! We recently had a cast and crea-tive team meal at the Duck where we remi-nisced about Freshfest plays gone by and felt very old.

The Quickening - Writer: Paddy Roberts. Di-rector: Elysha Cookson

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Paddy Roberts: Family. Death. Resurrection.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the play.PR: After the tragic loss of his daughter, a fa-ther hires someone to do the impossible and bring her back to life. But if you could wake the dead, would they really be alive?BA:What was the inspiration for your play?PR: Well, I wrote the play because I had noth-ing else going on. In that sense, I guess bore-dom was the main inspiration. That being said, there’s a sequence of poems called “Food for Risen Bodies” by Michael Symmons Rob-erts that prompted a few of my ideas.BA: How is your writer/director relationship?

PR: Fraught with tension. No, Elysha and I have a good understanding and, from my point of view, it’s a pleasure to see her work-ing with the actors and giving honest thought to the play, as she always does. BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? PR: To narrow it down to one thing is very difficult, so I’m going to cheat and say it’s the process of production. So that’s working with the director, casting, cutting and watching re-hearsals. It’s all been awesome.

The Hitman’s Ghost - Writer: Reece Goodall. Director: Jackie Coleman

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Reece Goodall: Funny Agatha Christie.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playRG: A police officer is invited to a family get-together, and the bitchy matriach finds herself in the unofortunate position of being killed by a dead guy in a locked room. Antics ensue.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?RG: All the classic crime shows.BA: How is your writer/director relationship?RG: It’s been nice - they’re lovely people, and they’re doing a brillant job.BA:What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? RG: The chance to see something I dreamt up on the stage is incredible, and I’m really look-ing forward to it.

Northbound Service to Belfast - Writer: Kate Mant. Director: Greg Layhe.

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Kate Mant: Irish, Pregnancy, RelationshipsBA: Give us a brief synopsis of the play

KM: The play revolves around the central character, Maura, who is struggling to come to terms with an unwanted pregnancy. The play is set on a train travelling across Ireland as Maura meets a colourful group of char-acters, eager to give her advice and guid-ance, whilst the narrative offers flashbacks to Maura’s life before and leading up to her pregnancy. This is an incredibly humorous, moving and thought-provoking play, that will make the audience question their own morals and beliefs, as they ride with Maura on the Northbound Service to Belfast.BA: How is your writer/director relationship?KM: Fantastic! We worked closely during auditions to find the right cast, and I get to come in and watch runs of the show and give advice.BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? KM:The opportunity to work with a talented cast of Freshers that I haven’t worked with before!

Dickens Vs. Hitler - Writer: Emma Carey. Director: George Davy and Freya Jeffries

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Emma Carey: Not historically accurate.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playEC: Dickens Vs. Hitler is a comedy play in which we see the lives of six people in a “Pathological Liars” retreat unravel in front of us. We endeavor to discover what is true, what is a lie, but ultimately, if it even matters.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?EC: The inspiration for the play came from a mixture of things. One was simply knowing people who told the most extraordinary lies and from questioning their motivation to lie. This also led me to wonder if it is always the

» There are eleven productions in this year’s Freshfest. Images: Freshblood Theatre

» Freshfest 2015. Image: Freshblood Theatre

30 theboar.orgEditor: Cath LyonArts@theboar.org

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19

So in last edition’s Arts Column, some-one called modern art a load of old rubbish. This caused me to LOSE MY SHIT. Fortunately, the pen is mightier

than the sword and all that, so here follows a kind of Culture Show/ WorldStarHipHop hybrid, all in less than 400 words.

And hey, can I start by saying that, whilst I politely disagree about modern art, we can all agree instead that the modern world is pretty terrible instead, right? What with its stinking rich 1%, and those bastard politicians with their second homes and expenses, and all that confusing television news full of nasty world events that we don’t really understand anymore.

Yeah, our modern world is scary and crap. And it’s this, in my opinion, which neces-sitates the need for a ‘modern’ kind of art, something that challenges and provokes and invites us to question both the nature of art, but also the world in which it is being pro-duced.

Last column, the British artist Tris Vonna-Michell was offered as an example of the fail-ings of modern art, and described as “par-ticularly terrible”. Which is totally fine, this is a safe space and we’re all entitled to our opinions. But personally I think he’s a really cool guy and his Finding Chopin: Dans l’Essex exhibition in my eyes demonstrates perfectly how modern art interrogates our under-standing of the modern world.

The video clips he narrates over aren’t ground-breaking in isolation, true, but it’s his verbal performance that steals the show. Imagine James Joyce laying down some bars with Sleaford Mods and you’ve kind of got the idea. It’s an incredible performance that engages with questions of identity and be-longing in the twenty-first century, and was described by the Telegraph’s art critic as “a self- portrait of a kind that I don’t believe has ever been exhibited in an art gallery before”.

And to be honest, I could just list off why some other vaguely conceptual artists are half decent, too, but that’s not the point. The point is that modern art draws reaction and debate and gets people- whether they’re aware their doing it or not- vaguely thinking about what this artwork is saying to them, and why it needs to be said.

So the old masters are great and all, but it would be both blinkered and dumb to only focus our attention on them. Our malignant modern world requires modern art more than ever.

Luke Brown

Arts Column Modern world = bad,Modern art = good.

Join in the discussion online and check out all the latest

goings on.Follow: @BoarArts

truth that ‘sets you free’ as we are so often told, or whether in fact a falsity here and there can actually benefit us in some way. Finally, I would say The Breakfast Club was been hugely influential on the play- it is a great sentiment on the human character.BA How is your writer/ director relationship?EC: They are both amazing in their different ways and I have loved what they have turned my words into. Although there has been the occasional line I have had to let go I know it has been for a greater good. BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? EC: I think my favourite thing about the pro-cess has been meeting the awesome cast and crew and just seeing something that has been in my head for so long become a reality. That is something truly special.

Dust - Writer: Sam Thorogood. Director: Stella Von Kussell.

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Sam Thorogood: Absurdist Martian tragi-comedy.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playST: Facing a solar energy-inhibiting dust storm, the crew of Mars Base One must come to terms with the potential enactment of ‘Protocol Zero’ as well as deciding what they miss more: chocolate or cheese.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?ST: Mars One; a Dutch entrepreneur called Bas Lansdorp aims to have established a per-manent human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. I guess this play is my own weird re-sponse to what it might be like to be the very first explorers on another planet, hemmed in day in and day out with the same group of people.BA: How is your writer/director relationship?ST: Really great. Stella is so on it with direct-ing. I know the play’s in very safe hands.BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? ST: As a first-time playwright, the slightly alien experience of letting this little thing I wrote be brought to completion by an amaz-ing cast and crew.

Fast Food Olympics - Writer: Megan Long. Directors: Alice Brazil-Burns and Amera Mitchell

BA: Describe your own play in three words. Megan Long: Straws. Ketchup. Gherkins.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the play.

ML: Four finalists will fight for the crown - McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and Subway compete in the ultimate battle.BA: What was the inspiration for your play? ML: In my home town, there’s a McDonalds and a Subway literally set up across the road from each other. I saw one worker from each out for a fag one lunchtime, and the Subway worker gave the McDonalds one the finger. It kind of evolved from there...BA: How is your writer/director relationship? ML: It’s pretty fabulous, someone always re-members to bring cake!BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? ML: The lack of boundaries - being able to make something so completely random just because we want to!

Remember the Hurricanes - Writer: Oscar Owen. Director: Max Kennedy.

Boar Arts: Describe your own play in three words. Oscar Owen: Death. Dating. Divorce.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playOO: A brother and sister are invited to lunch by their mother. A perfect family scenario except Patrick’s struggling to date, Helen’s go-ing through a divorce, and neither of them like their mother. As they clash over starters, mains and an awful lot of wine, we get a sense of three broken people just trying to muddle through it all.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?OO: Originally, it started as an exploration of the American family drama as a genre, but then it sort of evolved and took on a differ-ent life. Mostly I wanted to write about fami-lies, relationships, and mucking through the messy stuff we all have to deal with.BA: How is your writer/ director relationship?OO: I’ve mostly left Max to it with everything. There were some notes I gave before casting about the play, and how I felt stuff should be done, but otherwise I’ve trusted him to direct it himself and am excited to see the results. Occasionally Max has asked me a question about what something means and I’ve always offered my opinion but left it very open. I just really trust Max with it which is awesome.BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? OO: I’m finding it thrilling to create this mad old thing and then just give it over to other brilliant people and see what they do with it. No longer having control over my own writ-ing has been completely thrilling.

Amnion - Writer: Ollie Higgins. Director: Peter O’Brien.

Boar Arts: Describe your own play in three words. Ollie Higgins: Birth. Cinema. Death.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playOO: A boy finds a mysterious birth mark on his body, and tries desperately to find its ori-gin whilst concealing it from his friends.BA: What was the inspiration for your play?OO: Terrible old sci fi movies.BA: How is your writer/director relationship?OO: Very, very erotic! BA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? OO: How erotic our relationship is (very)!

Overtime - Writer: Sam Kirby

Boar Arts: Describe your own play in three words. Sam Kirby: Office. Murder. Banter.BA: Give us a brief synopsis of the playSK: Overtime is like a slasher whodunnit set in the aftermath of a messy office party, where the workers are picked off one by one. Could you cope if you were very hungover and people were being killed?BA: What was the inspiration for your play?SK: Slasher films e.g. ScreamBA: How is your writer/ director relationship?SK: HealthyBA: What are you enjoying most about the FreshFest process? SK: It’s been great

enjoy - Boar Arts provides a comprehensive guidefabulous guide

» Image: Freshblood Theatre

26 theboar.org

The world of music doesn’t know what it wants. Many are joining a rising debate as to whether young bands are increasingly asked to play head-

line arena gigs before their time; in the un-dertones, concern continues to grow towards festival headliners progressively becoming groups of old men trying to relive their youth. The contradiction is clear – newer bands be-ing are encouraged to rise up to the challenge of leading a festival, but also frowned upon if they seem as though they aren’t ready to play arenas when offered the chance. I mean, what’s so different between a festival and a gig anyway?

Despite attracting throngs of excited fans to almost all of their festival performances, it still came somewhat as a surprise that Alt-J were to headline the O2 Arena in London at the end of January this year. Rapidly selling out Alexandra Palace before the release of their sophomore album, This Is All Yours, last September, the hype that surrounded these triangle-lovers seemed to have fizzled out; whether due to disappointment from their change in direction on TIAY, or because they only played seven UK dates to celebrate its release, attention turned elsewhere. Nev-ertheless, they did still manage to sell out the O2, albeit slowly, so who’s to say they’re not worthy of playing there if they have enough fans to fill the space?

A similar thing occurred with The Vac-cines in May 2013; having released their sec-ond album and pulled in fairly large crowds at Reading and other festivals the previous year, they then seemed to just drop from existence after their O2 performance in or-der to work on their upcoming third album, English Graffiti, which is out later this year. Likewise, Two Door Cinema Club seemed to

do the same after headlining the O2 in De-cember 2013. All three bands received raving reviews for their sold-out shows at the North Greenwich venue, but perhaps it’s a long-standing curse that they all appeared to reach similar peaks in their careers there before suddenly disappearing into the shadows for some time afterwards.

What is it that makes a band ready for their own arena tour, though? Obviously, some bands get their first taste of the thrill that such a large crowd brings by supporting others at these venues. However, those fans don’t really belong to them, so the experience can’t be too much like playing to hordes of their own clan. Does it relate to where such a band would be likely to lie on the most popu-lar festival bills? Perhaps not.

