We swung open the Vanbrugh saloon doors with all the panache of Butch and Sundance. The Christian Union sloganeers shivering behind their stalls blinked at us hopefully, and proffered Bible passages on biros, mugs and keyrings. Clearly, no thrills were to be had in Vanbrugh. “Where now?” I asked. “You just keep thinking, Blake. That’s what you’re good at”, my housemate replied. The Roger Kirk Centre seemed the next obvious choice, so we staggered in and seated ourselves. “What do you want?” asked an officious catering assistant. “We want the finest wines available to humanity!” I exclaimed. “And we want them here, and we want them now!” She looked at me quizzically. “Sorry, chuck,” she said. “No wine. But I could do you a latte.”

Thus snubbed, we sprawled out onto the tarmac. What thrills now? We decided to catch ourselves a goose, forgetting what every campus-dwelling first year learns: that you never, under any circumstances, mess with the geese. They are the mafia of the wildfowl world. They are dangerous. They are organised. They mean business. We crept across Vanbrugh bowl in the gathering fog, hearts pounding, hands outstretched. The geese were waiting for us: their chests outthrust, their feathers ruffled, their beaks aloft. The leader of the gaggle – the Godfather of geese – waddled forward, eyeing me with intent. “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” I whispered, advancing slowly. In a flash, his neck shot forward – his beak flew open – he let out an almighty hiss. We scarpered with our lives in our hands.

Feeling our welfare had been threatened, we tripped round to the Students’ Union building. Sneaking up the stairs, we pressed our ears to the door and listened. “Have I got a big nose, Anne Marie?” we heard a male voice enquire. “Stop thinking about sex, Matt!” a female voice snapped. “I wasn’t!” he protested. She harrumphed. “You’re always on about it! Will the girls like this? Will the girls like that? Is it too big? Is it too small?” Suddenly, there were footsteps on the stairs behind us, and we were caught snooping by Sam Bayley. “Er, are you the Union for Students at York University?” I stammered, guiltily. “Fuck off! We’re the York University Students’ Union!” he snapped. “Our welfare has been jeopardised by wildfowl!” we wailed. “Not again!” he sighed. “Sorry, but we’re a bit short of welfare ourselves just now.”

As we left the building, it began to rain, so we rolled into McQ’s for a swift gin. Sadly, our visit was cut short by the appearance of erstwhile Vision rottweiler Adam Thorn. “Oh Christ”, I sighed. “Of all the gin joints in all the colleges at this University, he walks into mine.” As we left the bar, my housemate spotted a long-forgotten first-year flame. “Charles!” she squealed. “It’s wonderful to see you!” “Can’t stop, it’s raining” he replied, as he sped by. “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed”, she swooned.

Thankfully, we found refuge in the Careers Service. “Two careers, please”, we perkily requested, dripping on the carpet. But they refused to see us without an appointment, so we cleared them out of PriceWaterhouseCoopers leaflets in a daring act of sabotage, and wended our way despondently home.

On the way, I turned to my housemate in anguish. “Is this what it’s come to?” I whispered, darkly. “I’m bored. I’m lazy. I’m uninspired. I’ve spent all day seeking adventure, and all I’ve got to show for it are soggy trousers and a burgeoning head cold. My whole life is absolutely worthless.” She threw me a sympathetic smile. “Well”, she said, “nobody’s perfect”.

Blake 14:1- the estranged daughter

As I come to the end of three years at university, I am becoming aware of the urgent need to return home. Not just because of the maddening languor of undergraduate life, but because it has become increasingly apparent to me in recent weeks that my family need me.

My father telephoned the other day to inform me that he had just bought a flashing beacon and a set of fluorescent warning strips to affix to his car, “in case of emergency”. Given that my father works from home, and last went out socially in 1983, I can hardly see how this is the slightest bit necessary.

My mother, on the other hand, has begun collecting antique Hindi film posters, lovingly framing them, and hanging them all over the house. The woman has never seen a Hindi film, let alone been to India.

But it is my boyfriend who causes me real consternation. The other day, he informed me on the telephone that he had decided to read all the works of English fiction, starting with Chaucer, in chronological order.

I returned to London at once, since he was clearly unwell. When I reached him, he had just finished recording a 32-track cover version of Uncle Albert—Admiral Halsey by Wings, featuring himself singing 12 separate vocal parts in bass, tenor, alto and soprano, and accompanied by five different types of ukulele.

In one sense, it is comforting that it is not only we students who are regularly driven by sheer boredom to commit acts of unfathomable lunacy. On the other hand, it is distinctly depressing. I had assumed that the moment I graduated I would enter life as a fully functioning, well adjusted and, crucially, reasonable adult. Evidently, I was wrong.

Ennui sets in first, then despair. Productivity is impossible. “I’m bored!” You wail at your housemates every morning. “There’s nothing to do! I’m going mad in this post-apocalyptic winter hell!” “Can’t you start your essay?” they suggest, helpfully. “Of course not!” you bark. “I don’t have any of the books I need!” They blink at you. “Perhaps you could go to the library?” they gingerly enquire. “Go out?” you squeak, incredulous. “Out there? You’re expecting me to trudge for miles through rain, sleet and snow for a few crumby books?”

Even as you utter these words, you catch a glimpse of the view from the window. Outside, the sky is blue, and a pale, winter sun is shining gently through the bare trees. Birds are singing. Children are playing on the grass. You draw the curtains. “I’m staying here”, you say, firmly. “Suit yourself”, say your housemates, and continue going about their busy, fulfilling lives.

Now the house is empty, and you are forced to entertain yourself. Perhaps you could have a stab at one of those job applications? Not wise, you think. You’re riddled with Seasonal Affected Disorder; potential employers will sense the lethargy a mile off. How about finally getting started on Crime and Punishment? Well, maybe. But just one episode of the West Wing first. Oh, and there might be a bar or two of chocolate in the fridge…

And this is how, night after night, my housemates return, flushed and bright-eyed from long days of rewarding endeavour, to find me sprawled on the sofa, surrounded by half-eaten snacks and discarded wrappers, and embarking upon episode fourteen.

It’s a curious thing, the obsession among some students with fast-paced, dizzyingly scripted American dramas like the West Wing. My theory is that we’re bored enough to crave high action and stimulating dialogue, and listless enough never to try creating it for ourselves. These shows are the perfect antidote to the monotony of undergraduate life.
In the onscreen corridors of power, the likes of Josh Lyman and Sam Seabourn stroll faster than I run, sipping coffee and communing in urgent tones. In the Situation Room, Leo McGarry slams his fist on the table, enraged by the truculence of yet another rogue state. The Leader of the Free World (Martin Sheen) rises to his feet, thundering “I’m tired of waiting, dammit! This is candy ass! We are going to draw up a response scenario, I’m going to give the order, and we’re going to strike back today!” “Yes!” I cry, reaching for another doughnut. “That’s exactly what I would say if I were President!”

On my own for hours, watching the West Wing with the curtains drawn, the boundaries between fiction and reality can become alarmingly blurred. Why isn’t real life like this? These glowing, wisecracking stars make my real friends look like pasty, vapid zombies. They don’t understand me! They don’t see I’m a world-class strategist and policy maker; my searing wit is lost on them. Perhaps they’re jealous? Perhaps I should go to Washington, hurl myself into the cut and thrust of U.S. politics, and start a new life…

Suddenly I am C.J. Cregg, striding back and forth the Oval Office. I counsel the President. I brief the press. I practise whipping off my glasses and slipping them back on again for maximum effect. There’s a commotion in the office. We’re polling to establish our job approval; bad results could scupper our chances of a second term. Others have become bogged down in detail, but I see the bigger picture. “This is an important poll!” shout Josh and Leo. “I’m well aware of its importance” I reply acidly, swinging my glossy auburn hair. “I’m also aware that if we don’t start the phone banks right now, I won’t have time to leak the internals to media outlets before we hit the weekend!” The others nod sagely, wowed by my lucidity and candour. “Start the banks!” I cry, and 30 men and women obediently pick up their phones and start dialling.

