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subtext ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Issue 141 21 January 2016 ***************************************************** Fortnightly during term time. All letters, contributions and comments to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but will consider requests for publication with the name withheld. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. Back issues and subscription details can be found at www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see: www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/ CONTENTS: editorial, court preview, lecture recordings, democracy, TEF, freedom of speech, gratitude, lords, Bill Bryson, Lancaster arts, Simon Danczuk, shart attack, food review, concert review, letters. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL The most striking aspect of the month that saw half of Lancashire submerged in water was the efficiency of the University, while students practically climbed atop one another to try and get a Wi-Fi signal. On Sunday 6th December, a crowd of students fanned out around Alexandra Square as the University Secretary (whose somewhat tranquil tones perhaps weren't ideal for addressing over a hundred people in an open space) made some announcements. The well-received news that all deadlines and lectures were postponed weren’t quite enough to soften the despairing gasps when they were informed that they had to evacuate their rooms immediately, for safety reasons. Into the night, coaches made round trips to the nearest safe railway station (Preston), buildings were kitted out with bedding and emergency generators for those who were stranded, while truckloads of food and supplies arrived on campus. subtext seldom agrees with the University on student finance, but in this instance they have spent what must have been tens of thousands of pounds ensuring that students were safe on an extremely tight turnaround. subtext shall join the majority in thanking the University for its significant investment, and all those staff who showed up out of hours and volunteered tirelessly into the night. That said, the ease with which administrative logistics were dealt with (cut lecture courses short, shift week 10 deadlines to week 11, etc) is striking, given the end-of-days preaching we are subjected to whenever the UCU goes on strike. All in all, we are certain that the University of Lancaster and its surrounding areas are striving for a slightly different kind of ‘Dry January’ to those quitting booze for the month. ***************************************************** THE PAPERLESS COURT MEETING One of the benefits of sitting on University Court, which holds its annual meeting on 30 January, is that alongside the order paper, list of nominees and minutes of the last meeting, members are sent pristine copies of the university's annual report and LUSU's annual report. Always well-designed, they're much appreciated, especially by external members of the Court. Sadly it seems that this particular benefit has come to an end. For 2016, all the paperwork will be circulated via email only, and no paper copies of either the university's report, or LUSU's report, will be produced. Presumably members will be encouraged to bring along their laptops and tablets. This move could be given an environmentally-friendly spin, maybe - an awful lot of trees have died in the service of producing Court papers - but subtext is not convinced. How many external members will remember to bring along laptops, or print out hundreds of pages of documents? And has anyone sought to quantify what we've lost, in terms of impact, by not posting out an attractive set of reports to hundreds of opinion-formers from across the region? Hopefully the VC will make up for this by giving us the multimedia presentation of his life. As an aside, we note that the minutes of the previous meeting are presented with their usual fastidiousness. We still think that our report in subtext 128 is a better record, though, especially of the SU motions that were passed. Might we take the opportunity to inform the membership that these motions were duly passed on to University Council, who flattened both of them after a concerted instructive effort by the top table. Perhaps members present would like to ask why this was the case. subtext will be in attendance. ***************************************************** ON THE RECORD The idea of recording and uploading all lectures has been floating around campus for a while now, with the Students’ Union being particularly vocal in calling for its universal usage. In a recent consultation, the student body has overwhelmingly said ‘yes’ to lecture recordings. Overwhelming, if not a little ill-informedly from those both asking and answering the question; of course the majority of students want their lectures recorded and put online – ‘laziness’ is a characteristic stereotypically attributed to and even self-professed by students. Accordingly, the SU has announced that it intends to produce a short video demonstrating ‘just how easy [recording lectures] is to do.’ We at subtext are sure that this educational video will go further than to show fuddyish academics the ‘on’ button on an RCA VHS camcorder, and offer a simple resolution to a number of niggles that are, we are sure, insignificant. The first issue is one of copyright and performing rights. If a VT of Professor X is recorded and distributed, Professor X legally has a say in whether and how this happens; as such, implementing it as university policy is futile, since no academic is obliged to adhere to it. Many may refuse to in fear of becoming dispensable – the Screen Actors Guild’s historic battle for residual payments for televisual repeats of films springs to mind. Furthermore, there are a number of idiosyncrasies that simply can’t be accommodated for on a video recording. For a Panopto recording of a lecture to work, it requires the lecturer to be stood still behind a lectern for the entirety of the session, speaking to a slideshow (and the software is only compatible with MS Powerpoint), and that’s if an academic prefers to make use of slideshows, which many don’t, as is their right. Perhaps it may work if all lectures were like a TED talk, but in more scientific and quantitative subjects, there are no means of capturing writing on a whiteboard or the use of visualisers, and as such the experience is limited to looking at an empty lectern unable to see anything that is being written down. Never mind the complete lack of any interactive element and post lecture discussion, which will doubtless result in busier office hours and a heftier email backlog full of questions from those who weren’t present in a lecture to ask them. And, pedagogically, there is the very real risk that lecture attendance will drop off, and students will find themselves resorting to recordings fraught with the issues outlined above, blurring the lines between the University experience and a MOOC. We eagerly await a simple, cost effective resolution to these issues that doesn’t result in significant expenditure and an increased workload for academic staff. Readers are welcome to write in with solutions of their own to the usual address. ***************************************************** DEMOCRACY UPDATE subtext readers with an interest in the democratic process will have been awaiting the publication of the new electoral register with interest. The introduction of individual electoral registration, in which it is no longer be possible for a landlord or a "head of the household" to register everyone living in a property, led to widespread predictions of thousands, including many of Lancaster's students, being unduly disenfranchised. With elections for Police and Crime Commissioners in May, and the EU referendum possibly as early as June, the quality of the electoral register is highly significant. Well, the new register was released on 1 December, so let's have a look, shall we? At first glance - it doesn't look so bad. Across the Lancaster district, there were just over 102 thousand electors in May 2015 - now, there are just over 98 thousand, a 4% drop. Not great for democracy, but not a disaster either. And on campus, it seems that 1903 people are on the register. Very impressive! Pretty much the same number who were on the register in May, actually. Hang on . . . Ah. It seems that the city council has failed to remove last year's students, so almost everyone listed as being registered on campus is not actually resident there anymore. Things suddenly don't look quite so rosy. It's possible to count the number of people who have registered on campus who weren't registered in May - this gives a fair idea of the true size of the campus electorate. We get: 58 voters subtext is developing a case of déjà vu - perhaps we should just refer you to our democracy articles from last year and be done with it! In Manchester and Sheffield, and probably many other cities, the local authority has worked effectively and efficiently with local universities to ensure their registers are as accurate as possible. Hopefully it'll be third time lucky for us in 2016-17. ***************************************************** A MINOR TEF http://tinyurl.com/hzfw4t2 - for an interesting critical analysis of the impending arrival of the TEF. What’s nice is that, unlike the REF where Universities carped and moaned but didn’t actually do much to challenge it, the TEF is coming in for some stiff opposition (quite rightly – it is even more of a mare’s nest, dog’s dinner and complete bloody mess than the REF. And that’s going some). Green shoots of the University sector getting its mojo back? Or, might it be that the Higher Education sector is becoming increasingly aware that it is now, to all intents and purposes, in the sector not the public sector (“public sector” = “funded from public funds”, which Universities now aren’t) and that consequently the government now no longer has the leverage over it that it did hitherto? subtext learns that Lancaster’s response to the TEF proposals has gone through the consultation stages, and by all accounts it is a fairly robust and assertive document that seems difficult to disagree with. We will report further when the University’s response has been finalised, and present our own analysis of the proposals in the next issue. ***************************************************** TRIAL BY TABLE Last year we reported on the Spiked Online ‘Free Speech’ rankings, a league table which deems Universities with policies against harassment and bullying in the workplace to be dangerous inhibitors of free speech. It would appear that their previous showing was inaugural, and the ‘rankings’ have been reheated