Recently branded as too “boring” to head-line Isle of Wight Festival, Ed Sheeran’s re-sponse, just a month later, was to announce a headline gig at Wembley Stadium. With popular demand having forced this event to multiply into a string of three dates, dis-approval began to bubble under the surface, before suddenly being released by Noel Gal-lagher proclaiming that he couldn’t live in a world where such a thing was possible. With these three shows, Sheeran will be perform-ing for 240,000 punters (including Gallagh-er’s daughter, reportedly armed with a list of people to insult) – just under three times the number he’d have played to at Isle of Wight, should every festival-goer have seen his set. So, if the demand’s there for him to play to such large crowds, why shouldn’t he?

Perhaps this controversy of bands rising up to play larger shows comes in part from the selfishness of their fans. Despite the pride felt for the success of your favourites, you lose the all-important intimacy; with the band so far away, you almost need binoculars to see

them – even when you’re standing at the bar-rier. Arena gigs are also far more expensive than their small-capacity younger siblings, despite the sound quality only being to the same in very few areas in the crowd.

An important thing to note, however, is that arenas can greatly vary in the size of their capacity; to some, Alexandra Palace is considered an arena with a capacity of 7,300 – the same category as Birmingham’s LG Arena, which is over twice its size and pro-vides an entirely different experience. Per-sonally, I consider venues like Ally Pally as bridging the gap for bands preparing to reach the dizzying heights of true arenas and, God forbid, festival headline slots after the relative comfort of sweaty O2 Academy shows. Plus, at least at these ‘mini-arenas’ there isn’t the cluster of onlookers sitting awkwardly in the seats up in the rafters, unsure if it’s acceptable for them to be looking like they’re having a good time.

So, should younger bands be headlining such large arenas? Well, if they’re able to pack out the venue with swathes of fans who will, on the most part, enjoy that band’s perfor-mance no matter where they’re playing, then why not? The truth is that there’s no harm in these bands stepping into the limelight; we really should be proud of their ambition and bravery in revealing themselves to so many people at one time, competing against the traditional arena bands of old, and living the rock star dream.

MUSICEditor: Sam Evans

Music@theboar.org Twitter @BoarMusic

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» Alex Trimble of Two Door Cinema Club; last seen at the O2 in May 2013: have you seen this rockstar? Photo: partywounds / Flickr

They grow up so fast...Jess Mason looks at the trend of bands booking huge venues early in their career

Niall Johnson was lucky enough to meet Hudson Taylor last week. Here’s how it went...

On a surprisingly warm Sunday night in February, my friend Nick and I were given the privilege by RaW of meeting Alfie and Harry

Hudson-Taylor backstage at the Institute, before the Birmingham leg of their ‘Singing for Strangers’ album tour. Although having not yet released an album in the UK, Hudson Taylor’s following is impressive, gaining pop-ularity largely through social media, YouTube and Spotify. From the very start of the inter-view an air of Irish geniality filled the room, as they described how thankful they were to their fans and for their dedication to fol-low their music, even knowing the words to unreleased songs. Harry commented on the difficulties of being able to keep songs under wraps because of the huge influence of social media but you got the feeling that neither of them really minded but were more than hap-

py for their music to be heard far and wide. This friendliness translated on to the

stage, in what was a night full of Irish acts of slightly differing genres. Josh Murray opened proceedings with a stripped back set which consisted of just himself, his guitar and a mi-crophone. His thirty minutes of stage time were largely filled by his own songs critiquing society and the music industry, his thick Irish accent and mumbling voice between songs hinted at a degree of nervousness at playing to a packed house in the Library Room of the institute. His voice had a rugged, soulful edge to it, and visually he resembled a hidden gem, there is no doubt he has potential but his un-easiness on stage was clear to see. He left the stage in a low key, unsuspecting fashion at the end of his short set, although that wasn’t the

last we would see of him. The Institute, as a location for gigs, felt

perfect for the evening’s music. The audience were so close to the artists that you felt you could really make a connection with them. It had the feel of a large pub and this was helped by the audience demographic being particu-larly mixed, a range of young and old coming together to see one band is not often seen on such a stage. The room itself was packed, with the audience standing up the staircases on ei-ther side of the sound desk, in an attempt to get a better view.

Perhaps this controversy of bands rising up to play larger shows comes in part from the selfishness of their fans

Those fans don’t really belong to them, so the experience can’t be too much like playing to hordes of their own clan

They all appeared to reach similar peaks in their careers before suddenly disappearing into the shadows for some time afterwards

Think you’ve got what it takes to write 600 words on

anything music-related?Tell us on Facebook

Husdon TaylorLive at the Insititute

Part 1

His voice had a rugged, soulful edge to it, and visually he resembled a hidden gem

26 theboar.org

Second on the billing were brother and sister duo Southern, who weren’t to be the only sibling double act of the evening going by their family name.

Nonetheless, what they did bring which was unique to the evening was a deep, bluesy sound, generated predominantly by Thom Southern’s electric guitar. Stage presence also wasn’t a problem as both Thom and Lucy moved comfortably around the stage, with a tinge of youthful excitement which endeared the audience to the relatively new kids on the block. Forming in 2012, the band already have a fine collection of songs. Notable high-lights from the night included ‘Cool Kid’ and ‘World Don’t Shine’, both of which included wonderfully orchestrated vocal harmonies; Lucy understatedly supporting Thom’s lead vocals.

It was obvious, though, that for the major-ity of the audience, due to the hysteria caused by even the mention of their name, that Hud-son Taylor were why people had turned up – which for them was a lovely feeling. Before the show, they described how they had sup-ported a number of acts, including Kodaline and Jake Bugg, which meant that they often only had thirty minutes to play their sets to audiences who hadn’t specifically come to see them. But on their very own tour, the tables had turned, and their freedom to play what-ever they wanted for however long they want-ed to was exercised. The performance which followed was thoroughly enjoyable, and they exhibited a great rapport with the audience. A few songs into the gig, an audience member screamed ‘Battles’, arguably their most icon-ic song, to which Harry replied coolly, “Not yet my dear, we don’t want to peak too early now”. This closeness to the audience was rep-licated half way through the show when the support band left and Alfie and Harry came to the front of the stage and played without microphones, as if they were busking. The product was a beautifully soulful song, with interlinking and spot on harmonies that went to reveal the boys’ true musical talent.

My personal highlight of the night was their song ‘Just a Thought’ being followed seamlessly by AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’, which was thoroughly enjoyable, and one of the bands that has influenced Hudson Taylor most; as revealed when the duo travelled to Curiositiea last year. ‘Care’ was also brilliant-ly executed, along with ‘Beautiful Mistake’ and ‘Open Up’, which contrasted as slower but lyrically poignant tracks. I felt they were an absolutely brilliant live band, arguably better on stage than in the recording studio, and I would thoroughly recommend seeing them in the near future.

theboar.org/Music | @BoarMusic | MUSIC 21

A fine sweep for The Mindsweep

For a band from the rather gentile St. Albans, Hertfordshire, whose name at first glance appears to encourage you to engage the beloved Columbi-

an pop-star Shakira in coitus, Enter Shikari have come a long way. The genre-defying four-piece put out their fourth album, The Mindsweep (which refers to “those in power withholding or discrediting new ideas”) last month, and performed a celebratory, album launch show at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, the night before its release. I was there, and I’m about to tell you it was bloody excellent.

The performance began as the album does, with ‘The Appeal and The Mindsweep I’. It’s a spoken word, crescendo of a track, culminat-ing in the angry proclamation “this fight is for humankind”; and wouldn’t you believe it. As the song ascends into euphoric trance, fol-lowed by angry screams (“I am a mindsweep-er! Focus on me!”) and thrashing guitar, the crowd descends into a seething pit of flailing limbs and floundering, primal body contor-tions. This chaotic slice of charging anarchy Enter Shikari offer up means the audience is very much at one with, and a part of, the per-formance. Mosh-pitting, crowd-surfing, and the construction of fleeting human pyramids soon establish a sweaty throng of bodies, as the band throw themselves around the stage, out into the audience - guitars and all - and atop speakers. Remixes, extended intros and outros all feature; even a snippet of The Lion King’s ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight’ makes its way into ‘Gandhi Mate, Gandhi’ [sic], a call to arms which mounts a scathing attack on late capitalism’s culture of greed.

Enter Shikari’s assault on the political class on The Mindsweep is more direct than they’ve ever been before. ‘The Anaesthetist’, an attack on the increasing privatisation of the NHS, provides probably the best moment of the gig: “you will not profit off our health”

Rou screams into the microphone; the crowd duly screams right back at him, before a crushing breakdown closes the main part of a breakneck set. Perhaps the moment you feel you are experiencing something special most, however, is at that point which Rou de-cides to make his way into the middle of the crowd and sit cross-legged with his guitar, to perform a haunting outro to ‘Radiate’. Goose-bumps were aplenty.

Some aspects of the night’s proceedings suggest an attempt at something a little more grandiose, a little more mature. Roughton ‘Rou’ Reynolds adorns a grey, tweed jacket (how on earth he kept it on the whole night, I do not know), and the gig itself takes place in a theatre more commonly used for rendi-tions of Romeo and Juliet than thundering, anti-establishment post-hardcore, with its intimate standing area enclosed by four tiers of raised seating. With last night’s raucous fu-rore still ringing in the ears of yours truly, I sat down to listen to The Mindsweep the next morning, and make sense of the madness…

Those inclinations towards something more resplendent, are indeed reflected on the new album. A piano ballad in ‘Dear Future Historians…’, and a swarming intermission of majestic horns in ‘Interlude’, achieve as much. Delving further into the album, ‘Myo-pia’ and ‘Torn Apart’ resemble A Flash Flood of Colour’s ‘System…’ and ‘…Meltdown’ in that they seamlessly merge into one another. Each hammer of the guitar is matched bar for bar, only by Rou’s vehement growls. In fact, Reynold’s lyrics are poignant and purposeful throughout, and probably the most laudable part of The Mindsweep: “the invisible hand no longer guides, it chokes” he sings on ‘The Bank of England’.

The pseudo-intellectual lyrics on the prac-tically rap-rock ‘Never Let Go of the Micro-scope’ (“Like Socrates I only graze on the summits of my own ignorance”) and brutal clutter of noise on ‘There’s A Price On Your Head’ are probably the only two points at which the otherwise high standards are not met. On the latter, however, as Rou protests the class system and exponential growth in wealth inequality, the introduction of East-ern strings mid-song, which mimic the gui-tar riffs that’ve come before, are a stroke of characteristic genius, and signpost exactly

what we’ve come to expect from Enter Shi-kari: the unexpected. Their kaleidoscopic blend of thundering guitars, delirium-induc-ing electronicore, and guttural barrages of heartfelt revolution is superior to anything else any other contemporary hardcore band is producing.

Yet while Shikari’s political remonstra-tions and obvious disheartenment at the way things currently are, to paint The Mindsweep as largely pessimistic would be an incredi-bly broad, generalising stroke of the brush. It has its uplifting moments too, and ‘One True Colour’ is one such moment. Its stirring yet forceful melody, softly sung bridge, as it’s mused “how rich the soil/How wondrous the upheaval/It’s time to embark”, while rich, at-mospheric strings enwrap Rou’s dulcet tones, provide a sense of relief - as ‘Dear Future His-torians…’ does - from the otherwise predom-inant chaos.

