Student News - January, 2008

This week, One World Week (OWW) sees the University transformed into a global village. OWW, which started on Monday is the largest student-run global event and will run until January 27. Each day takes explores a different part of the world and provides many new and diverse experiences and attractions. OWW gives students a chance to experience new cultures and organisers hope it will raise awareness of various global issues. A number of forums debate the monoliths of terrorism, gender, oil and the media.

Student life is no longer a beans on toast fuelled struggle to survive, but a life of leisure filled with trips abroad, shopping sprees and quality cuisine, says a Guardian survey.

The Students’ Union has announced their reviewed completion date for the Union South rebuild as October 2009. Union South was built more than 30 years ago and the number of students at the University has since increased ten fold. The planned changes promise a dramatic improvement in the Union South in all aspects. The Boar has been told that the construction is going to be carried out as efficiently as possible to stretch the £11 million budget even further. Commercial areas will increase by 40 per cent while space for members will grow by 80 per cent.

The Norovirus hit Warwick university campus during the Christmas holidays: On Saturday 23 December 2007 the university reported a number of cases of diarrhoea and vomiting to the authorities. The infection was identified as Norovirus, a 24-hour stomach bug which had infected 82 people attending the Bahai conference, according to a university spokesperson. After this occurred, the situation was monitored by the Health Protection Agency. The latter expressed the efficient measures taken by university officials.

A Conservative MP has told students at the University that his party have no plans to change the top-up fee system if they gain power. Speaking in an interview with Radio Warwick (RaW), David Willetts MP, the Shadow Universities Secretary argued that there is no evidence indicating that university applications have been- affected by top up fees. Whilst he accepted the present system, he emphasised that “the only case for top up fees ultimately is that they are a benefit to students themselves”.

Last year, the University issued over 330 formal warnings to students, the most of any university in Britain. The figures published under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) show there were exactly 338 formal warnings in the space of a year, for bad behaviour on the campus. Of the 338 warnings, 138 were for breaches of accommodation rules and 121 for unacceptable noise levels. It is not yet known what the remaining 79 formal warnings were for.