for another year. Subscribers can read our previous analysis of their infantile methodology in subtext 128, but we shall add a couple more. Once again, Lancaster receives a ‘red’ rating for the same reasons as last year. The research barely goes beyond a brief Google search with no in-depth analysis of institutional behaviours and events, so we put the following question: would a university which apparently is a ‘no go area’ for freedom of expression allow a publication such as subtext to exist within its community, not least host it on its own servers and facilitate it with its own email system? We also note that The Tab, has produced a long diatribe bemoaning Lancaster’s ‘embarrassing’ record on free speech. Publicly, without reprimand(!) < http://tinyurl.com/hybq8wm > Furthermore, it is perfectly valid to say that Students’ Unions across the country are developing a growing pre-disposition to supporting policies on banning things left, right and centre. For the most part, however, this is just over-zealous officers wanting to back up their opinions, and in general SU policies aren’t worth the paper they’re written on – there is a difference between an institution saying it doesn’t like ‘cultural appropriation’ and an institution bundling people off to a Soviet gulag for wearing a sombrero – only one of these is a true inhibition of ‘free speech.’ It is true when they say that a University should be a place where we scrutinise, criticise and pull apart bad ideas – we await the same being done to claims in this ludicrous table. ***************************************************** THE APOCALYPSE - HALL OF FAME subtext thinks it would be nice to celebrate the local businesses which, during December's power cut, stayed open and helped an awful lot of confused residents. Businesses like these, which opened on the Sunday: Single Step Wholefoods on Penny Street plus the Salvation Army giving out free food and hot drink from their van in Church Street and Marsh Community Centre providing food and shelter
***************************************************** A CHOLMONDLEY GATHERING The alumni office has invited Lancaster graduates, at £60 a pop, to “an evening reception at the House of Lords hosted by Baroness Henig CBE in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mark E. Smith”, on 28th April in the House of Lords, Cholmondley Room. There is very little explanation as to what the event is to entail, other than standing around like a whelk listening to the erstwhile county councillor. So, some of our readers enquired further, and with their permission we have printed their queries below. *** Dear Alumni and Development, Is there any information on what this event would entail? Is it a development or shoulder-rubbing opportunity? Also, do you offer subsidised or price waived tickets for the unwaged or is the onus on the Graduate to develop themselves? * Thanks for the email. This event is a combination of a chance to see the venue, a couple of speeches and the opportunity to network with a cross section of alumni across years and occupations. Unfortunately, as we heavily subsidise these London events we’re not able to offer discounts for some events, but we do host other events throughout the year which are both cheaper and possibly more appropriate to your area of work. We usually send out emails about these events, but it is also worth checking the alumni website from time to time to see if there is anything appropriate for your needs. I hope this information is useful to you. * Might I suggest you would attract an even wider range of alumni if the event was more accessible? Where does the £60 figure come from, and is there scope for charging £67 and subsidising 10% of tickets for those less able to afford the tourism / networking event? Can I also ask which 'areas of work' this event is appropriate for? You've been very vague as to what it constitutes. Is it absolutely necessary that it happen in this venue? Perhaps this event is for a certain class of person who are able to intuit its suitability without asking daft questions. *** So, to clarify, it's £60 to stand in a room for two hours with a retired county councillor? If you want to pep it up a bit, can't you run to some lookalike acts to do a cabaret? Possibly even the real Joe Longthorne. *** [...] Will Mark E. Smith be performing Hex Enduction Hour? There's some colourful language in there that may be considered most un-parliamentary, I must warn you! He once threw a bottle at Mumford and Sons. I hate to think how he might remonstrate upon the erstwhile Councillor. ***************************************************** LITERARY REVIEW "[…] the university of Virginia ranks 130th among the world's universities. Eighteen much more modestly funded British universities rank higher. On the world stage, according to the Times Higher, Virginia is about level with Britain's Lancaster University, which has an endowment fund one-thousandth the size of Virginia's. That is pretty extraordinary.” That is a passage from Bill Bryson’s most recent title, ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’, in which the University of Lancaster is used as a benchmark for the excellence of the UK’s HE sector. Bryson served as Chancellor of Durham University for six years, and it is understood that he once got drunk with Russell Crowe and invited him to deliver a workshop to