No other British band since, perhaps, the Manic Street Preachers in the 1990s, have managed to attract as large and as devoted a fan-base, critical acclaim, all the while ar-dently promoting such an important polit-ical message, as Enter Shikari have. During ‘Destabilise’, a fervent, fans’ favourite, Rou cries “Rory C. what’s your thesis?!”; “I don’t fucking believe this!!” the guitarist rages in return.

Indeed, the ever increasing list of problems planet Earth must face in 2015 and beyond, really does beggar belief at times. “War, pov-erty, collusion, corruption” continue to wreak colossal destruction and despair. Neverthe-less, in an industry marred by political apa-thy and cynicism, Enter Shikari are a shin-ing beacon of hope; this most recent release manages to offer escapism and confrontation in equal measure. Their political message on The Mindsweep is stronger, more powerful and more direct than ever before; and their hypotheses don’t lie.

Stephen Paul reviews Enter Shikari’s recent album launch show

» Photo: Niall Johnson

In an industry marred by political apathy and cynicism, Enter Shikari are a shining beacon of hope

Their kaleidoscopic blend of thundering guitars is superior to anything else any other contemporary hardcore band is producing

Husdon TaylorLive at the Insititute

Part 2

I felt they were an absolutely brilliant live band, arguably better on stage than in the recording studio

» Photo: HalcyonNights / Deviant Art

30 theboar.orgEditor: Emily Nabney

Books@theboar.org Twitter @BoarBooks

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Aviation and autobiographyBOOKS22

From Night Flak to Hijack: It’s a Small World is the autobiography of Regi-nald Levy, a British pilot who reached a total of 25,090 flying hours in more

than 40 years of aviation. He is also my grandfather. He led, as he himself expressed, an exciting and glamorous life, but also one of great stress and hardship. His job as a pilot (especially before technology improved dra-matically in the last couple of decades) was invariably dangerous, whether due to techni-cal malfunctions, weather conditions, or, as he so often said, human error. Nevertheless, two major events stand out from his tale: his role as a Bomber Command pilot dur-ing World War Two, and the hijacking of his plane in 1972 by Black September terrorists, better known for their role in the Munich Massacre of same year.

My grandfather passed away in 2010 and left behind his unfinished manuscript. I be-gan to work on it in 2013 and did not initially realise the amount of work such a project would entail. I came to understand that there was so much that my grandfather had done or taken part in that I knew nothing about, so it was a very insightful and moving experi-ence for me. His military training in the US, his partaking in the bombings of Hamburg and Berlin, his role in the Berlin Airlift and his witnessing of the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ are recounted with such detail and excite-ment that I felt myself coming to know him

better as a person. The task of writing the epilogue was not without its difficulties, and it was challenging to articulate the memories I had of him, whilst also keeping in mind the importance of how other people thought of and remembered him.

Working on the book, I became con-scious of how much the world he described has changed from the one we live in now. At the same age as I was writing the book, my grandfather was training to become a Bomb-er Command pilot and would soon be flying sorties over Nazi Germany.

Nevertheless, some echoes of what he lived through continue to be relevant to this day, notably the hijacking of his Sabena plane in 1972. The hijacking by Black September ter-rorists dragged him quite literally into the Is-raeli-Palestinian conflict. In his memoirs, he stresses the point that he ‘had absolutely no political sympathies with either side and only strove to do all [he] could to get [his] passen-gers and crew out of the aeroplane’. His anger at the hijackers was not directed towards their demands or their goal in achieving this, but at the fact that his command of the aircraft had been threatened and that his passengers were being put in danger. With ‘no wish to be embroiled in the bitter battle that was going on between the state of Israel and the Arabs’, Reginald stood precariously on the front line of a conflict which had started several dec-ades beforehand and which continues today to divide opinions, states and people. Never-theless, he stood his ground and refused to be pulled into this rapid sink-hole of political entanglements and chaos, something from

which I believe there is a lesson to be learnt.Today his autobiography allows us to ap-

proach such complex circumstances from a different vantage point and better under-stand the way the world is today. I feel very proud of him, and of having the memoirs published, and I hope it will prove an inter-esting and captivating read for those with a passion for history, aviation and war but also those who wish to simply grasp a fragment of the past.

What book are you reading at the moment?Ha, I rarely have any time for reading. Read-ing? What reading? The last book I read over Christmas was Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. It is a great book, but very dark and violent. The novel is about Tan-Tan, the mayor’s daughter who is ‘kidnapped’ or un-knowingly follows her father into exile. Then things spiral into “what the fuck?!”.

Who is your favourite literary character?Emma Woodhouse from Jane Austen’s Emma: “Handsome, rich and clever, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition.” She is such a fun character who is haughty, full of attitude, and unromantic, or even an-ti-romantic. But then again, she can be a bit ‘bitchy’.

What is the first book you remember read-ing?When I was five, I read the easy-to-read ver-sions of David Copperfield and Great Expec-tations. I loved following David and Pip’s stories and I would read the books over and over again. Another of my favourites was my first-ever visual HTML book for my ninth birthday. I absolutely adored it to bits as I was in love with website interaction and plat-forms.

What is your all-time favourite book?Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Heath-cliff was the tragic demented villain with whom you can relate to and sympathise with. It is such a beautiful novel showing the distorted side of passion. Cathy was a little hopeless. And all the characters who bullied poor little Heathcliff!

If you wrote an autobiography, what would be the title?I’m not hipster, I’m just a middle-class girl pre-tending to be ghetto.

Kindle vs. book?I’m a traveller, so I know the importance of having a Kindle. If the course text is not on Kindle, I might not even read it! I am also a minimalist in a sense. I hate having too much stuff and too many things to carry around. I am that annoying Literature student who tries to get rid of all her books at the end of the year. I prefer the reading experience of a hard copy, but my modern practicality says Kindle.

How much is a pint of purple?It’s only £1.50 in the Copper Rooms, but it’s something like £2 at the Terrace Bar and Bar Fusion? I don’t buy a pint of purple on its own anyway.

Pint of purpleNews Editor Ann

Yip on her lifestyle and reading habits

I n the tucked-away, appropriately-named Big Comfy Bookshop in Coventry, five Birmingham authors spent the evening of January 27, 2015 reading extracts from

their novels. The whole evening was one of warm ambience. The writers were Iain Grant, Heide Goody, A. A. Abbott, James Brogden and Simon Fairbanks. The pieces read were of varying genres, ranging from comedy to horror, and each reading left behind a desire to find out more.

Iain Grant and Heide Goody read from their collaboratively written pieces centred around Satan. Due to “gross incompetence,” Satan is exiled and forced to live in Birming-ham under the alias Jeremy Clovenhoof. The extracts, containing everything from comi-cally frightened demons and agoraphobia to “surprisingly expressive” livers and strange mythological beings, were humorous and lighthearted. Especially comic is the contrast

between a generally dark subject and the unremarkable setting, as well as the writing style, which is somewhat reminiscent of Rick Rioardan’s style in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Vivid descriptions bring the whole story to life and bring joy in redis-covering a known subject through a different perspective.

In complete contrast to these excerpts was thriller writer A. A. Abbott’s reading of her novel, After the Interview. The story was much darker and featured a very com-plex character named Boris, described by the author as “a small man with very big prob-lems.” Although she only read an extract, Ab-bott managed to introduce both murder and fraud into the picture, and left off when the audience were deeply involved in the story but still needed to know much more. The characters’ cryptic actions not only created a gripping story saturated with suspense, but left listeners wanting to uncover the mystery. Alongside the extract, Abbott also read a flash fiction. A concise piece, it featured a hu-morous twist at the end that set it apart from

the novel extract.A very intriguing passage was read by

James Brogden, from his novel Tourmaline. The story features an unusual concept. It is centred round a parallel world, Tourmaline Archipelago, that people can only access when they dream too deeply, for example, in a coma. The story focuses on the people of Tourmaline, and their reaction when hu-mans trapped in their dreams act out their dreams or nightmares in that parallel world. The novel raises the chilling question about what might happen if one was forced to act out their dreams in reality. The reading fea-tured engrossing descriptions of action and is especially memorable because of its concept and seemingly complex, multi-layered plot.

Finally, Simon Fairbanks read a short story, ‘Munchkin,’ from his collection Bread-crumbs. Capturing the reader with a catchy beginning, the story maintains its hold until the very end. Taking the typical idea of the monster in the cupboard, Fairbanks gives it a startling twist in this short horror story. Fair-banks also read a fantasy poem, Crispin the Crooked. The poem is especially compelling because of its steady rhyme and rhythm, and tells a story fascinating enough to captivate any reader.

At the end of the evening, the audience had a chance to talk with the writers. When asked about their inspirations, most of the authors referred to aspects of daily life, whether it was a dream, an experience working in a certain environment, or just seeing something inter-esting that evoked a story within them. It was fascinating to see how skillfully each of the writers turned everyday things into extraor-dinary ones through storytelling. Although each work is different from the other, all of them are sure to entertain readers in their particular genre.

A reading at the Big Comfy BookshopSohini Kumar

Alex Schiphorst

» Visitors enjoy refreshments whilst browsing. Photo: Facebook

30 theboar.orgTVEditor: Laura Primiceri

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Is there a flaw in reasoning when people complain about being offended by things that explicitly advise them to not watch if they are easily offended?

As surely as people like to enjoy cer-tain things, there will always be people who don’t.

Something that splits opinion massively is the idea of black humour; com-edy that deals with taboo subjects like death, and generates laughs from the fact that these are not things that are discussed, often result-ing in a massive amount of controversy.

It is so divisive, it begs the question of where the place for black humour is in the modern televisual world.

Now obviously, there is some need for common sense. If you’re watching a kid’s show, for instance, I don’t expect to see any form of black humour (unless it’s Courage the Cowardly Dog, one of the greatest children’s programmes ever).

Nothing would jar more with the Teletub-bies than Dipsy going off on a major rant about how much he hates gays or different races – this is not the place for it.

Even some more innocent places get away with it – early Simpsons episodes contain jokes about dead orphans and Marge’s uncle going on a gun massacre – but it is not be-yond reason for a comedy to employ a form of black comedy.

However, when we look at things that pur-posely employ black humour and make no secret of it, things get a bit more patchy.

Consider a comedian such as Proclaim-er-a-like Frankie Boyle. He used to be a mainstay of BBC satirical panel show Mock the Week, leaving in 2010 following criticism of a number of his jokes (including particu-larly good ones about Heath Ledger and the Queen’s genitals) and the gradual realisation that some of his riskier content was simply being cut out.

Fair enough, yes? Well, no – the pro-gramme was designed to be near-the-knuck-le, screened post-watershed and always with warnings that it would contain profanity and offensive jokes, so arguably any audience member should’ve known what they expect-ed to see.

Is there a flaw in reasoning when people complain about being offended by things that explicitly advise them to not watch if they are easily offended?

This extends further, or rather back-wards into the past. Standards and percep-tions change, and people with them – it is not right to mock the people of the past for concluding the world was flat, for instance –

and this leads into criticism of the past. Racial humour, for example, was rather

common in Britain of the 70s and 80s – tune into any sitcom of the time, and there’s a chance that you’ll find a black character with a racist nickname. Not acceptable by today’s standards, so people ring in and complain, but that’s nonsensical – you can’t judge peo-ple of the past by a different ideology.

By this logic, we should hate pretty much everyone before 1950 for believing white

people were superior. I want to consider N***** the dog. A real

creature, and part of the Dam Busters team, the dog’s name became a massive issue when The Dam Busters was aired on ITV3 in 2012. Despite warnings a racist term was used, people still watched the film and complained about that fact a racist term was used – this is, to my mind, clearly absurd.