My telephone rings. I snatch it up eagerly, yelling “Give me some good news, goddammit!” into the receiver. It’s my mum. She wants to check I’m eating properly. I survey the carnage of comestibles around me, and utter a low, guttural groan.

I am not in Washington. I am not eating properly. And it is still winter. “Have you made any progress with your work?” she asks, nervously. I tell her that she should not expect too much too soon. Checks and balances make rapid change impossible. We have to take Congress with us.

Blake 13:32: the parable of Chav D

My personal congratulations go out to Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, YUSU’s diminutive Academic and Welfare Officer turned free-marketeer, who lent clout to the Union’s decision to scrap its Ethical Merchandising Policy last week by swinging the clunking fist of student welfare directly into the beatific face of Dan Taylor, self-appointed Guardian of Public Morals and sometime scourge of the NUS.

If the slurred reports of onlookers are to be believed, the spat occurred when Taylor, a giant among men in physique if not in subtlety of thought, approached Fletcher-Hackwood outside Chav D.
Drawing himself up to full height and salivating visibly, he bellowed: “You guys are, like, well hypocritical about all that ethical merchandise stuff!” Whereupon, Fletcher-Hackwood, who makes up in pluck what she lacks in stature, shrieked “Ethical merchandise? I’ll show you ethical bloody merchandise!” and swung in a stiff right hook.

Quite how she managed to reach his hairy earlobe, which is where the clunk apparently landed, is a matter still under investigation.

However, few would deny that the episode is a modern fable of biblical proportions. Move over David! Step aside, Samson! This spunky heroine doesn’t even need a slingshot – she’ll floor Goliath and strike a blow for feminism with a mere flick of the wrist!

“Sound the alarm! Call the police! I’ve been assaulted!” the stricken giant was heard to roar, as Fletcher-Hackwood beat a hasty retreat to higher ground. “Gutted, mate. You’ve just been whacked by a midget,” his loyal companions helpfully intoned.

Surely, this is the stuff that dreams are made of.

I’ve tried to love my fellow human, really I have. But I can’t get past the fact that, by and large, people are really, really, toe-curlingly awful. Our cities are rammed with men and women who make snorting noises when they laugh, carry out buttock-clenchingly inane conversations loudly on buses, show a wilful disregard for the proper use of the English language, and unashamedly pick their noses. It’s revolting.

Given all this, it’s probably rather a good thing that I spend most of my time sheltered from the putrid mass of seething humanity by confinement to the campus bubble, and that wider society, in turn, is spared exposure to me. Unfortunately, this comes with the downside of a pathological abhorrence of those foibles particular to students. For example, there are times – most of the time, in fact – when I fear that if I hear the words “I was unbelievably battered” once more, I might go feral and eat my own fists. (For the record, there is absolutely nothing unbelievable about your having been being “battered”. We are all battered, all the time. It’s the only way of mitigating the ceaseless tedium of each-other’s company).

The thing which raises my misanthropic hackles more than anything, though, is the sort of flabby faux-activism which leads our students to join ‘campaigning’ Facebook groups, or sit about loudly and drunkenly proclaiming the evils of capitalism, without ever really lifting a political finger. Don’t mistake my meaning: I’m not staking any claim to political virtue, but at least I’m prepared to admit that I’ve never so much as thrown a sausage to a worthy cause. False worthiness is the most singularly maddening trait common among students.

My last run in with such worthiness came at an unfortunate time. Though few and far between, there are moments in the life of even the bitterest curmudgeon when it just so happens that no-one in the vicinity is saying or doing anything to betray the worthlessness of humankind. Naturally, such moments of contentment are sacred, and this was one of them.

After a seemingly interminable stretch in the joyless wilderness which is the J.B. Morrell library, I was finally ensconced in the pub. The fire crackled merrily in the grate; the pint of bitter between my hands was almost full; no-one was snorting or belching or sabotaging the English language, and I was just settling down to lose a pleasant evening in ale-soaked oblivion. It was at this moment that one of my companions – a woman I’d never met before – turned to me, fixed me intently with a soulful gaze, and asked me pleadingly “Have you worked out what to do about Burma yet?”

I blinked. Had I heard her correctly? Was it possible that someone was asking me – me, who still can’t actually tie my own shoelaces – if I had found “something to do” about the crisis of bloody oppression playing itself out some 5,000 miles away to the unanimous horror of the watching world? “I beg your pardon?” I stuttered. Her pleading gaze widened. “What shall we dooo?” she wailed. “I mean, it’s so awful. We must do something!”

Seriously, what does one say to such a person? My instinct, of course, was to reply “Do you know, it’s funny you should ask, because I did actually work out exactly what needs to be done to remedy the whole pesky mess just this afternoon. No of course I haven’t ‘worked it out’, you blithering twat!”

This strange belief that it might – just might – be possible to heal the great ills of the world through slurred debate over a pub table is curiously prevalent among students. Why is this? Perhaps we are so comfortably reconciled with the fact that nothing we think, say or do ever amounts to anything more significant than a typed figure on a bit of paper tacked to a crummy departmental notice board, that there seems nothing strange about expending such fervour without effect. Many would argue that this woman’s futile compassion is infinitely preferable to my churlish ennui, and they’d probably be right. Like I said, I’m afflicted: I’m the first to admit my mind is addled with blind ill humour.

Whichever way you look at it, my fragile equilibrium was shattered. Had she not caught me at a moment of antecedent calm, the evening’s hair-tearing would have started there. But empathy got the better of me, just about. She was hopelessly earnest; I couldn’t be cruel. “Um, can’t say I have, actually,” I mumbled. She looked downcast. “No, me neither” she admitted, lip wobbling. “Perhaps we should set up a Facebook group?”

The Lion, the Witch and the Minge

Obviously, the best thing to do when you find yourself in tedious company, is to get as drunk as possible, as fast as possible. The inevitable dreariness of human conversation is the main reason people drink. This is why people don’t often get drunk alone.

Unfortunately, however, becoming insensible through alcohol abuse takes time. Therefore, there will be at least a couple of hours in an evening spent with ‘friends’ during which one finds oneself in the uncomfortable position of having to make the effort to speak to other people, show an interest in them and find out about their lives.

I have found a cunning way around this. Believe it or not, there is a way of filling the awkward interlude between the start of the evening and alcoholic oblivion with sparkling and witty repartee, without expending any effort. It is called the Minge Game.

The rules of the Minge Game are deceptively simple. You simply take the title of a well known film, book or song – or a popular saying of some kind – and substitute one of the crucial nouns with the incomparable word “minge”.

You end up with classic films such as Gone with the Minge, Four Minges and a Funeral and Mingefinger. In popular sayings, there’s “a minge in time saves nine”, “an eye for an eye and a minge for a minge” and, best of all, “one man’s minge is another man’s poison”.

My favourites are the children’s books (there’s nothing so amusing as perverting the acoutrements of youth) – there’s George’s Marvellous Minge, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Minge, and James and the Giant Minge. Bloody marvellous.

Former YUSU Academic and Welfare Officer Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, who was forced to resign after hitting second-year student Dan Taylor, has claimed that she was driven out because she was a “personal hate figure” for the campus right wing. Fletcher-Hackwood lost a vote of no confidence proposed by Taylor, which generated an unprecedented turn-out of 1400 students, by just eight votes.

Speaking exclusively to Nouse in her first interview since losing the vote on February 7, Fletcher-Hackwood said: “I don’t think anybody’s fooled for a second into thinking that Dan Taylor believed I couldn’t do my job. He doesn’t care, because he doesn’t think YUSU should exist. But the things I’ve done during my time at York – my feminism, and standing as a Labour councillor – have made me a personal hate figure not just for him, but for a lot of the right wing on campus. The chance to get rid of me just wasn’t something they were going to pass up.”

Fletcher-Hackwood hit Taylor outside a Chav D event in January, during an argument over whether YUSU should use ethical merchandise. Taylor proposed a motion of no confidence the following week, which was discussed at a Union General Meeting on Januar 30, and voting was carried out subsequently online. Despite losing by only eight votes, Fletcher-Hackwood has decided not to appeal at an Emergency General Meeting, on the grounds that “It would be too messy”.