Durham’s theatre students. subtext wonders what delights our own Alan Milburn might be able to bestow upon Lancaster’s students. Humourous scenarios to the usual address are welcome. ***************************************************** WHAT’S ON While we’re on the topic of exciting guest speakers, is it just us or has Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University (formerly LICA) really upped its game in recent months? The upcoming Festival of Questions (2nd Feb – 20th Feb) is bringing us a huge array of prominent speakers (Owen Jones amongst them), presentations, seminars and plays. We yearn for the days of the Great Hall’s peak, when our campus was a huge part of every artistic circuit going, and hope that this goes some way to bringing them back. More information here: https://www.lancasterarts.org/festival-of-questions ***************************************************** DANCZUK WITH THE DOLLY In subtext 128, we took the opportunity to examine the ‘alumni banner’ – a lineup of our notable alumni, with photographs, which appears if you search for the University on Google. Back then, Mr. Jon Moulton was demoted from 1st place to somewhere around 35th place in light of a scandal which involved him making a thousand strong workforce redundant on Christmas Day. These days, this unscrupulous figure is once again on full view in 5th place, a good few positions ahead of… Simon Danczuk MP! Mr. Danczuk has long been featured in the tabloid press as a columnist, although these days he makes their front pages for his less than savoury texting habits, so lagging behind a character like Moulton is no good thing. Nor is having your alumni profile removed from the University website, which would appear to be the case for the unfortunate MP. ***************************************************** SHART ATTACK FROM: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). Dear Mattheus, First of all, please allow me to introduce myself – my name is Mike M. Shart; I’ve been the Vice-Chancellor of LuVE-U for the last four years. I’ve done some research on the NSS Completion Facilitation Unit, harking back to the days when you were known as the ‘Students’ Union’ – I’m sure whatever it is you do is all excellent stuff. I am writing to you today on Hewlett’s recommendation – he tells me that you are the people I need to speak to about setting up student societies. A few months back, we were musing on the ‘Piers Gaveston Society’ – a student group at Oxford University, known for being a breeding ground of future political allegiances, formed over debauched sessions of drinking, drug taking and enterprising sexual congress. Given that this society has bred many influential political figures (including the Prime Minister, whose membership and initiation was the subject of much media attention some months ago), we were eager to set up something similar here, in order to bring us in line with our competitor institutions. As such, I am pleased to announce that as of today, after reaching an agreement with someone willing to lend his name and Honourary Presidency to the club, you will be financing and implementing the ‘Damon Dungczack Society.’ Mr. Dungczack is a highly prolific alumnus of the University, and at present he is a serving opposition MP with, I have been assured, a high profile in the media. Apparently he has been in all the papers, and while I haven’t had the opportunity to research his credentials myself, Hewlett tells me that he has a reputation for a straight talking attitude and is famous for his old-fashioned political operating. I look forward to seeing this exciting new endeavour come to fruition. Best, Sent from my iPad *** FROM: Mattheus St. Clair, CEO, LuVE-U NSS Completion Facilitation Unit. Dear Mike, Thank you for this – no need for introductions, we have met several times before. In fact, I’m presently sat two seats away from you in this finance meeting. I’d be happy to begin implementing this project, although I hasten to add that in the last 45 seconds this meeting has just voted in favour of an 85% staffing cut to the NSS Completion Facilitation Unit. On your instructions. Best, Sent from my iPhone *** FROM: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). Well then, it’s better than I thought – not only will you now have the money to do it; you’ll be able to do it with twice the efficiency! Mike. *** FROM: Mattheus St. Clair, CEO, LuVE-U NSS Completion Facilitation Unit. The staffing costs are to make up 25% of the deficit left by the cut to the block grant, which you also instructed the meeting to vote through. Mattheus. *** FROM: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U). Great! ***************************************************** DELI-DESIGN First, let's be clear. Catering at the University has improved dramatically over the last decade. The food is better, and the areas that it is served in are brighter, cleaner and more professional. Usually. The Venue, of unlamented memory, was a horrible place to use and, one suspects, work in. When it was closed for refurbishment and resurrected as The Deli, one might have been forgiven for heaving a sigh of relief and assuming that this time they would take the opportunity get it right. One might. The aim of any eatery is to ensure that customers are given a range of choices quickly and clearly, that once they make their decision they can place their