The film recreates the mission, and the dog’s name (which was completely acceptable at the time) was a fact. Clearly, however, the warnings weren’t enough, and now the film is censored whenever it is shown.

So it leads us to the question of how far do we go? The anti-PC brigade has become a new Mary Whitehouse, and the moment anything could be construed as offensive to anyone, they swoop in for the kill, ready to beat the victim to death with angry rhetoric.

The problem is that humour is subjective – whereas I find no problem with jokes about death, I can quite understand that people might, but I’m driven to rage by the idea that Sarah Millican gets away with calling herself a comedian – and that creating a be-all and end-all definition of what is acceptable or not is an absurd thing to do.

If anything, all this serves to do is limit cre-ativity – things such as Monty Python would never exist if these sorts of guidelines were in effect.

I’d like to end with a joke designed to of-fend no-one, but such a thing is unthinkable.

Reece Goodall

My Life As A TV Pilot

» Photo: DisneyABC / Flickr

» Photo: Adrian Long / Flickr

Rooted within the vast Marvel uni-verse, mid-season replacement se-ries Agent Carter is a fundamentally refreshing show in almost every as-

pect imaginable. First and foremost, it would be an under-

statement to describe this series as gloriously feminist. A focal aspect of Peggy Carter’s (Hayley Atwell) story lies in the illumination of the struggles she faces as a female agent attempting to successfully navigate her way through a vastly male-oriented profession in 1940s America.

Agent Carter unapologetically explores themes of gender biases, professional sexism and the concept of male entitlement; in other words, issues that are still prevalent societal issues for women today. Agent Carter itself is the only current female-led cinematic or television series derived from a comic book.

Ms. Carter episodically establishes her-

self as not only a feminist icon, but also as a generally inspirational and badass heroine who is just as capable of accomplishing tasks through physical means as she is through seamless charm and wit.

Moreover, easily passing the Bechdel test, Agent Carter places high esteem upon strong female friendships in the midst of Peggy’s at-tempts to destroy the patriarchy.

Furthermore, featuring faces like former One Tree Hill favourite Chad Michael Murray as the irritatingly smug Jack Thompson, Ni-kita’s Lyndsey Fonseca in the role of sweet yet feisty waitress Angie Martinelli, and Domi-nic Cooper as the infamous Lothario of the Marvel universe, Mr. Howard Stark as just a few examples, it’s hard not to fall in love with Agent Carter’s bedazzling exhibition of famil-iar and formidable supporting cast members alone.

Overall, Agent Carter is highly reminiscent of Alias and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shows that which also featured compelling storytell-ing and wonderfully-developed characters. Without doubt, this is a show that deserves a chance to spread its wings further for at least one more season.

Agent Carter unapologetically explores themes of gender biases, professional sexism and the concept of male entitle-ment.

Drawing the line for black comedy

#RenewAgentCarter Hannah Martin argues for the feminist cult hit to be renewed

This week on My Life As A TV Pilot... Joe Baker.

In a world where social media is flourish-ing and we are all closer to one another than ever before comes The Bus Boy. A story of love, life and loss of innocence,

which some critics called “mundane”, others “downright antisocial”, and by this press re-lease as “potentially career ending”.

Joe Baker is just your normal, everyday manic-depressive who, in his second year at Warwick, gains the incredible power to avoid

people you don’t particularly want to speak to on public transport. Watch him fly upstairs to the U1’s upper floor to hide from his semi-nar tutor, curl into the folds of his hoodie at a busy bus stop in case he’s recognized, and miss lectures just to avoid that “I’ve got so much work to do” conversation we all really enjoy having on that half an hour journey back to Leamington.

Strap in for sidesplitting scenes as Joe is forced to sit next to someone he met once at Pop! a few weeks ago but doesn’t really know that well. And witness the incredible jour-ney of one man who got off at the top of the High Street rather than stay on any longer with that course-mate who can’t stop talking about their Gap Yah in Ugandah.

Will the bus boy ever get over his fears and maybe, just maybe, find the Bus Girl of his dreams? Probably not, as he’s got quite into Tinder recently.

What would your life be like if it was a TV show?If you know the answer, email tv@theboar.org to write for this column!

20 theboar.org

24 FILMEditor: Paulina Dregvaite

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The Boar takes on Berlinale 2015

Before I went to the Berlinale I didn’t think there was such a thing as watching too many films. Nine days and 30 films later, I was positively ex-

hausted. What was so overwhelming was the sheer range of films on show. From prestige pictures, to experimental documentaries, to delightful indies, it truly represented a whole cross-section of film. Some films were great (The Summer of Sangaile, Queen of the De-sert) some were terrible (Nasty Baby, The Greenery Will Bloom Again) and some were simply average (Taxi, Mr Holmes).

I travelled several countries, from Taiwan to Lithuania to Brazil, all whilst hanging around Potsdamer Platz. Yet despite this vast variety of techniques and locations, some themes and innovations kept cropping up again and again, showing that some trends are becoming more universal. A festival is a handy way of seeing the way cinema is going, and I think these trends will be more preva-lent in the future.

The possibilities of digital camera

In the old days when directors only shot on film, there was only a set amount of time

they could shoot a scene for before chang-ing the reel. Now with digital cameras, this is no longer the case, and you can quite liter-ally create a movie in one take. This was first seen in 2002 with Russian Ark which was all one tracking shot over 80 minutes long. Now this has been bettered with this years’ Vic-toria, a heist thriller set in Berlin, with a 140 minute tracking shot that somehow followed the actors through nightclubs, spatkaufs, and rooftops. The technique really added to the immediacy of the premise, and made it an immersive experience that was hard to for-get. Digital trickery was also seen in Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein In Gaunajauto, in which several tracking shots are artificially stitched together, with the characters ended up in multiple places within the same frame. So digital isn’t the safe and boring alternative to film it is made out to be, rather it has its own potential for expanding the language of cinema.

Dealing with the past

Several films were backwards looking, il-luminating aspects of the past so their char-acters could attempt to move forward.

Mr. Holmes, featuring a very grouchy Ian McKellen, sees the famous sleuth looking back at his final case, the facts of which are a mystery as a result of his dementia, in order to die knowing he did the right thing.

Queen of Earth plays with different time frames also, juxtaposing two summers be-tween friends, fully exploiting the irony of their shifting relationships. This harsh pre-sentness of the past is also seen in films such Thanatos, Drunk, Flotel Europa, Unoccupied and Chorus, making it an important device in shaping character and mood. But you have to give it the top prize to Terrence Mal-ick, who seems to create a film unburdened from time in Knight of Cups, a film which somehow seems totally unstuck in time so we never know quite where we are.

As much as the films at the Berlinale point toward a new, exciting era of film - one in

which it’s constantly evolving - the legacy of the past is never far behind.

The prevalence of female roles

On the whole, female-centric films won the festival this year. Whether it was the two charming performances from Aiste Dirziute and Julija Steponaityte in The Summer of Sangaile, Cate Blanchett’s hilarious turn as the evil stepmother in Cinderella, Nicole Kid-man as Getrude Bell in Queen of The Desert, or Laia Costa’s memorable turn in Victoria, female roles far outshone their male peers. There should be a day when we don’t notice this kind of thing, but given the dearth of great female performances in the Oscars (is Laura Dern really worthy of a nomination?) here is some hope for a more equal industry.

Boar Film: What I liked about the film is that it deals with a lot of serious issues such as the fear of success and self-harm but deals with it in a bittersweet manner so there’s lightness throughout. Was it impor-tant to you to keep it light?

Alante Kavaite: I’m twenty years separated from my characters. With a distance I see that all the suffering I had at that period of life was necessary to grow up. They were only steps to becoming what I am. I thought I saw too many movies about this similar age that are really dark. I think I wanted to make the kind of movie I would have liked to see as a teenager.

BF: Some critics have been comparing it to Blue is the Warmest Colour. Is this an inspi-ration at all?

AK: It’s a very strange question from the critics. They must understand that you don’t do a film in two months. When Blue is the Warmest Colour came out in Cannes I was al-ready in preparation with my movie, I was in Lithuania and my script was already written. I saw it but I was already in my film. I shot in the summer of 2013 so I saw it after. We are in opposite aesthetic directions. I don’t un-derstand the comparison, maybe because it’s about two girls in love. Maybe we don’t have enough lesbian films.

BF: I like the way you depicted the summer. The film was shot on digital but you added grain later which I thought gave it a hazy,

nostalgic look. Were you trying to evoke that perfect youthful summer with this ef-fect?

AK: Yes, I worked a lot with sensation more than words, so the image and the sound were just as important. Nostalgic... maybe nostal-gic because what looks nostalgic is maybe recreation itself. Maybe because I chose an aesthetic from the 60s, where you have con-crete buildings, you have the power plant next to where they live, you have some strange sculptures, and models from the Soviet era and also my character Austé - who lives in the concrete building - she listens to vin-tage swinging sixties Lithuanian music, and she designs dresses that also have a little bit of the sixties style. But the cinematography itself, I didn’t want to put a colour grading effect to make it nostalgic, I think it’s more the other elements that makes you feel this way. I thought a lot about the Japanese cin-ema of the sixties as well. I have a fixed frame because I have a character who is dreaming about flying, so I really need to shoot the movie with a really fixed frame with no ex-ceptions and it was really challenging and it caused quite a big fight with the crew because it’s not so easy to do so.

BF: There’s also the class difference between the two girls as well. It’s interesting because Austé has less but she makes more of her room but Sangaile has the better house yet she has nothing in it.

AK: Exactly. I thought a lot about this. I real-

ly wanted to focus a lot on individuals, think-ing that a lot of things depend on who you are inside. Aiste has nothing or almost noth-ing, she needs to work at the power plant and at the air show, but she still does anything she wants. Sangaile has everything but she doesn’t know what to do with that.

BF: I think your movie is actually very ro-mantic, but it’s not so much about what people do or say or it’s more in how they look and smile at each other, and music plays a strong part in this as well. How did you try and toe the line between making a good romance without stepping into Hol-lywood cliches?

AK: It comes through the music. The spirit of life comes through music. From the begin-ning of the writing I knew that I wanted this movie to be very musical, and kind of pop. You have these swinging sixties songs, but I also wanted today’s music. Now about ro-mantics. It is not the main subject, the love story. I wanted to depict the good side of romance. Sangaile will grow up to be open, she’ll come out of her shell, thanks to some-

one who just looks at her in a different way.

BF: That’s what I thought gave the film its empathy and sweet heart. Also the sex scenes, I thought they had a nice sweetness to them. Was it difficult to film such inti-macy between the two actresses?

AK: It wasn’t difficult because my goal was not to be outside of the action. I really wanted to do a film from an idealistic point of view so I wanted the love scenes to be part of that. And I wanted the audience to watch two girls make love. That was difficult to convey but we talked a lot in preparation and everything I asked for they were very generous in their approach. It was a lot of fun, but it was not so difficult because we discussed so much.

Alanté Kavaité is a Lithuanian film witer-director. The Summer of Sangaile is her sec-ond movie.