Though Fletcher-Hackwood has questioned Taylor’s motives for proposing the vote, she acknowledged that the result was ultimately decided by the student body. “I know there aren’t 656 people who hate me personally. It’s obvious that a lot of people voted because they genuinely thought that someone who hits a student isn’t a suitable welfare officer, and I can’t blame them for that. But I think a lot of that was due to manipulation by Dan. He was always going to use this for personal and political capital,” she said.

Taylor denies that his decision to propose the vote was motivated by personal dislike. He said: “I believe that the decision should be in the hands of students as to whether they wish to keep an Academic and W­elfare officer in her position after assaulting a student. That is what the incident boiled down to when one was sensible and removed the personalities involved. I hoped that Grace would have the self-respect after the incident to resign. Clearly she saw her position as a right and not a privilege, and her lack of integrity shone through.”

Having resigned her position, Fletcher-Hackwood plans to move to Manchester, where she will take a law conversion course. She said: “Dan Taylor doesn’t appreciate what he’s done. He didn’t care what happened to YUSU, and he probably finds it very funny that he’s taken away something so important to me. But to me, and to YUSU, this is not a game. It’s something really quite serious, and it has been very upsetting.”

YUSU President Anne-Marie Canning, who will take over the Academic and Welfare brief until the end of the year, said she accepted Fletcher-Hackwood’s decision not to appeal. She said: “We support Grace in her decision which no doubt was a difficult one to make. The sabbaticals are saddened to have lost a member of the team but we wish Grace luck in all her future endeavors.’”
Canning admitted that the EGM would have been difficult politically. She said: “It would probably have undermined people’s faith in the UGM and could have possibly disenfranchised various students. In terms of moving forward for the Union this is the best result.”

Fletcher-Hackwood’s office has been emptied of her personal belongings and its resources made available to college welfare teams.

Heidi Blake speaks to Grace Fletcher-Hackwood on the eve of her departure from the University of York.

Grace Fletcher-Hackwood is never out of place at the centre of a political storm. In her four years at YUSU, she has gained a reputation as a militant feminist and a left-wing firebrand.

She was first threatened with a vote of no confidence when, as Women’s Officer in 2006, she protested angrily against proposals to remove equality officers from Executive Committee. She promptly resigned, freeing herself to spearhead the prominent “Vote No” campaign which ultimately derailed the proposals, and was gloriously reinstated weeks later, having shored up the position of liberation officers in the Union.

Sadly, the circumstances of Grace’s resignation from the position of Academic and Welfare Officer this February were very different. She was forced to go by a vote of no confidence of unprecedented scale, which she lost by eight votes. She relinquished her office not in willing service of a noble cause but because, during a drunken row over ethical merchandise, she had assaulted second-year student Dan Taylor.

Grace now plans to leave York for good after five years, and has agreed to give one last interview to Nouse before she goes. Looking tired and drawn, she speaks wearily of the events of the past few weeks. “As soon as we realised a vote of no confidence was on the cards Jolene, the Union Manager, said ‘Okay Grace, this is going to be the worst couple of weeks of your life’. And it has been. I’m just glad it’s over.”

Grace has decided that to appeal against the vote would be “too messy”. She plans to move as soon as she can find a flat in Manchester. “Of course I’m really, really sad. I regret what I did, and I regret what it led to. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, so I’m moving on and it’s quite exciting. I don’t want to be one of the former sabbs who hangs around,” she says, with a wry smile.

In her capacity as Academic and Welfare Officer, Grace was responsible for the advocacy and protection of students. So how did she come to hit Dan Taylor? “Nothing personal, obviously”, she says. “We’ve just known and loathed each other for about 18 months.” Grace continues, apparently unaware of the incongruity in what she says. “It’s a horrible irony on my entire time here that we were arguing about whether the Union should use ethical merchandise.”

Taylor, who tabled the vote of no confidence against Grace and led the campaign for her removal, has argued that her assault was entirely unprovoked. Is this true? Grace looks pensive. “I don’t want to make it sound like I sought him out to hurt him because he’s always irritated me, but we’ve disagreed for a long time because he’s a very right wing Conservative and I’m a left wing member of the Labour party. Of course, just because Dan is not a very nice person doesn’t mean it’s okay for people to hit him. But I was very frustrated by his total lack of concern about ethical merchandise.”

Grace says she realised the seriousness of what she had done immediately, and sent Taylor a message of apology the following morning. By his own admission, Taylor replied telling Grace she was ‘forgiven’, but days later, he went to the campus media with the story. Grace says she was baffled by his change of heart. “I thought for a while that he considered my abject apology a victory in itself, but the next I heard about it was when Nouse found out, and then he proposed the vote against me days later.”

Grace believes that Taylor’s decision to pursue a vote of no confidence was motivated by personal and political malice. “I don’t think anybody’s fooled for a second into thinking that Dan believed I couldn’t do my job. He doesn’t care, because he doesn’t think YUSU should exist. But the things I’ve done during my time here – my feminism, and standing as a Labour councillor – have made me a bit of a personal hate figure not just for him, but for a lot of the right wing on campus. Obviously, a lot of people voted because they genuinely thought that someone who hit a student isn’t a suitable welfare officer, and I can’t blame them. But I think a lot of that was due to manipulation by Dan.”
During the campaign against her, both Dan Taylor and former Vice-President of the York Tories Thomas Crockitt posted allegations on Facebook that Grace had taken two years out of university due to a nervous breakdown.

Grace responds to these accusations with obvious indignation. “The thing which amazes me about what Dan Taylor did was not the fact that he lied, but the fact that he thought that would be an insult. I took a leave of absence for two terms because I had absolutely no money, so I was trying to do a 25-hour working week, and my degree, and YUSU. But does he really think that, if I did have a nervous breakdown, that would make me a terrible person?”

Despite Grace’s claims of a right-wing vendetta against her, some of her opponents came from other quarters. Joey Ellis, YUSU Student Development and Charities Officer, called for her colleague’s resignation at the Union General Meeting, on the basis that “violence of any kind is unacceptable”. Grace is clearly hurt by Ellis’s decision to lend weight to the campaign against her. “I don’t understand why she feels so strongly about this, although obviously I entirely respect her opinion”, she says. “Her speech was very unexpected. It’s sad, because when we were all sabbs we were really good friends and now, fairly obviously, we’re not. I never imagined this might happen.”
Though she feels hurt, Grace is determined to remain positive in the face of adversity and maintains her loyalty to the Union. “The value of YUSU is immeasurable”, she says and it is her achievements as a sabbatical officer of which Grace feels most proud.

“Doing the extra bit for students…Those things make a difference.” Grace’s smile is suddenly overcast. “I feel really bad now”, she says. “I was going to say the main thing is just being there for students. But I’m not there anymore, and that feels really sad.”

“You feel like you’re making a difference every day. I’ve been a YUSU officer longer than I’ve been anything else, and everyone knows how much student welfare means to me.”

She considers her role in derailing the anti-equality proposals one of her biggest achievements on YUSU, as well as helping to change a culture of casual sexism on campus.

However, it is her achievements as a sabbatical officer of which Grace feels most proud. 150 people used her new chlamydia testing service last term. “It’s the little things like that, the individual successes, which matter”, she says, smiling. “And doing the extra bit for students.

Those things make a difference.” Grace’s smile is suddenly overcast. “I feel really bad now”, she says. “I was going to say the main thing is just being there for students. But I’m not there anymore, and that feels really sad.”

When someone comes in and tells you they’re scared to go and see their supervisor, it’s so much easier if you just go with them. Someone came in for a pregnancy test once, and she didn’t want to see the results on her own, so I sat and had a cup of tea with her while she waited.

She was first threatened with a vote of no confidence when, as Women’s Officer in 2006, she protested angrily against proposals to remove equality officers from Executive Committee. She promptly resigned, freeing herself to spearhead the prominent “Vote No” campaign which ultimately derailed the proposals, and was gloriously reinstated weeks later, having shored up the position of liberation officers in the Union.