order simply and speedily, that offering and processing payment is easy, and that the whole scenario is simple, obvious and achieved with the minimum of fuss, inconvenience or delay. The good news is that The Deli avoids the fundamental flaw in The Venue's design, which combined the brilliant idea of presenting one queue with two competing till points with a choice of several equally inconvenient service points. However . . . Walking into The Deli, one is met by a payment point a third of the way along the service area. Before one gets to the salads. In what is described as a "salad bar", which suggests that the salads are the main reason people might be attracted to come to it. One is being asked to pay for one's salad before one gets to see what the salads actually are. So, when asked at the till what salads they'd like, people either go and look, leaving the cashier and the queue twiddling their thumbs, or else they come in at the back of the queue, walk past the queue in order to take a look, and then come back - through the door again if necessary - to rejoin the back of the queue. There's more, but enough. Let's at least celebrate that they got rid of the high chairs that made The Venue look like the café on the old Holyhead to Dublin car ferry. What on earth was that about? ***************************************************** CONCERT REVIEW Decent modern sound equipment can reproduce the original sound of music in the concert hall so faithfully that to some, possibly to many, people there could seem no reason to go to hear concerts at all. Why not listen at home, on that comfy sofa? Yet there is something special about being present in the hall at the very moment the music is performed - the shared experience with the other audience members, the chance to watch the players and the expressions on their faces - which makes a live performance more rewarding than listening to music on online or a concert on the radio. Organ recitals are rather different. They nearly always take place in a church, where the organist is often completely out of sight, so that some of the interest is lost. But not so in Lancaster’s Great Hall, where the organist is on the stage, in full view of the audience. Ok, it’s the view of the organist’s back, so the facial expressions are invisible, but the organist’s feet can be seen, and the feet can be the most interesting bits to watch as they slither crabwise up and down the pedal-board. The University’s new organist, Michael Wynne, gave his inaugural recital in the Great Hall on 26 November. It was a virtuoso programme, of works by Bach, Dupré and Mendelssohn, in which Wynne’s performance of the Bach pieces was outstanding, if sometimes unconventional. The Prelude and Fugue in D major is clearly a very demanding piece to perform, with bravura scales on the pedals and manuals - those on the pedals were breath-taking to watch. The performance of the well-known Toccata and Fugue in D minor (the one featured in Disney’s Fantasia and many horror films) really made your reviewer sit up: it was radically different from the accepted convention of performance in being very non-legato, with large gaps between chords. Perhaps the fact that Michael Wynne habitually plays in large, reverberant spaces, such as St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Cathedral in London, encourages this style of playing. In the dry acoustic of our Great Hall it seemed a little odd, but it certainly made one listen. This was a stimulating recital - a promise of more good things to come, perhaps...? ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear subtext, I read about LUSU censoring SCAN with some nostalgia. In 1997 I was LUSU President. The then SCAN editor wanted to run a 'story' based on his brief conversation with the VC, Bill Ritchie. For no apparent reason our newshound had asked the great man 'have you ever done cocaine?' Bill, baffled, said a firm 'No'. Moments later in the SCAN office there was then a mock up a front page taken in full with the headline "VC DENIES COCAINE SLUR". At that point, I became just another in a long line of LUSU baddy SCAN censors..... In the end, that issue went out with the unrelated headline "HAVE A GOOD XMAS, THEY WILL' above pictures of the VC, University Secretary and the Finance Director and their salary displayed below each mugshot. I've since reflected that good journalists speak truth to power. Great journalists blow raspberries at it. Guy McEvoy [A fantastic story, that subtext has long heard whispered but never had confirmed. We invite readers to write in with similar tales. Eds] ******** Dear subtext, I’d like to subtexts new logo be whatever is on the reverse of that shield. Rob ******** Dear subtext Have you noticed that the University campus is now within a possible fracking area? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35121390 https://decc-edu.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=29c31fa4b00248418e545d222e57ddaa PG ******** Dear subtext, I found a swoosh on the Moodle “down due to planned maintenance” page. One for subtext if still running spot the swoosh. http://oi68.tinypic.com/28a2ikg.jpg Chris Hart [We’ll only stop running it when people stop spotting them. Eds.] ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, James Groves, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, Johnny Unger, and Martin Widden. |