Redmond Bacon

Berlinale Interview: director of The Summer of Sangaile, Alante Kavaite

Redmond Bacon details his experiences at one of the world’s biggest film festivals

» Photos: Berlinale.de

21 theboar.orgtheboar.org/Film | @BoarFilm | FILM 25

M atthew Vaughn has made the film that he wanted to and it’s kind of bonkers. A stylish action spy film in the vein of Bond (although

owing more than enough to The Avengers), the story depicts veteran secret agent Harry Hart (Firth) as he takes “youff ” Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin under his wing and introduces him into a world of espionage.

The performances are chiefly great. Firth is having a ball, Samuel L. Jackson’s villain hams just the right amount to avoid irritation and Sofia Boutella as the augmented hench-woman Gazelle is a visual marvel, while new-comer Egerton is fantastically likable in the leading role. It’s a shame that many of the other side characters (Strong, Hamill, Cook-son) fall into obscurity without enough flesh on their bones to standout beyond support, in particular Caine whose main job is sitting and explaining the plot.

The film follows a fairly traditional formu-la, and unfortunately a majority of the film is dominated by the training stages of Eggsy’s recruitment, and not enough on the depic-tion of the agents themselves. Due to this the film moves sluggishly outside of its struc-tured set-pieces. As Jackson’s plot (and to that extent the film’s) unfurls, Kingsman descends into one of the more joyfully frenzied third

acts that you’re likely to experience this year. Topped off with a fight sequence accompa-nied by KC & The Sunshine Band and a spec-tacular fireworks display, it’s where the film really decides to go for broke with its warped angle and races for the climax.

It can’t help but be argued that Vaughn has, in fact, already made his own Bond film in the form of X-Men: First Class – an interna-tional adventure tale of throwback influences harking back to 60s filmmaking techniques. While Vaughn has a keen comic eye, the ac-tion sequences are shot in such a hyperkinet-ic manner that it’s difficult to register spatially what’s going on, while Goldman’s cineliterate screenplay careens relentlessly.

There is a classicist approach towards this kind of genre that suits the internal world better. Not just via its aesthetics but by its treatment of the material from which it is working. Millar’s anarchic methods of writ-ing have always been controversial at the best of times, less able to balance the tonally bleak from the black. Where Kick-Ass exorcised many of these shifts in favour of a more co-hesive ambiance and genre meditation, King-sman runs at the spy model with little am-bition towards subtlety or vast commentary. It is not that the film is intellectually dead, but rather that it chooses not to assert itself in any unique way outside of its established tropes and its determination to pronounce its disparity from the genre (“This isn’t that kind of movie”). The satire of celebrities, technol-ogy and social hierarchy are all there, but soft in application. This is a broadly comic send-up film with many laughs aimed towards the lunacy of Bond’s former world, mainly at their expense.

Adolescent gaudiness is the order of the

day, and the film pulls no punches. Foul lan-guage, blood and vomit are all present and accounted for, and a tone-deaf anal sex gag that takes even the most cringe-worthy of Bond puns to the nth degree. This is an unbe-lievably bloodthirsty picture of shock-factor violence tactics, notably a jaw-dropping mas-sacre scene in a church that will divide even the most confident of viewers. Kick-Ass’ use of violence was contextual about the cruel realities of its world, but here there is less to work with, and so the bloodshed is a means to an end – and that end is about having fun.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a film that will linger in the mind for many different reasons. It’s controversial, loud, fanciful and a little cruel, but it’s all in the name of amuse-ment. This is not a film for everyone, but for those who can stomach some of its denser elements there are certainly worse ways to spend an evening.

Review: Kingsman: The Secret ServiceLuke Whitticase evaluates the newest British spy escapade

T he wintry landscape of New York in the 1980s forms the backdrop of this all-American drama, which centres around the difficulties in establish-

ing a clean business in a crime-ridden town. In this case it’s an oil company run by en-trepreneur Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) who, with the help of his attorney Andrew (Albert Brooks) and wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), strikes a deal with a group of Jewish Chas-sidem, which will give him access to a valued oil terminal on the East River.

The problem is, though, that their oil trucks are regularly being hijacked and sto-len by criminals, not to mention the investi-gation of their company by a persistent Dis-trict Attorney (David Oyelowo). With only 30 days to gather the money required to save the deal - and therefore the business - Mo-rales must do everything he can while still remaining true to his morality and the law.

It’s a smart and tough piece, evocative of its period without ever descending into pastiche, and it treats its audience with a re-spect lacking in many other films of its type. While there are some action sequences, such as an effectively tense car chase through the

gutters of the city, it’s a film where the real drama happens behind closed doors, in meetings at restaurants or dim offices, where powerful men attempt to curry valuable po-litical favour among each other. The dialogue crackles with danger even though there’s no actual threat here - this isn’t Scorsese, a con-versation won’t end in a shootout, but it’s to Chandor’s credit that these scenes are just as exciting.

Having said that, I do feel it’s his weakest film so far. At times it feels like a very high-budget television production, the kind you’d

find on BBC2 at 9pm on a Sunday. It’s not necessarily an insult - some of the smartest stuff airs on television nowadays - but you can’t help but wonder if it’s really making the best use of its cinematic medium.

The drama is definitely elevated by its per-formances. Oscar Isaac is on fire right now, clearly making the most of his thorough-ly-due recognition from Inside Llewyn Da-vis, and he plays the lead with a complicated sensitivity (it might be his most likeable role yet). Jessica Chastain is arguably even better, playing a tough-as-nails woman who feels she has been unfairly sidelined, and tries to exert a powerful presence anyway. It’s a shame she doesn’t have more screen time - the scenes between her and Isaac, where she chastises him for being unable to step up and defend their family, are captivating.

In the end it’s a film worth seeing. It ru-minates effectively on the cost of achieving the American Dream - in many ways it’s a period companion piece to the neoliberal Margin Call, and its powerful climax cer-tainly brings to the forefront the theme that a rapidly-growing, ruthless business creates as many victims as it does victors. But as I left the cinema I couldn’t help but wonder if A Most Violent Year was a touch too slight to justify the price of the ticket.

Review: A Most Violent YearSam Gray looks into an exploration of the American dreamDirector: J. C. Chandor

Cast: Oscar Isaacs, Jessica Chastain

Length: 125 minutes

Country: USA

A n intelligent, moving testament to courage, love and the indomitable spirit of its heroine.

We begin on Armistice Day, 1914. A shattered young woman in a beret (Ali-cia Vikander) stumbles through the cheer-ing crowd to take refuge in a quiet church. Flashback to her life pre-Great War: Vera Brittain is a strong-willed but mostly care-free girl enjoying an idyllic summer with her brother Edward (Taron Edgerton) and his friends Victor (Colin Morgan) and Roland (Kit Harrington). Vera is fiercely resistant to her parents’ conventional aspirations for her and hopes to study at Oxford. However, even as the determined Vera prepares for the en-trance exams without a tutor and develops a tentative romance with Roland, the oncom-ing war threatens to tear apart their whole way of life.

Based on Vera Britten’s bestselling mem-oirs of the same name, Testament of Youth’s greatest strength is its unflinching honesty in depicting the war. It conveys a genera-tion’s loss of innocence (as well as the loss of thousands upon thousands of young men) without ever resorting to cheap sentimental-ity or easy tear-jerking moments. Any film whose subject matter is a large scale conflict (Gone With the Wind and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas both spring to mind) has to find a humanising viewpoint on the colossal loss of human life. In Testament of Youth it’s the irrepressible Vera Brittain, brought to life with honesty and conviction by the radiant Vikander.

There is also a strong supporting cast of mostly home-grown talent; Dominic West as Vera’s curmudgeonly father, Hayley Atwell as the most British of superintendent nurs-es and Miranda Richardson as a crotchety Oxford don. Kit Harrington also gives a far more nuanced performance as Vera’s forlorn fiancé than almost any previous role. That’s probably because Harrington is actually al-lowed to act rather than mope about show-ing off his six pack as in Game of Thrones and particularly Pompeii (2014).

Director James Kent’s documentary expe-rience helps keep the film grounded in reali-ty. Apart from the occasional overly abstract flourish which was distracting, the film is rooted in Vera’s world, and all the mud, rain, sea and blood that went with it. Testament of Youth’s visceral cinematography pulls you into the environment, whether you want to go or not.

Even if, like me, you’re completely unfa-miliar with Britten’s memoir, Testament of Youth does re-tread familiar ground: pre-war merriment, lingering looks at train stations and lines of wounded soldiers stretching out before our eyes. However, even though you know when watching Vera’s friends chase each other through the British countryside that most, if not all, these boys are doomed, that doesn’t make it less moving.

Testament of Youth conveys the price of war far more effectively than any documen-tary and, judging from the number of wars still going on today, it contains some lessons we still need to learn.

Emily Nabney

Testament of Youth

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine

Length: 129 minutes

Country: UK

» Photos: Top: 20th Century Fox, Right: Lionsgate Films

» Photo: Icon Films

What did you think of the recent film releases to the hit

the cinemas ?Tweet: @BoarFilm

22 theboar.org

GAMESEditor: Gabriella Watt

Games@theboar.org Twitter @BoarGames

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» Photos: Above, i.yitimg; Left, Kotaku

What do you think of Telltale Games’ take on

Game of Thrones?Tweet: @BoarGames

26

Two episodes in and the ill-fated For-resters are already reaching House Stark levels of despair and adversary. With their family members either

dead or scattered throughout Westeros, the Forresters’ situation at the end of the first episode was almost unbearably grim - even for Game of Thrones. Despite this, the first episode of Telltales’ choice-based adventure series was an exciting and enthralling two hours, and served as the perfect distraction for those who are waiting impatiently for Game of Thrones’ fifth season to begin. The first episode, then, was an engaging intro-duction into the tragic story of House For-rester - so how does the second episode - The Lost Lords - hold up in comparison?

Most notably, the second episode intro-duces two new playable members of House Forrester. The first one I won’t spoil in this review but it’s a character that hugely changes the dynamic of the politics and plotting that happens at the Forrester seat of Castle Iron-rath. The second character is Asher Forrester - the rebellious and wayward son of Gregor Forrester who was exiled across the Narrow Sea. When we first see him, Asher is in the midst of Daenerys Targaryen’s liberation of Slaver’s Bay. Within minutes of his introduc-tion, we are thrown into Asher’s violent life as a sellsword, where kidnapping former slave masters and murdering a group of mercenar-ies is just part of an ordinary day’s work.

Asher’s violent antics and the exotic back-drop of Slaver’s Bay provides a refreshing change of pace from the political happenings back in Westeros. It’s also exciting to see a playable character who can act as a morally

ambiguous anti-hero. Previous Telltale titles often featured such morally grey characters as their main protagonist, such as the con-victed murderer Lee Everett in the first sea-son of The Walking Dead and the gruff, ruth-less Bigby Wolf in The Wolf Among Us. As in the aforementioned titles, the inclusion of a darker and dishonourable protagonist gives the player opportunities to make more immoral or unethical choices - something that is hard to do with noble characters such as Mira Forrester and Gared Tuttle.

Meanwhile back in Westeros, circumstances are slowly devel-oping for the remaining For-resters throughout the second chapter. In King’s Landing, Mira’s access to powerful figures (such as Margaery Tyrell and Tyrion Lan-nister) gives her opportunities to help her family hundreds of miles away. Up in the north, squire Gared Tuttle joins the Night’s Watch and meets everybody’s fa-vourite bastard Jon Snow (voiced by Kit Harington). Finally, back in Ironrath, the remaining Forresters discuss their limit-ed options, as House Bolton and Whitehill threaten their exist-ence.