“I thought I would never want to see anyone from the Union again, but it’s not like that. I planned lots of nasty bitter things to say if I lost, but it’s a lot less weird than I thought it would be.”

Hackwood’s time at york

March 2004 – January 2006: After being elected as Women’s Officer for two terms she was threatened with a vote of no confidence for protesting against proposals to remove liberation officers from Executive Committee and thus resigned. She was later re-instated in a by-election.

April 2006-March 2007: Fletcher-Hackwood was elected as YUSU Policy and Campaigns Officer alongside being Vice Chair for the Univeristy of York Labour Club.

March 2007: She was elected as Academic and Welfare Officer in the YUSU elections .

May 2007: She came third in the York City Council elections standing as the Labour candidate for Heslington.

January 2008: Fletcher-Hackwood was forced to resign after losing a vote of no confidence put against her for hitting a student outside Chav D.

I’ve tried to love my fellow human, really I have. But I can’t get past the fact that, by and large, people are really, really, toe-curlingly awful. Our cities are rammed with men and women who make snorting noises when they laugh, carry out buttock-clenchingly inane conversations loudly on buses, show a wilful disregard for the proper use of the English language, and unashamedly pick their noses. It’s revolting.

Given all this, it’s probably rather a good thing that I spend most of my time sheltered from the putrid mass of seething humanity by confinement to the campus bubble, and that wider society, in turn, is spared exposure to me. Unfortunately, this comes with the downside of a pathological abhorrence of those foibles particular to students. For example, there are times – most of the time, in fact – when I fear that if I hear the words “I was unbelievably battered” once more, I might go feral and eat my own fists. (For the record, there is absolutely nothing unbelievable about your having been being “battered”. We are all battered, all the time. It’s the only way of mitigating the ceaseless tedium of each-other’s company).

The thing which raises my misanthropic hackles more than anything, though, is the sort of flabby faux-activism which leads our students to join ‘campaigning’ Facebook groups, or sit about loudly and drunkenly proclaiming the evils of capitalism, without ever really lifting a political finger. Don’t mistake my meaning: I’m not staking any claim to political virtue, but at least I’m prepared to admit that I’ve never so much as thrown a sausage to a worthy cause. False worthiness is the most singularly maddening trait common among students.

My last run in with such worthiness came at an unfortunate time. Though few and far between, there are moments in the life of even the bitterest curmudgeon when it just so happens that no-one in the vicinity is saying or doing anything to betray the worthlessness of humankind. Naturally, such moments of contentment are sacred, and this was one of them.

After a seemingly interminable stretch in the joyless wilderness which is the J.B. Morrell library, I was finally ensconced in the pub. The fire crackled merrily in the grate; the pint of bitter between my hands was almost full; no-one was snorting or belching or sabotaging the English language, and I was just settling down to lose a pleasant evening in ale-soaked oblivion. It was at this moment that one of my companions – a woman I’d never met before – turned to me, fixed me intently with a soulful gaze, and asked me pleadingly “Have you worked out what to do about Burma yet?”

I blinked. Had I heard her correctly? Was it possible that someone was asking me – me, who still can’t actually tie my own shoelaces – if I had found “something to do” about the crisis of bloody oppression playing itself out some 5,000 miles away to the unanimous horror of the watching world? “I beg your pardon?” I stuttered. Her pleading gaze widened. “What shall we dooo?” she wailed. “I mean, it’s so awful. We must do something!”

Seriously, what does one say to such a person? My instinct, of course, was to reply “Do you know, it’s funny you should ask, because I did actually work out exactly what needs to be done to remedy the whole pesky mess just this afternoon. No of course I haven’t ‘worked it out’, you blithering twat!”

This strange belief that it might – just might – be possible to heal the great ills of the world through slurred debate over a pub table is curiously prevalent among students. Why is this? Perhaps we are so comfortably reconciled with the fact that nothing we think, say or do ever amounts to anything more significant than a typed figure on a bit of paper tacked to a crummy departmental notice board, that there seems nothing strange about expending such fervour without effect. Many would argue that this woman’s futile compassion is infinitely preferable to my churlish ennui, and they’d probably be right. Like I said, I’m afflicted: I’m the first to admit my mind is addled with blind ill humour.

Whichever way you look at it, my fragile equilibrium was shattered. Had she not caught me at a moment of antecedent calm, the evening’s hair-tearing would have started there. But empathy got the better of me, just about. She was hopelessly earnest; I couldn’t be cruel. “Um, can’t say I have, actually,” I mumbled. She looked downcast. “No, me neither” she admitted, lip wobbling. “Perhaps we should set up a Facebook group?”

The Lion, the Witch and the Minge

Obviously, the best thing to do when you find yourself in tedious company, is to get as drunk as possible, as fast as possible. The inevitable dreariness of human conversation is the main reason people drink. This is why people don’t often get drunk alone.

Unfortunately, however, becoming insensible through alcohol abuse takes time. Therefore, there will be at least a couple of hours in an evening spent with ‘friends’ during which one finds oneself in the uncomfortable position of having to make the effort to speak to other people, show an interest in them and find out about their lives.

I have found a cunning way around this. Believe it or not, there is a way of filling the awkward interlude between the start of the evening and alcoholic oblivion with sparkling and witty repartee, without expending any effort. It is called the Minge Game.
The rules of the Minge Game are deceptively simple. You simply take the title of a well known film, book or song – or a popular saying of some kind – and substitute one of the crucial nouns with the incomparable word “minge”.

You end up with classic films such as Gone with the Minge, Four Minges and a Funeral and Mingefinger. In popular sayings, there’s “a minge in time saves nine”, “an eye for an eye and a minge for a minge” and, best of all, “one man’s minge is another man’s poison”.

My favourites are the children’s books (there’s nothing so amusing as perverting the acoutrements of youth) – there’s George’s Marvellous Minge, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Minge, and James and the Giant Minge. Bloody marvellous.

A new academic year brings with it a number of things. Droves of bright-faced freshers tumble noisily around campus, upsetting the wildlife and vomiting into the lake; sullen hosts of jaded second and third years slope sluggishly about, muttering darkly about the youth of today, and newly mandated sabbatical officers occupy the Student Centre, full of the promise of their own brilliance.

Members of YUSU start the year energetic, earnest and open to all comers. Sabbatical officers will gaily entreat you to “Come and say hi when you see me in Your:Shop! Find me in Toffs and I’ll buy you a drink!” Sadly, the executive core of the SU rarely maintains this level of professional peachy-cleanliness beyond the first couple of weeks of term.

One of the main reasons sabbatical officers come a cropper is their inability to decide whether they are freewheeling, zany students or serious executives. On the one hand, they are fresh out of their undergraduate nappies; chiefly mandated to organise piss-ups and distribute free condoms. On the other, they stress the gravity of their welfare role with their hands on their hearts, claim thousands of pounds’ worth of your tuition fees in salary, and vigorously defend their right to censor the student media.

Last year, when Nouse printed leaked details of a “freshers sex bingo” game devised by the then sabbatical team, debate raged about how much professionalism it is reasonable to expect from Union officers. When one high spirited member of last year’s team sent a mock invitation to a gay orgy out to hundreds of students, many felt an important line had been crossed.

Against this grubby backdrop, the news that this year’s sabbatical officers have chosen “professionalism” as their buzzword should be met with happy relief. Anne-Marie Canning’s newly inaugurated team are to be found, even as you read, beavering away behind immaculately tidy desks in a freshly spruced office, suited and booted for all the world to see on their new 24-hour webcam.

The once notorious Matt Burton (Services and Finance) and Sam Bayley (Societies and Communications) are pioneering a strict rebranding programme, and are not afraid to rap the knuckles of those who fail to adhere to it. It’s YUSU, but the way, not the SU, and what was the Academic and Welfare drop-in service is now the nauseating “Your:Support”.