Compared to the eventful and bloody first episode, how-ever, the storylines in the second seem a tad slow and un-interesting in com-parison - perhaps because a lot of the episode feels like it’s setting things up for events later in the season. Gared’s isolated story at the Wall is a good example of this. Aside

from meeting Jon Snow, hardly anything of real importance happens as Gared begins his training as a member of the Night’s Watch. However, the prospect of fighting in the up-coming Battle of Castle Black and maybe ex-ploring the lands beyond the Wall in search of the North Grove (a mysterious place that

could ensure the survival of the Forrest-ers) gives me hope that Gared’s story

will soon pick up momentum. Despite its slow-pace and

lack of exciting developments, many of Telltale’s signature strengths are still present in the

second episode. In particular, the characters remain well written, engaging and are supported by excellent voice acting. This is no more apparent than with the new characters introduced in The Lost

Lords that were created especially for the game. One of these new

characters is Frost-finger, a Night’s Watch veteran who trains the new re-cruits in a harsh and unforgiving manner. Another particularly inter-esting character is the battle-scarred sellsword Beskha who accompanies Asher in his trip to Mereen. Both characters are in-stantly captivat-ing and fit in well alongside estab-lished favourites,

such as Jon Snow.Some further

things that are appreciat-ed in Telltales’s Game of Thrones series are the hidden easter eggs and references for fans of the

books and television

series. One particularly amusing reference happens during the conversation between Jon Snow and Gared. Choosing a particular choice of dialogue results in a clueless Jon not saying anything and the notification “Jon Snow knows nothing” to appear on screen. Another reference happens when Beskha ex-presses annoyance about remembering the long and complex names of the people from Slaver’s Bay- a common complaint that is of-ten heard from readers whenever they reach a Daenerys chapter in the books.

However, the few negatives found in the first episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones are still apparent in The Lost Lords. For in-stance, whilst the backdrops of Westeros and the character’s facial expressions are superbly realised, the animation tends to come across as a bit jilted and not quite right, which can beoccasionally jarring. The concept that your choices impact the story in a meaningful way is also one that is certainly debatable. Howev-er, the second episode in particular includes choices that seemingly promise to pay off in future episodes. So whether the choices you made in The Lost Lords actually matter in terms of influencing the game’s narrative re-mains to be seen.

Overall, the second chapter of Telltales’ Game of Thrones was a worthy and enjoya-ble successor to the first, even if it was slower and less eventful in comparison. At times it felt like a filler episode - as if it was a brief interlude before the usual death and destruc-tion starts up again. Thankfully the inclusion of two new game-changing protagonists; the ever-excellent writing and the hidden refer-ences weaved into the narrative of the game, mean The Lost Lords remains engaging and fun to play despite its slower pace.

Winter is coming: du-dun du-du-du-dun... Game of Thrones: The Lost Lords is not filled with the tragic gloominess Alex Brock hoped for, but it spells tension for Episode 3

Choosing a particular choice of dialogue results in a clueless Jon not saying anything and the notification “Jon Snow knows nothing” to appear on screen.

23 theboar.org

Since the beginning of my interest in games, the concept of character crea-tion has thrilled me. From age eight I have hunted down games with com-

plex character creation systems and by ex-tension, the ability to create my own story within a game. I have a memory of stand-ing in a local GAME store wondering about how best to spend my pocket money. I spent it on an RPG with a character creation sys-tem, longevity, and an open world element. The result was one of my favourite childhood games coming home with me (Champions of Norrath) and a true insertion into the world of flexible RPGs, and an understanding of what RPG truly means in high customisation video games.

When a character creation screen pops up after an opening cinematic, I get excited. In the case of games like Champions of Norrath, Skyrim and in this case specifically Dragon Age: Inquisition, the possibilities of complete control over how the story develops open up considerably. Don’t misunderstand me, I like character driven games like the Lara Croft reboot and The Last of Us, but I’m a gaming tyrant when it comes to RPGs. Even in story centric games I like to control little details, which is why I enjoy aspects such as skill trees and customisable gear in games like Far Cry 4. I need personalisation to give me that little extra boost I need to buy a game.

I am not however, a retro revisionist custo-misation fan. Games like Crash Bandicoot or Rayman could not be much improved by say, the ability to create your own character. What makes these games so classic are their rec-ognisable and relatable protagonists. But in many RPGs, the character is deliberately put as an everyman, with branching choices and decisions that cannot possible be mapped onto any one character mould. As a result, games like South Park: The Stick of Truth and the Dark Souls series give you the ability to

create the ‘self ’. Making a character that looks like you has

several fundamental pros. The character that looks like you complicates morality. So for example, if you play as a huge demonic char-acter, massacring a village for profit seems axiomatic, but when you play as ‘yourself ’, a morally much more complicated individual (let’s hope), this choice becomes more dif-ficult. It also provides endless hilarity in at-tempting to make a character look like you rather than a deformed goblin.

The sync feature of Bioware’s recent games (Inquisition included) really add to the cohesive, unique-to-player story experience. Extremely customisable fac-es are, to me, a hallmark of the modern RPG, and whilst I personally rarely dabble deeply in cheek bone ratios, I e n j o y fine-tuning the expres-sion of my character to better represent myself. Overall the ability to create and customise multiple characters to wildly different spec-ifications adds both replayability and a gen-der equality element, and as a gaming tyrant, I also like my money’s worth. Multiple plays result in a happy g a m e r : go cus-tomisa-tion!

Tête-à-tête

For AgainstMax Elgar Alistair Jones

“You there, step forward. Who are you?” The first time I played Skyrim, I spent a good fifteen minutes tweaking the

player customisation options into a reason-able, if somewhat more rugged, approxima-tion of myself. Once I was done, the game returned to first-person view, and I chose to spend most of my time unable to see my character. My only glimpses of what I’d creat-ed came from occasional kill-cams, and even they only lasted until I found some decent armour, at which point my masterpiece was obscured from the world forever.

Player customisation can be fun, and I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed creating some abomina-tions in my time, but very few customisations change the game in any real way. In the new Dragon Age: Inquisition, the customisation options will likely allow you to put hours into the game before even seeing the first cutscene, but none of it

matters. While picking your c h a r a c t e r ’s race or special abilities is an important part

of any game, the colour of their

outer irises and the exact bend of

their nose is not, e s p e c i a l l y

when

you’ve kitted them out to the point where you can’t even see their face.

What’s more, I find player-created char-acters to be far less interesting protagonists than their pre-designed counterparts. Ad-mittedly, if you’re looking for immersion in an RPG, they’re arguably the way to go, but I always find they have almost no depth of character beyond the selection of dialogue options set out by the game. While not every ‘original’ protagonist is perfect (Watch Dogs’ Aiden Pearce immediately springs to mind) characters like Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio and The Last of Us’ Joel and Ellie have personalities that complement their games rather than making them feel like glorified pick-your-own adventures. These are characters whose stories can be responsible for carrying entire franchises, and we need them to be emotive, cinematic figures who we can engage with, rather than stand-ins for players that we sim-ply steer through games with very little po-tential for growth.

While player customisation definitely has a place within gaming, its physical aspect is nowhere near as important as certain devel-opers would have us believe, and when it has no impact on the game and arguably leads to a more blinkered way of telling a story, I would always rather have an original protag-onist. Yes, a personal touch is nice, but that can come through skill trees and play style much more effectively than through choos-ing what colour eye-shadow your protagonist is wearing. In my opinion, the best way to go about customisation is to incorporate it into a game alongside a strong protagonist, some-thing Rockstar have been doing with Grand Theft Auto for years. While you’ll never get the same range of detail you find in Skyrim or Dragon Age, you get to project at least some of your personality onto your charac-ter while allowing them to have a character of their own.

Character Customisation

theboar.org/games | @BoarGames | GAMES 27

You’ve been tasked with the destruc-tion of a medieval castle, and giv-en only a few explosives and a set of simple tools to do it. How do

you proceed? Construct a rudimentary fly-ing-machine to act as a bomber? Use your engineering know-how to build a function-ing catapult? Or just line up as many cannons as you can get hold of and hope for the best?

If you’ve always wanted to be a Cru-sades-style war-monger but have previous-ly lacked the siege equipment necessary to achieve your goals, then Besiege could be

your kind of game. Equipped with a varie-ty of weapons, building blocks and moving parts, your aim is to build functioning war machines. The game grants you almost to-tal freedom; I’ve seen everything I’ve already mentioned as well as some absolute mon-strosities that looked like they could barely hold themselves together, let alone lay waste to a carefully constructed stronghold.

The most appealing aspect of Besiege is that it can be played at almost any level. While the moving parts are simple enough for anyone to get to grips with, the game’s

physics are realistic enough that it’s possible to spend hours tweaking your design to per-fection if you want to. In one game, while I was busy stacking up cannons, my housemate was building a functioning torpedo and had started working on a reloading mechanism.

This level of freedom is what makes Be-siege stand out; there’s no right way to com-plete a level, and even if you smash yourself to bits in an attempt to destroy one solitary hut, there’s no reason why adding a few big metal spikes to your weapons might not solve your problems next time around.

Casual Gamer: War machines made on your machineAlistair Jones plays Besiege, a physics based strategy game on Steam

» Photos: Joshua/Essell / Flickr; Torley / Flickr; mrwynd / Flickr; Youtube

PHOTOGRAPHY Editor: Ife AkinroyejePhotography@theboar.org

Twitter @boarphotographyfb.com/TheBoarPhotography

The Boar Photographers’ FeatureWe showcase the work of Warwick’s photographers to celebrate the amazing photography talent around

The journey of being the Photography Editor for the Boar has been hugely rewarding and within my

time the team has expanded great-ly. We have expanded not just in size but we have been able to create a regular section in the paper for photographers to showcase their own work, as well as offer our pho-tographers far more opportunities than ever before. However, we are yet to reach perfection, and what is more exciting is to realise where the Boar is heading, and what it can accomplish. Ideally we will one day have a paper where all as many photographs as possible are provid-ed by the students.

What is special about this issue is that it contains the works of vari-ous students from within Warwick, who sent in their work. There was no theme, the aim was to give each student a platform, and the sub-missions were amazing and really encompass how proud I have been to be the Photography Editor and work with such talented people.

Unfortunately, I will not be running as the next Photography Editor for the paper, and neither will my great deputies, Alex Stur-tivant and Tom Lord, who have helped me significantly along the way. Therefore, we are in search of someone to take up the challenge and continue to help the section progress.

It’s been a great year for the photography section; we’ve explored new styles and had submissions from such a wide

range of individuals. Being a dep-uty has allowed me to not only witness the talent of photographers from across campus but has more importantly allowed me to stay cre-ative and maintain my sanity!

The growth of the Photogra-phy section this last year has been phenomenal, and much of that has been due

to the amazing submissions we’ve received from everyone who’s been getting involved throughout our time here. We’ve had some really fantastic entries that’ve been fea-tured in the paper, and many more that didn’t quite make it, which have been uploaded online. I’m sure you can see, the results speak for themselves. This issue features some of our most stunning piec-es yet, the Boar photographers are making their mark on Warwick campus.

Ife Akinroyeje

Alex Sturtivant

» Nude in studio // photo: Alex Kharlamov

» London Doesn’t Wait // photo: Dis ath David

» City Dusk // photo: Jack Bonnamy

» Untitled // photo: Joyce Lau

» Raindrops // photo: Jessica Hayne

» Sleeping Beauty // photo: Ife Akinroyeje

» Wrath // photo: Patrick Sambiasi

Tom Lord

PHOTOGRAPHYEditor: Ife Akinroyeje

Photography@theboar.org Twitter @boarphotography

fb.com/TheBoarPhotography

» Untitled #1 // photo: Liam Simmonds

» Untitled // photo: Torgyn Shaikhina

» Jephson // photo: Alex Sturtivant

» Outreach // photo: Georgina Yorke

» Foals’ closing their Saturday night headline set, Bestival 2014.// photo: Oliver Ship

» Untitled // photo: Joyce Lau

» Networks // photo: Linda Nagy

» LINE Photoshoot // photo: IA

24 theboar.org

Travel app review: likealocalPaolo Vacca reviews a new app to help travellers skip the tourist traps and explore ‘like a local’

TRAVELEditor: Samantha Hopps

Travel@theboar.org Twitter @BoarTravel

fb.com/groups/BoarTravel

Travellers know that there’s nothing worse than being a tourist. Day trips, weekend getaways, month-long va-cations – they’re all vulnerable to

tourist traps and time-wasting, over-rated sights. And let’s be honest: a good, unforget-table experience free from the tourist bug is quite hard to achieve. Who’s reliable enough to give out tips on must-visits and no-goes? Official travel guides share that annoying habit of fobbing off very limited experi-ences, tailored the same way for different people with different interests, tastes, and budgets.

Luckily for us travelheads, Estonian Kalev Külaase and Ülane Vilumets have come up with a brilliant idea that will definitely change our stu-dent escapes. Likealocal travel guide is a thriving, passionate communi-ty that brings together experienced travellers, reviewers and casual trav-el-writing enthusiasts from all around the world who are willing to crank out tips and heads-up about their home turfs. Every city has its own page from which you can easily browse general info, places where to eat, sleep and do shopping, or where to go on a night out. Just play with the colourful menu at the top of the page and you’ll find all you need to know. My personal favourite is the transport section, in the ‘City info’ sub-menu. Local transport websites are usually terrible and written in a very peculiar English. However, in these city guides, locals will tell you which bus you have to take to get that cheap pint in the quirky pub downtown!

So, does this whole idea work in practice? In order to answer this question, I packed

my rucksack and jumped on a train to Flor-ence (if this is not dedication…) with Mary’s reviews at hand. Now that I am in the m i d d l e of my

post-Florence blues, I can confirm that my experience in the ‘Cradle of the Renaissance’ would have been much different (and less intense) without Likeal-ocal’s tips. Once out of Santa Maria Novella station, I unleashed the irredeemable foodie

I am and made my way to one of the sugges-tions in the ‘Budget Lunch spots in Florence’ list: Cioccolateria Ballerini, a jubilation of chocolate, cakes and pizza hidden in a rather anonymous side street just by the Arno riv-er. Trust me when I say that the Florentine cake I had there has won my love forever. The rest of the experience turned into a se-ries of WOAH-moments at the Duomo, the Uffizi or Ponte Vecchio – sights you proba-

bly don’t need a local to tell you about - and side-street incursions questing for hidden

gems: an old monastery turned into a li-brary; a tiny square with a funky name and cosy ice-cream parlours; a Ben-edictine church overlooking the city from high above.

Likealocal got it right.And brace yourselves: you can ac-

tually be part of this project. If this sounds your kind of thing, Likealocal is a very new app and is looking for

city editors to expand its content. It’s the opportunity to tell travellers what’s

the best way to experience your home town! For info visit www.likealocalguide.com

Happy days, expensive nights:

Kenilworth Castle

Kenilworth Castle is one of the largest ruined castles in Britain and is per-fect for an interesting and afforda-ble day out. Located in Kenilworth,

the castle dates back to the 12th century but is well known for being the 16th century res-idence of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leices-ter and Queen Elizabeth I’s close friend and suitor. Famously, it was also the setting for Sir Walter Scott’s 1821 romantic novel Kenilworth which follows the romance of Elizabeth and Dudley.

Steeped in rich history, the castle is exten-sive and includes Elizabeth’s private apart-ment block which was erected by Dudley between 1571 and 1572; she used these apart-ments several times and her 1575 visit, which was her last, was a lengthy 19 days. Dudley also created a private garden for Elizabeth and in 2009 a recreation of the Elizabethan garden was opened, complete with marble fountain and aviary – without a doubt in the Spring and Summer months this will be particularly beautiful. Another notable sec-tion of the castle is John Gaunt’s great hall, kitchens and Saintlowe Tower. Gaunt, the first Duke of Lancaster, was the fourth son of King Edward III and he built extensively on the castle grounds in the 14th century. The castle has buildings from different time peri-ods which add an extra layer of history, lead-ing to an engaging experience. It is also pos-sible to walk to the top of some of the towers, offering picturesque views of the landscape.

English Heritage has managed the cas-tle since 1984 and it is currently open to the public on the weekends from 10am to 4pm. However, from 1 April 2015 until 30 Sep-tember 2015 the castle will be open every day of the week from 10am to 6pm. Tickets for students are £8.40 and this is good val-ue for money considering how much there is to explore on the site. I recently visited the castle and had a brilliant day out which was refreshingly quiet with no large crowds. If you want a bite to eat during your visit, the castle boasts a tearoom which serves an array of cakes, some light lunch food and of course tea and drinks.

A trip to Kenilworth Castle is much cheap-er than a night out and is perfectly suited to anyone who enjoys history and learning about the past. There is no other historical site which is so well situated, only 20 minutes from both University campus and Leaming-ton Spa.

If you have a suggestion for a great student day out that costs less than a night out, and would like to see your name in the Boar, email travel@theboar.org with your idea.

Julia Wessels

» The Cioccolateria Ballerini, one of the best spots in Florence. Photo: Paolo Vacca

30

» Photo: barnyz / Flickr

It may be hard to believe, but there is one country left in Europe that EasyJet and Ryan Air are yet to commandeer as the new low-cost hotspot. In fact, even the

cutting-edge technology of the train is yet to reach Montenegro. But the absence of a railway doesn’t mean you should cross it off your bucket list. Although it’s an established destination for Russian holidaymakers, it’s rare to hear an English voice in Montenegro, and there are several reasons why that could change.

Firstly, the landscape: part Amalfi coast, part wilderness, Montenegro’s beaches are characterised by their lush mountain back-drop. Lake Skadar, billed as the country’s must-see national park, was blissfully tour-ist-free. Its floating hills stretch into the dis-tance into neighbouring Albania, and kayak-ing is a must to take in the unique views.

Secondly, the history: Kotor, a medieval coastal town, is popular with day trippers from nearby Croatia, and brings in business thanks to a rumour that it boasts the longest ancient wall after the Great Wall of China. These fortifications disappear half-way up, but don’t worry, there’s a helpful colour-cod-ed map to make sure you don’t stray to the ‘unstable’ areas of the wall - reassuring. At first glance, the town appears to be perched on the edge of a lake, but this body of water is in fact the Adriatic Sea at one of its most inverted points.

Thirdly, the celeb spotting: tennis ace No-vak Djokovic got married this summer on Sveti Stefan, a former fishing island turned luxury hotel. Pretty expensive to stay on, but it makes for a great (and more affordable) photo opportunity from the nearby road. If it’s good enough for a Wimbledon champi-

on…And finally, the journey. It’s one that should

come with a slogan: only for those with a strong bladder. With no airports or railways, Montenegrins rely on an efficient bus service to get around. Travelling to Budva (think Dubrovnik meets Kavos) from Belgrade was a 14-hour journey, complete with a toilet-less coach, a serious language barrier and a driver determined to drop off every Montenegrin pensioner at their front door.

It’s only a matter of time before this un-discovered gem becomes EasyJet’s version of the same thing, and the journey will involve a few hours at Luton airport instead of the colourful coach ride. But however you end up getting there, after experiencing Monte-negro’s seamless balance between beach holi-day and intrepid daytrips, even a 14-hour bus journey will have been worth it.

Celeb getaway or future student hotspot?

» Sveti Stefan, “a former fishing island turned luxury hotel”. Photo: Jonas Ahlberg / Flickr

Izzy Stephenson ponders whether Montenegro will be the next low-budget global destination

Do you know of any hidden treasures in big cities? Don’t

keep it to yourself!Tweet: @BoarTravel

25 theboar.org

Small sport stories you can salivate over whilst on the go. Providing you’re travelling an exceptionally small distance.

24 Hour Campus Run

The men’s football team spent 24 hours running around campus col-lecting money for the charity Right to Play UK last week.

From 12 noon on the February 19 to 12 noon on the 20th, the guys took it in shifts to jog around the University shaking their bucket at rather bemused passers by, and the club have currently raised over £400 for their charity.

Right to Play UK are an organi-sation that specialise in using sport to “educate and empower children and youth to overcome the effects of poverty, conflict and disease in disadvantaged communities”.

You can still donate to the squad by visiting their Just Giving page at justgiving.com/UWMFC24hourrun.

Thought lobbing paper aer-oplanes was a pastime re-served exclusively for eight

year old boys, or for annoying the hell out of that old substitute teach-er you always used to get lumbered with back at school? Well think again, because on Friday 6 March the Red Bull Paper Wings com-petition will touch down at the Main Hall, and is offering students the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria to compete in a Grand Fi-nal. Certainly not a bad prize for launching a sheet of A4 from one side of a hall to another.

Even better, there are three different disciplines to compete in, meaning you stand a

good chance of success no matter what your paper plane speciality. Perhaps most intriguing is the aero-batics category, where any budding paper stunt pilot can try to impress the judges with their creativity and flight performance. Planes will also be marked for longest distance and longest airtime, with the panel of judges consisting of personalities from around campus.

The rules are pretty simple, and for the longest distance and longest airtime category sheets of A4 will be provided on the day. This can then obviously be folded, but no further modifications are allowed. So with a ban on things like rip-ping, cutting and stapling, it might be worth brushing up on your ori-gami skills before you get yourself down to the Main Hall.

Warwick student Henry Hayes has been busy helping to organise the event, and he told Boar Sport earlier this week why he thought every student should try their arm in the contest. “The prize on offer is massive,” he told

me, “and competing in the Grand Final in Austria will be an amazing opportunity for somebody. Even better is that it’s taking place at the personal hangar of Dietrich Mates-chitz- the owner of Red Bull. Not a bad reward for throwing a paper aeroplane!”

Henry also spoke about how he wants to encourage sports teams and societies to take part, empha-sising the social aspect of the com-petition. “The event is great for so-cieties as there’ll be some healthy competition when it comes down to it,” he said. “Plus the event isn’t only restricted to entrants from Warwick Uni, so there should be some members of the public taking part too, and hopefully some com-petitors from other universities.”

As for tips on how to bag your-self that trip to Austria, Henry rec-ommended getting experimental. “The aerobatics category is a great one to get inventive in, at the end of the day the three judges are all

going to have their opinions and the wackier a plane

is, the more it’s going to stand out. Better yet, come dressed as a pilot!”

The day certainly promises a car-nival atmosphere, and the fact that there will be public speakers on the day of the competition, promises to further add to the sense of occa-sion. But in the meantime, it would appear practice makes perfect, and Henry earnestly suggested that all those who want to win the compe-

tition should be “living, breathing and dreaming paper”.

You can pre-register to enter the tournament at the Red Bull web-site, or simply turn up on the day to take part in the competition. And whoever manages to fly their paper plane to success will then soon find themselves flying on a very real ad-

venture.

Warwick Snooker felt that they had “not done as well as they were hoping to” in the Midlands Cup 2015 despite some great individual performances, according to Club President Guneet Walia.