A move to ban jeans and casual clothing from the office altogether met resistance from Grace Fletcher-Hall, this year’s resident fly in the ointment, who demanded her right to dungarees and denim, on the basis that “If I don’t look like a student, students won’t want to approach me.”

Perhaps she has a point. Is true professionalism really just sartorial? Well, yes, according to Sam Bayley, who swears “All you have to do to be professional is stick on a suit. If you dress right, people take you more seriously.”

When asked what YUSU’s key objective is to be this year, other than “being professional”, Sam Bayley’s answer did not inspire a great deal of confidence. “Uh, I dunno, really. We’ve talked about it, but we can’t really think of anything that isn’t a joke. How about ‘Let’s have a good year?’” Well, yes please, that would be nice. Any idea how you’ll go about it?

The graffiti drawing of a spurting phallus on Canning’s Facebook profile, which she uses to organise YUSU events, does little more to convince me that this Students’ Union are any more truly professional than the last. Nor rumours that Fletcher-Hall vomited drunkenly into Burton’s lap at a recent NUS conference (“He was the only person in sight!” she explained).

No doubt if we are to take our Union at all seriously, they must be professional about what they do. But professionalism is more than just a euphemism for dressing up in daddy’s clothes. It is about serious and skilled application to the task at hand.

If putting on a suit and tidying up the office helps with being taken seriously, then by all means, let’s. But I hope that this year’s team will harness their starburst of start-of-year zeal and remember that what we ask for when we demand their professionalism is a Students’ Union which is run by students for students, and run well. We want officers with fire in their bellies, who turn their hands to the task with passion and ability, and who never forget that it is our money and electoral mandate which put them where they are. If they could only get this right, they could come to the office in sackcloth for all I care.

Being, as we are, an under-funded small-campus tabloid struggling to maintain honorary broadsheet status, it is not uncommon for accusations of pomposity to be levelled at Nouse. Having actually converted to broadsheet, albeit for only one special edition, will be interpreted by many, it can be assumed, as a further manifestation of that pomposity. And to an extent, that is probably a fair assessment.

After all, the broadsheet format is certainly an unusual choice in these heady, modern times. With the rise of communications technology in its myriad forms, and the resulting diversification of media outlets, print is considered by many to be an out-moded and soon-to-be defunct medium. The impact of the communications revolution on the media industry is playing itself out for all to see both nationally and internationally. And we are not immune: that revolution has arrived on campus, too, albeit on the microcosmic scale on which most things in York are undertaken.

Campus media groups are being forced to diversify in just the same way as their national and international counterparts. This explains why both Nouse and York Vision have drawn out fresh journalistic battle lines on our respective websites, with exclusive content increasingly being posted online by both. It explains too why Nouse— staunch print devotees that we may be—now foray each edition into the world of broadcast media with our online podcasts; why URY and YSTV have begun streaming their output over the web, and why Daniel Ashby, previously editor of Vision, threw in the towel with print and set up his own news and features website, the Yorker, which he hopes will be every student’s homepage before the year is out.

In this context, the choice to go broadsheet seems a strange one indeed. Even in print circles, the broadsheet is seen as a dying form in the UK (though it is more healthily represented internationally, particularly across the Atlantic). Broadsheets may not be as elegant as the Berliner form which the Guardian has adopted instead; nor are they as portable as the increasingly ubiquitous tabloid. But, for all we might be pompous, Nouse has no real pretentions either to chic elegance or to portability.

We do our best, however, to pay attention to the way you read the paper and we are aware that, because few of you will read us on the commute or in transit, you do not necessarily require such standards of portability from us. You will most likely be reading Nouse lounging in the JCRC, spreading it out on your kitchen table in halls, or curling up with it on your sofa at home. Unwieldy as it may be to read on the bus, there is no better format than the broadsheet for lounging with. And since it’s the end of the academic year, and lounging is the order of the day, there seemed no better form for our graduation special edition to take.
So we hope you will sit back, relax and enjoy lounging with this particular broadsheet…

It wasn’t until her family threatened her with genital mutilation that Florence Moses finally attempted to escape from her home in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Having come out as a lesbian to her family in 2002 at the age of 22, Florence was forced into a marriage with her cousin in which she was repeatedly raped and beaten. When she continued to fight against her cousin’s sexual violence, in earshot of other members of the family living in the house including her mother and aunt, the idea of vaginal circumcision was proposed as a ‘cure’.

Florence fled to the United Kingdom and arrived in January 2003, terrified, confused and three months pregnant as a result of rape. She was denied asylum by the British authorities on the grounds that her claim was incoherent and that the persecution she had received in Sierra Leone was “not sufficiently serious”.

Florence and her son Michael now face detention and deportation at any time. This year, the National Union of Students adopted the campaign to keep Florence and Michael in the UK, which is spearheaded by the Manchester Lesbian Community Project (LCP), as one of its main LGBT campaign objectives.

I?have planned to spend a day with Florence in Manchester, where she is currently living, in order to find out more about the life she fled in Sierra Leone and her experiences at the hands of the asylum authorities since arriving in the United Kingdom.

It is striking, on first meeting Florence, how well she blends in amidst the stylish crowds of young Mancunians humming past Manchester Piccadilly; she is fashionably dressed in bright, assertive colours and holds herself with an unaffected grace. It is clear, enough, though, from the edgy eagerness with which Florence grasps my hand and begins immediately to speak fervently about her case that she lives in a state of perpetually heightened anxiousness.

After only a few moments, Florence is leading me purposefully through the hot Manchester throng, talking animatedly all the while though with no particular focus, until we reach the relative calm of Piccadilly Gardens. Here, having located a spot in the shade, she seems more able to gather her thoughts, and begins systematically to pull together for me the narrative details of her history.

Florence tells me that she first realised she was a lesbian when she met an American woman called Hilda at Lumley beach in 2002. Their relationship persisted for a month, during which time Hilda awakened Florence to her first sexual experiences. “She showed me all kinds of things” Florence told me. “Amazing things.”

When Hilda returned to America, the pair kept in touch by phone. Florence continued to communicate with Hilda through the abuse and violence she faced from her family, her cousin and members of the surrounding community subsequently to coming out. When she decided to flee after being threatened with vaginal mutilation, it was Hilda who sent over the money which made Florence’s escape possible. Hilda also sent a chaperone who Florence tells me is called Rashid, purportedly to bring Florence to the USA and to deal with all her paperwork. Rashid, however, disappeared when the pair landed at Gatwick airport in transit to America, forcing Florence to seek asylum in the UK. Florence is wary when talking about Hilda and is obviously not keen to answer questions on the relationship the two once shared.

It is partly on the grounds of this reticence to talk about her first sexual relationship that the rejection of Florence’s claim by the British asylum authorities has been based. Karen McCarthy, who is Florence’s voluntary campaign manager at the LCP, told me “there is something very private about Hilda for Florence; there are aspects of that part of her life which she just won’t share, even with me and I’m on her side!”
Karen also tells me that Florence becomes very anxious when talking about all aspects of her case, because she fears that she will, once again, be disbelieved.

Sitting in Piccadilly Gardens, I ask Florence whether she would be willing to let me have a look at her court papers in order for me to understand her situation better. It seems unlikely that she will be able to furnish me with papers dating back three years at such short notice, but to my surprise Florence immediately produces from her trendy ‘tropical surf’ bag a huge wedge of papers which she begins to leaf through keenly. It strikes me that, concealed beneath the vibrant exterior of her colourful bag and stylish appearance, Florence is quite literally bearing the great weight of her troubled past on her shoulders.

She pulls out leaves of paper one by one, and hands them to me, drawing my attention to particular injustices in the decisions presented by the home office, or particularly painful aspects of her personal situation. She tells me that she must carry her papers with her at all times in case she is stopped and searched by the police and can’t prove she is ‘in the system’. Skimming over the pages, I am instantly struck by the clinical phrasing around the tragic details of Florence’s case: “You claim your family beat you up…you claim you began to face abuse from members of the community”.