In the annual event teams com-peted in four competitions.

This year the teams graced the tables of Atack Snooker Club in Nuneaton. Arriving at the venue for 8:30AM, they battled it out until midnight on both days in an action packed contest.

The first day focused on the in-dividual contests, which were split into two tiers of 1st and 2nd teams. This was where Warwick shone as in the 2nd tier contest all other Uni-versities were vanquished by the semi-finals.

In what was an unusual situation

of Civil War for the four members of the 2nd team, friendships were set aside in the chase for individual glory. The final was fought between Sam Matto-Willey and Rahul Sodha, with the former taking the crown in a close match that ended 2-1.

The 1st tier individual tourna-ment was not quite such a domi-nant display from the home side. Stewart Ball played well but could not get past the quarter finals, whilst Walia stormed into the final before unfortunately losing out to the cueist from Kent.

On the second day, the team competitions got underway in a similar two-tier style to the indi-viduals. Despite victory for the 2nd team last year and similar success for the 1sts in 2013, Warwick were

unable to add to their rich history in the event.

The 2nd team reached the final to continue their individual form but could not quite go the distance, whilst the 1st team lost out in a tense semi-final play-off that on another day could easily have gone their way.

Whilst both teams were disap-pointed not to win, they did them-selves justice with their perfor-mances.

Guneet Walia spoke afterwards to talk about the Cup, the upcom-ing BUCS tournament and the state of Warwick Snooker in general:

“Everybody played very well but we were a bit disappointed not to do quite as well as we were hoping. This has been one of the strongest years for the club since I’ve been a

part of it and it would have been nice to have more to show for that.”

“It was obviously incredible to reach the final and it’s amazing for the club to be competing in each section of the event.”

“Student level competitions are played to such a high standard it’s great to see such great talent com-ing through the club. We’ve had great interest from Freshers and that’s what it’s all about – continu-ity. The club’s in very good health.”

“We’re looking forward to the BUCS competition in March, and we’ve grown in confidence in the last few years in the event. We lost out to Southampton in the quarters in 2013 and Manchester Met in the semis, so hopefully we can progress further once again. We fancy our chances.” Sam Nugent

Snooker: reflections on the Midlands Cup

Sports news in brief

(Paper)wing your way to success Luke Brown suggests you visit Main Hall on March 6 for the Red Bull Paper Wings competition

How to make the perfect plane...Unsure how to make the perfect

paper aeroplane? Then you may well struggle in this competition, what with the paper aeroplane as-pect and all. But Boar Sport is here to help you, and we asked Henry for some tips on the perfect A4 fly-ing device.

He decided to show us how to make the ‘harrier’- which is basi-

cally a fancy word to describe your regular aeroplane only with the nose folded over so that it looks a bit cooler.

“The key to success is in the fold-ing”, Henry told us, and as you can see in the pictures above you’ll be wanting some crisp lines to maxim-ise your chance of success. Mean-while, if you want that distinctive harrier shape, you’ll need to fold

the nose in on itself three times.And how did it fly? Well after be-

ing dared by us to throw the plane from the terrace bar bench area into the atrium below, we witnessed the harrier in action, and it flew pretty well.

Definitely a model to consid-er should you be entertaining thoughts of winning that trip to Austria.

A l s o , make sure to do some research online to find out how to make a couple of other designs. The competition is guaranteed to be stiff, and we have our suspicions that that regular old dart design might not cut the mustard.

Planes will be judged in three disciplines: longest distance, longest airtime and- most intriguingly- aerobatics.

Henry spoke about how he wanted to encourage sports teams and societies to take part together.

Bubble Football

Sticking with the football theme, have you ever caught your-self thinking mid-way through a match, “this game could really do with some bigger and better balls”? Nope, us neither. But for everyone who has, Warwick Sport have the answer.

On March 12 & 13, you’ll be able to take part in the activity over at the Tarkett Pitches by Westwood. The event runs from 9am to 10pm on both days and there’s an event with more details on Facebook.

One hour group bookings cost £150, based on £10 per person with 15 reccommended to form one team. There are also discounts available for captains registered with the Warwick Active football and basketball leagues.

It looks a lot of fun, and at least you know there’s less chance of get-ting injured than in normal foot-ball.

Coventry Bears Contract

Rugby League men’s first team captain David O’Connor has re-cently signed a contract with the Coventry Bears, a semi-profession-al team who play at the Butts Park Arena.

The side compete in the King-stone Press League One, which is the country’s third tier rugby league competition.

O’Connor, who plays as a second row, impressed the club enough at trials to secure his contract.

His success further highlights the impressive rise of the War-wick Rugby League team in recent years, emphasised recently by their fantastic underdog performance against a very strong Coventry side in Varsity 2015.

» photos: Luke Brown

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Ruby Compton-Davies spoke prior to the forthcoming University rebrand, reports Luke BrownMixed feeling at sports club kit consultation

“We’re trying to progress like a working group- just bigger”After the consultation, Ruby offered her reflections on changing club kit and the rebrand to Boar Sport

A day after the kit consulta-tion, Ruby Compton-Davies spoke to Boar Sport about

her thoughts on the meeting, and about the issue of adopting a new kit more generally.

Ruby began by commenting on how pleased she was that there was a strong turnout to the meet-ing, and how desperately she had wanted people to attend. “This was a genuine prior consultation and it was important for students to have their voices heard. There’s going to be an immediate follow up to this meeting, hopefully within ten working days.”

When asked, Ruby explained that she expects the results of Wednes-day’s voting would be incorporated into designs which will be shown at the next consultation. “I’m hoping that at this consultation we’ll be able to display mock-ups for kits in the most popular three colours,” she said.

The prospect of a new sports emblem, a proposal that won ma-jority support at Wednesday’s con-sultation, was also discussed. “I’ll this week as well be asking the marketing team to look at ways in which the current Team Warwick bear emblem can be reworked, or whether a new design- incorpo-rating features from the University crest- can be worked on.”

Another question from Wednes-day’s consultation, in this instance whether or not to adopt a sole sponsor across Warwick’s sports clubs, revealed a strong desire against such action, and Ruby sup-ports this point of view.

“I’m pleased that people voted against having a sole sponsor- it’s something that I wanted to check with all the members just to judge the overriding feeling on the is-sue- but I know our clubs draw in so much sponsorship on their own merits, so to group all of our clubs

together would result in less mon-ey, which obviously doesn’t benefit our clubs as much. And it obvious-ly leads to the difficult question of how do you fairly split up the mon-ey?”

The idea of moving to a central-

ised kit design was another devel-opment that pleased Ruby. “If I’m being frank, I think the best op-tion is to eventually move towards a centralised colour,” she said. “A large part of this is because there is currently the chance of receiving some money from the University to support a change in kit. It wouldn’t be fair for new club members to inherit this cost a few years down the line, so I believe we have to run with it whilst we have more con-trol.”

Ruby believes this prospect of financial support is key in coming to a resolution sooner rather than later, instead of burying the issue for another few years. She told Boar Sport that “after discussions with Lisa Dodd-Mayne (the Director of Sport and Active Communities), we’ve been given an estimated sum of money that the University would be willing to subsidise. We’ve not had confirmation of this sum yet

as first we need to gauge whether there’s an appetite for a new kit in the first place, but these conditions will be decided on within the next couple of weeks.”

The interview concluded with Ruby stressing that she wants this process to be as democratic and comprehensive as possible. “I don’t want to just propose a kit and then ask people whether they like it or not,” she said. “It’s better to work on something altogether, and then to build some plans from majori-ty feeling. We’re trying to progress like a working group, just on a much bigger scale.”

To make sure that you have your say on the issue, make sure to keep a check on social media and the SU website for details on the time and location of the follow up consulta-tion, which will take place before the end of term.

Luke Brown

Sports Officer Ruby Comp-ton-Davies headed up a sports club kit consultation on

Wednesday 17 February, prior to a University-wide rebranding project that will be made public later in the year.

At the beginning of the consul-tation, a member of staff from the University’s marketing department revealed that the logo of the Uni-versity was subject to change, and that the Warwick crest was to be reserved only for ceremonial pur-poses, meaning it will no longer be allowed to be displayed on new items of sports kit.

After this introduction, Ruby ex-plained that the choice whether to adopt a new kit, and what that kit would look like, was firmly in the hands of sports team members.

The positives of a standard-ised kit design were nevertheless stressed, however, and the kits of universities such as Loughborough, Coventry and Bath Spa were high-lighted as strong examples of how a uniform kit design across sports clubs can work in the interest of university teams.

Everybody present was then in-vited take part in an online poll,

with 10 questions posed to judge whether there was support for a new kit design, as well as variety of other kit issues. The interactive technology largely proved success-ful, with around 200 people voting on each individual question.

Of particular early interest was question four, with 149 people re-sponding that their current kit was a “major component of their indi-vidual club identity”, compared to just 50 people who believed theirs was not. Question five then es-tablished that 57 people believed their club identity was established through the colour of their kit, 53 felt it was through the use of their logo, and 40 voted that it was be-cause of the name used on the kit.

Question seven then asked those present whether they believed there should be one dominant colour for all of Warwick’s sport teams. Cru-cially, 145 people voted that this

was a good idea, compared to 39 who dislike the idea and five who abstained. The follow-up question, however, revealed that people were split on whether a universal kit theme should only be produced by one supplier: 111 felt that this was a bad idea, compared to 68 who saw the positives of having only one supplier.

Meanwhile, the tenth question asked revealed a strong preference for a ‘Team Warwick’ sports mo-tif being developed for all clubs to use instead of the heraldic crest, with 137 people voting in favour of a new emblem being developed, specifically for the use of sports teams. Other universities, such as Birmingham and Durham, already make use of specific sporting em-blems.

After this final question, Ruby then revealed a solitary page of a booklet produced by the Warwick marketing team on the University rebranding project. The document listed nine colours, which those present then listed in order of pref-erence, to discover which colour would prove more popular if a standardised kit design was taken forward.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the colour’s already strong associ-ation with sports teams including men’s football, American foot-ball and cheerleading as well as its prominence on the University crest, red proved the most popular option. Sky blue was the equally unsurprising second choice, fol-lowed by black, in third position.

The other colours available to choose from were white, gold, au-bergine, orange, green and grey, and were voted for in that order, with grey ultimately proving the least popular shade on offer.

After the voting had concluded, Ruby stressed pointedly that this was, in effect, a consultation to a forthcoming consultation, and that no firm decisions had been made. This was likely said to reassure those who had attended and voted on the matters at hand, and yet who do not support a standardised kit

proposal. Sentiments to this effect were

expressed prior to the event on Facebook, with one club member, Hamza Alawiye, commenting that “While I appreciate (the) meeting is an attempt to involve students, the impression I get is that whoever turns up will be told what’s chang-ing and then be given the commis-eration prize of a vote on what col-our the kit should be”.

However, Ruby, and the attend-ing Democracy and Development Officer, Rob Ankcorn, assured those present at the consultation that any decision would be made later on in the academic year at an All Student Meeting, with the vot-ing restricted so that only current sports club members could take part.

In the meantime, Ruby urged those with any suggestions or fur-ther queries to contact her at club-kit@warwicksu.com.

149 people responded that their current kit was a “major component of their individual club identity”.

Would your club be happy to change kit?

Or just give us a poke.Tell us on Facebook

» Photo: FreeSpace

The tenth question asked revealed a strong preference for a ‘Team Warwick’ sports motif being used.

» photo: Warwick SU