The opening paragraph of the first refusal letter Florence received from the Home Office in 2004 reads “In order to qualify for asylum under the terms of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the United Kingdom is a signatory, an applicant must show that he has a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. It seems bizarre, even outlandish, that a nation such as the United Kingdom which purports to be both liberal and liberated, should adhere to the minutiae of such an archaic Convention, drawn up 16 years before homosexuality was even decriminalised in the United Kingdom.

The goes on to state that the kind of harm that Florence would be likely to suffer should she return to Sierra Leone “does not constitute persecution as described in the UNHCR Handbook, or as interpreted by the courts.”

Since her initial claim was rejected, Florence has appealed the decision twice without success. A spokeswoman for the LCP claims that Florence’s appeals have been rejected as a result of the “institutional sexism and homophobia of the British asylum system, which does not recognise gender or sexuality as a grounds for persecution.”

It is hard to dispute the institutional sexism and homophobia of a system which does not even recognise persecution on the grounds of gender or sexuality. The use of the pronoun ‘he’ in a letter addressed to a lesbian woman struck me as particularly crass. With devastating irony, the footer to the Home Office letter read ‘Building a safe, just and tolerant society’.

Florence tells me that she lives in a constant state of fear that she will be detained and deported at any time. Like all asylum seekers, she must ‘sign on’ each month at Dallas Court, a reporting centre in Manchester, which I?am told has a reputation for ‘kidnapping people’ and detaining them when they go to sign on. She tells me: “The week before I have to go I don’t sleep. I cry myself to sleep every night. I try to take it out of my mind, but something will always remind you that this is the week.”

Dallas Court does not represent the extent of Florence’s fear of detention, however. She fears that immigration officials may turn up at her house at any hour of the day and night and take her without warning. She tells me she knows women with babies who have been taken from their homes in their nightclothes in the early hours of the morning. “I never forget that.” She tells me. “How can I relax; how can I chill out when I know that might happen?”

It is no wonder that Florence tells me she feels tired all the time. “God knows I am tired of everything. Sometimes I?just want to take my life and be at rest.”

When we pick Michael up from school together at the end of the day, it is clear that Florence has little emotional energy remaining for her highly energetic and demanding son, who is suffering from arrested development and severe speech impediments as a result of the turbulence of his upbringing.

Florence has converted to Christianity since she arrived in the UK and her Manchester house is full of religious icons. A messianic hologram beams down from a high shelf, and mother Mary smiles at us from the wall. There is even a be-tinselled model of Father Christmas on top of the TV set.

It is hard to know whether this is a a hangover from Christmas or a supposedly reassuring Western symbol of the kind of benevolence, generosity and acceptance which this country has has, at least institutionally, failed so completely to bestow upon Florence to this day.

According to Pallas, “whoever drafted the constitution originally wasn’t consistent in their inclusion of trans students.” The joint officers have proposed a re-wording of the constitution to be voted on at the next UGM that ensures trans students are mentioned alongside lesbian, gay and bisexual students in every clause of the LGBT section.

Both Gamble and Pallas have placed trans issues at the top of their agenda as LGBT officers. Gamble, who is a trans-sexual woman, told Nouse that, in her experience, YUSU’s past provision for trans students has been insufficient.

“I felt the support that LGBT could provide in the past was non-existent,” she said. “The only support I got was from friends. There was no way that I could access specific information or somebody to talk to. That’s really what I want to do for people – I want to make it so there is that provision. Unless that’s in place, there’s no way to find other trans people. If you don’t accommodate trans people, they won’t come. Most people see LGBT as LGB with a T shoved on the end for effect, and that has to change.”

Pallas hopes to organise an awareness-raising campaign on trans issues during his time as LGBT officer. The proposed constitutional changes are to be voted on at the UGM this Wednesday.

Heidi Blake speaks to two students about their experiences of dealing with gender transition in a university environment

Students who define themselves as ‘trans’ open themselves up to a bewilderingly plentiful array of identity options, even by post-modern standards. The term is an umbrella which covers those who identify variously as ‘gender queer’, ‘gender neutral’, ‘gender-fluid’, ‘trans-gender’, ‘transvestite’ and/or ‘trans-sexual’.

Despite the continued blossoming of so-called Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) communities at universities around the country, the reality is that trans students remain an all-but invisible presence on most campuses. According to Aimee Gamble, YUSU’s current LGBT officer, who self-defines as a trans-sexual woman, “People just don’t know about trans issues. They think of LGBT as LGB with a T shoved on the end for effect”. It seems curious, in this fast-moving, consumer-driven age in which the principle of free choice reigns supreme, that such ignorance should prevail about a demographic who have made, or seek to make, the ultimate free choice. “That’s why I’m doing this”, Gamble tells me, “because I want to make sure people know about the issues, and that the right kind of support is there for trans people. Unless that’s in place, there’s no way trans students are going to come forward: if you don’t accommodate them, they won’t come.”

Before it was only in my mind that the battle was on. Now it involves everything: my mind, my body and other people

Aimee is a third-year Chemistry student, and is currently the only known trans-sexual at York, though she tells me she has heard there might be others who are not out. She came out to her friends as “trans-something” last Easter, and finally “changed from a man to a woman in Week 2 of Autumn term”. By and large, Aimee’s friends were supportive of her coming out, “apart from one, who was very much like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know you anymore’, but then, after a few weeks, realised that that there was nothing really different; just something more.”

Just after Christmas, Aimee began taking hormones which effectively produce a female puberty (blessedly for her, perhaps, minus menstruation) resulting in softer skin, reduced hair growth, reduced libido, redistribution of body fat, fuller cheeks, some breast and nipple growth, decrease in genital size and, eventually, infertility.

Aimee began to realise she was trans when, at the age of 10, she found herself unable to explain to her mother her “complete horror” at being told she was to be sent to an all-boys secondary school. She describes her school-years as “socially the worst of my life”. She came to a full realisation of her gender issues when she was 17, but wasn’t to act on it until she came to University. “I continued to live as a man at that time because the hardest part is getting it out. I had no-one to talk to about it; I couldn’t talk to my parents because it’s not the sort of thing that you do, so I bottled it in.”

Even at a liberal institution such as York, coming out as the only transsexual on campus must have been a lonely and frightening prospect. How did Aimee cope with the early stages of transition? “I tried the counselling service and they were dreadful—they kept trying to divert onto other aspects of my life which they felt they could deal with, when what I needed counselling for was my trans issues.

Eventually, I found out that I had to go to my GP, so I went to the health centre and they did the usual questionnaire. The GP sent me to an NHS psychiatrist for scrutiny, who sent me away again saying I was just a confused little boy.” By this point, Aimee had already come out as trans-sexual and was living as a woman. Having been dismissed by her psychotherapist, she went away feeling distraught and suicidal. “I felt as though either she was trying to make me feel really shit or what I thought I was wasn’t what I was. One of the theories is that, because there’s money involved and they need to get patient lists down, they try to force you off the waiting list without treating you.” Thankfully for Aimee, when she eventually told her parents, they were not so judgemental. “They were fine about it. My mum wasn’t expecting it when I told her, but she said she wasn’t surprised”.

It was in the summer before Uni that I started transitioning, and I arrived there very much a women and not a trans person

Aimee was finally diagnosed as a trans-sexual following six sessions of private psychiatry and was put on hormone therapy. When I ask about the effects of the hormones, she replies wistfully, “Not much has happened to me physically yet”, but she describes the intense mood swings which are one of the recognised side effects of the treatment. “I’m moody as hell at the moment. Recently, I’ve been going up and down like a yo-yo. I don’t even know myself what’s going on. I’ve been going into depression and I’ve never been so bad before. Last week, I broke down in front of everybody. I was drunk and so were they, but the mood swing was genuine.”

Clearly the process of transition has not been easy so far. Is Aimee convinced that she made the right decision to change? She replies thoughtfully, “I’m convinced that this is right, but life is actually harsher now that it was before; it’s a lot more stressful. You gain in one bit and you lose in the rest really. Before it was okay, because it was only in my mind that the battle was on. Now it involves everything: my mind, my physical body and other people. But it’s one of these things where you’ve got to work on it.”

However, in some respects it sounds like Aimee is happier now than she has been. “In my first year, I was a bit screwed-up, and I spent my second year recovering and coming out. This year, I’ve noticed a big difference. I have a lot more friends now and they’re a lot closer. I feel as though I can actually do things now. In my first and second years, I did very little.”

Aimee says she has been pleasantly surprised by the benign reaction to her transition on campus, though she finds it perplexing that “people on my course still haven’t said anything about it after seven months. People still talk to me as they used to, but no-one’s mentioned it.” She finds it frustrating when people get their gender pronouns mixed up in reference to her, or use the name she went by before the change.

Off campus, things have been harder. “It seems pathetic to get upset by it, but it’s really hard when people shout at you in the street, or ask if you’re a man or a woman.” Perhaps this is why Aimee declares her intention to stay in education “for as long as possible” and plans to stay in York to do a Ph.D.

Despite her commitment to being a woman, Aimee has not made a final decision to have a gender reassignment operation. “The main question for me is, is there a point in it? At the moment I don’t want to be in a relationship, so there isn’t . But if I did then I think that would be the thing to tip me over.”

After meeting Aimee, I spoke to Ruth, a second-year philosophy student at Warwick who also self-defines as a trans-sexual woman. Ruth has been on hormones for six months and has lived in a female role for almost two years. She came out to her mother at 16, though she did not tell her father until two years later. “My mum just didn’t know quite how to deal with it; she didn’t react badly as such. She said she would be there for me, but she had her doubts. Essentially she’s just slowly adapted to it. My dad found it harder to accept, and he still mainly calls me by the old name and mixes his pronouns.”

Ruth tells me she began to come to terms with her trans identity at 16. “I realised that the way I was thinking wasn’t normal. Mostly it was about wanting to wake up in the morning as a girl rather than a boy. I tried crossdressing, but it didn’t do anything much for me. It wasn’t about that, it was that I felt stuck in the way I appeared to the world and the way I acted. I felt uncomfortable trying to put on a male role.

“It was pretty much the summer before I went to University that I started transitioning, and I arrived there very much as a woman and not as a trans person.” The people Ruth lived with in her first year initially did not know she was trans-sexual, though several of them found out through the year. “Most people were very decent about it, because fortunately most of my friends are very openminded. Although one person seems to blank it out almost like it’s something terrible that she doesn’t want to think of, which is quite sad.

“A lot of my friends at Uni still don’t know I’m trans, which was a deliberate decision I made and that’s why I transitioned when I did. I find it hurtful when people take me as male, which still happens occasionally.” It is impossible not to notice that Ruth speaks with a highly feminised voice, and I ask her whether this is the result of the hormones she is taking. She explains that it is not possible for hormones to reverse physical changes like a broken voice. “However, most people’s voices have a far greater range than you’d expect. When I was about 16, my voice had dropped quite late, so I essentially just worked it back up again. And I do student radio, so I suppose I’ve got better at watching my voice. For me, it was a gradual process; other people really work at it.”

Like Aimee, Ruth does not prioritise the gender reversal operation. “My major priority is getting through university, and in terms of being trans, the main thing is about being able to express myself. As far as anything down there is concerned, it’s important but not as important. It’s your outward appearance which matters most.” However, Ruth does plan to have the operation when it becomes financially possible for her to do so. “It is important for me, and for my relationship. I’ve been with my girlfriend for a couple of years now. I’m bisexual.” Ruth met her girlfriend shortly before she transitioned, so I ask her how the change has affected their relationship.

“The intimate bits are very complicated indeed. But it’s certainly possible to be in a relationship and I’m happy to be in one. It’s very difficult for a lot of people, but it’s worked for us.” Similarly to Aimee’s experience at York, Ruth does not feel she has experienced too much adversity living as a trans-sexual at Warwick. “The only prejudice I ever experienced was from someone I tried to buy a banana from in a university café, rather bizarrely. I had a deal card which had my name and photograph on and she refused to believe it was my card, because it was a girl’s picture and a girl’s name. I was looking pretty ambiguous that morning.” Ruth seems to have no major regrets about making the transition: “In a way I’m probably at the best point I’ve been at in my life. I’ve got an active social life, I’m doing alright on my course, and I’m pretty happy a lot of the time about how I look and stuff.”

Despite her positive outlook, there are clearly aspects of trans life which she finds wearing. “I’m still very, very conscious about my appearance. I’ve pretty much got the worries everyone has about ‘Oh my God, do I look alright’, with the additional ‘Does my gender look right?’ on top. But I am growing breasts, which helps because I’ll be able to wear low cut tops soon, rather than stuffing my bra with tissue to appear normal. It’s simple things like that which make a difference. And a lot of the more masculine hair growth dies back a bit with the hormones, although I still have some facial hair. Having to think about these things every day, and being reminded that I’m trans, can be really soulsearching.”

The NHS booklet A Guide for Young Trans People in the UK, stipulates the importance of maintaining a positive identity: “Just because you’re trans doesn’t mean you don’t have the same prospects as everyone else. Trans people usually fall in love, succeed in their chosen careers, have good friends and loving relationships with their family just like everyone else. Living as a trans person might be difficult because society is not equipped to deal with such things. It is up to us to change that and a good start is to remain positive.”

How very true. In the meantime, the rest of society must equip itself to welcome and accommodate brave trans people dealing with what is a complex, fraught, but potentially lifeaffirming choice.

Resources for trans students

YUSU LGBT officers
Aimee Gamble and Matthew Pallas hold regular drop-in sessions for those needing support and advice related to their sexuality or in coping with transphobia.
lgbt@yusu.org

York LGBT Project
A project run by York City Council Youth Service for under-25s, providing a safe space for discussion and meeting new people.The group meets every Thursday in the city centre
info@lgbtyouthyork.org.uk

A website providing information on all things trans, with a forum and a chatroom for discussion and support
www.t-vox.org

GYUK
A web forum for talking about trans issues, coming out, sex and prejudice.
www.gyuk.co.uk

T-Vox
Homophobic and transphobic bullying help
www.officeronline.co.uk

York Men’s 2nds secured a close victory at the end of an exciting day of cricket at the 22 Acres on Friday: having won the toss and batted first, the home team racked up a total of 272 runs which Lancaster failed to match.

After a nerve-wracking start to the first innings, with two wickets falling in the first 8 overs, York’s batsmen finally found their form and maintained a steady run rate, ending all out for 272 after 49 of 50 overs. The batting was galvanised by some magnificent stroke-play from Hudson, who came to the crease at number three and scored an elegant 90 including a smattering of neat boundaries.

Lancaster fought back after lunch and picked up the pace after a slow start, chasing the York total down to a fairly close 232, where they finished all out with four overs remaining.

A Nouse poll has uncovered potentially worrying divisions between international and home students at York, with 49% of international students saying that they ‘feel excluded by British students’ and 30% saying that they have experienced what they consider to be racist attitudes from students or staff during their time at York. This comes at a time when concerns have been raised in some quarters about creeping racial tensions at the University and in York.

Speaking to Nouse on Sunday, Vice Chancellor Brian Cantor broke a long silence on student issues to express his support of international students, saying “The foreign students that come to York are a great benefit to the York community; they do very well, they’re good students, and they go on to do marvelous things in the world. There’s no way we wouldn’t want international students coming here.”

Of all the international students polled, 89% said they enjoy their courses, while 70% said they are involved in extra-curricular activities at the University. However, the Nouse poll, which was conducted over the internet, also revealed surprising levels of racial tension on campus, with many of the participants submitting detailed written accounts of what they consider to be personal experiences of racism.

One participant wrote “Non-academic staff seem to be prejudiced when seeing someone with an Asian appearance. The assumption seems to be that I should be pliant and not protesting when I’m treated in a lax way.” The same participant said he had experienced violent and threatening behaviour on and around campus, on one occasion when “someone in a car tried to attack me with an egg” and another when the driver of a BMW “attempted to intimidate me by pretending he wanted to run me over while I was crossing University Road.”

Bukky Ojo, last year’s SU Racial Equality Officer, said “During my officership, a lot of people did talk to us about experiencing racism on campus.”

Michael Batula, Ojo’s successor as Racial Equality Officer, said in a recent interview with the York Press “There are certainly not any racial undertones at the University. The Students’ Union at the moment is working very closely with the University to ensure all students – particularly internationals who may find it difficult – feel integrated into the University.”

However, concerns about underlying racial tensions in York have been augmented in recent months by the increased presence of the BNP, who put forward candidates in nine York wards in the recent council elections and gained 3,582 local votes. In February this year, Nouse reported that Ogtay Husseyni, chair of Islamic Society, was the victim of an alleged racist incident involving local BNP Officer Ian Dawson who allegedly approached Husseyni and photographed him, threatening to place his photograph on the far-right website Redwatch and telling him to “get out of my f**cking country”. The BNP have recently circulated leaflets in York calling for the burqa to be banned and immigration from Muslim countries to be halted.

Campus newspaper York Vision opened a new area for debate recently with the publication of an article headlined ‘Immigration Shambles’, which claimed “Incredible new evidence suggests that foreign students are exploiting the university to gain entry into Britain”. This claim was based on the fact that 43 foreign students, who have been granted student visas to enter Britain, have dropped out of their courses without informing the University during the last three years.

Of the York Vision article, Brian Cantor said on Sunday “I’m a believer in freedom of speech, but at the end of the day people will make up their own minds, and if you try and play a story up too much then you lose credibility. I’m not saying it has been played up too much; I’m not commenting on that, I’m just saying that the numbers are very low and that people should draw their own conclusions from that.”

“It is also worth noting that there are lots of British students whose whereabouts are unknown, because students have the right to decide where they go. International students are a credit to the University community and as such we should do our best to support visa requirements which make their entry possible.”

York Vision’s editorial (1/5/07) called for ‘students who claim visas on the basis of their place in York’ to be ‘thoroughly scrutinised before they are offered a place to study’. One participant in the Nouse poll said of the article “I found Vision’s latest headlines about the ‘Immigration Shambles’ extremely irritating…Jumping on the anti-immigrant band-wagon that the tackier publications of this country tout is a cheap step back. I have had an amazing time as an international student at York, and do not feel that a more stringent effort to supervise my behaviour would be anything but patronizing.”

Several of the participants in the poll suggested ways in which international students might become better integrated into the campus community. One wrote “I believe international students need to be more outgoing if they wish to improve their experiences. You have to immerse yourself in the culture here in order to gain the most from being in York. Another wrote “I would like to have more chances to meet local residents so as to engage with British culture more easily”. One participant wrote “Studying at York is the greatest experience of my life, but sometimes racist problems spoil it.”

Please read our correction regarding quotations taken from York Vision.

Moore decided to use the supplier, which has come under fire in the past for poor working conditions and the use of sweatshops, despite the fact that the Union Code states that YUSU will promote ‘sound ethical choice’ of products and ‘will purchase, where practical, from suppliers graded highly by the NUSSL Environment and Ethics Committee.’

Tom Moore justified his decision to purchase the merchandise from Fruit of the Loom by claiming that “the order for the shirts was made weeks ago.

“Ordering through ‘fairtrade’ suppliers, which breaches commercial contractual agreements made by YUSU, would mean they simply would not have been delivered on time and they would have cost 60% more to buy.”

Moore also added that the company ADM, through which the SU sources its merchandise, and which deals with Fruit of the Loom, are ecologically sustainable and check the trading standards of the companies they source from. He added “You may also want to ask the YUSU environment and ethics officers as they have checked everything through with this company.”

However, when contacted, the current Environment and Ethics Officers, Tom Williams and Tom Langley, claimed they “weren’t aware that the Roses merchandise had been sourced from Fruit of the Loom” and said they were ”more than a little dismayed to have this brought to our attention – the decision, had we been aware of it, would certainly not have been supported.”
Charlotte Bonner, the previous Environment and Ethics Officer said she “had not been involved in the decision making or even consulted.”

Langley and Williams told Nouse “part of the problem is that until the Ethical Merchandise motion was finally passed at the last UGM members of the union weren’t obliged to consult on merchandise, and so it would have been fully within the AU’s power to order from any company they liked without us being aware of it. The situation is now very different, and from this point on Union merchandise should only be purchased from companies (and initially sourced from manufacturers) that we approve, and I very much hope that this will be the last occurence of its kind.”

Fruit of the Loom have been condemned by the International Textile Garments and Leather Workers Federation as having “a history of virulent anti-union activity” as well as subjecting employees to long hours, “poverty pay” and dangerous conditions reminiscent of a Victorian mill rather than a modern transnational company.

Derwent College decided to unilaterally abandon contracts with the company as long ago as 2005.

The SU has already been caught up in another ethical clothing gaffe earlier this year over the t-shirts for the Viking Raid II, where Fruit of the Loom was the supplier despite objections from Environment Council as well as staff and students. The same excuse was used then as now; that the merchandise would not have arrived in time for the event had it been ordered from a fair trade supplier.

Roses is pre-scheduled to take place every year, arguably giving the current AU adequate time to prepare an order with a manufacturer with a better record on workers’ rights.

With the passing of the recent UGM motion it is hoped that this will be the last time YUSU will order merchandise from a supplier not considered ethical by the NUSSL.

The last couple of weeks at Nouse have been nothing short of eventful; hard as that may be to believe for any resident of soporific old York. We broke a story which went national; found ourselves at the centre of a veritable eddy of media attention; had the distribution of the paper anonymously sabotaged, and became the centre of heated campus debate. More than anything, the events of the past weeks have begged the question: what is the role of the campus media? Are we, as we are given to believing, noble yet fashionably jaded hacks, burdened with the fearsome duty of exposing the truth at all costs, or are we, as one reader has recently called us “nothing but students in a campus society…let down by the odd ‘reporter’ whose disloyalty to fellow societies is deplorable; blinded by the simple desire to have a story published”? In the words of Big Brother: you decide.

What shall henceforth be referred to as ‘the OTC affair’ (or, better, ‘mock-execution-gate’) is a case in point. For those of you who haven’t seen the paper, I’ll recapitulate. Members of the York detachment of the University Officer Training Corps filmed a mock execution while on exercise and placed the footage on You Tube, not long after one Officer Cadet was chastised for arriving at a ‘German’ themed social dressed in the black and white pyjamas worn by concentration camp detainees during the Second World War. The initial question to be asked on uncovering such a story is, of course, ‘how big a deal is this’? Nouse, and the campus media in general, are regularly accused of wilfully sensationalising news items which would otherwise appear anodyne. In fact, I think many of our detractors would benefit from an afternoon spent as a fly on the wall in the Nouse office, not only for the ample opportunities it would provide for us to squash them, but also because I suspect they’d be surprised to observe the length at which we tussle amongst ourselves over these issues.

Surely the principle role of the media, amateur or otherwise, is to hold people accountable by establishing and exposing the truth about their behaviour, so that they think twice before repeating it?

Opinion was divided in the office over the OTC affair. Some felt that what we had uncovered was merely evidence of inevitable, if inappropriate, high spirits. A significant majority, however, felt that what the video represented something far more sinister. The fact that highly educated members of the Officer Training Corps, who are likely to be fast-tracked into positions of military authority, think it is appropriate to simulate an illegal act of extra-military brutality during an otherwise legitimate exercise, and further, to place evidence of the act on the internet, makes a mockery of everything the British Army purports to stand for. When viewed not merely as high spirits, but as a simulacrum of the genuine acts of extreme brutality which have been perpetrated in armed conflicts, most recently in Iraq, this is a grave matter indeed.

I quote, “if you name them it might make them look bad. It might make people on campus turn against them”.

Having established whether or not a story is genuinely news-worthy, a second question which must be asked is whether or not it is right and/or necessary to name the parties involved. In the OTC case, opinion in the office was once again divided as to whether we should name the perpetrators of the mock execution. Some felt that they ought to be exposed for their dangerous behaviour; others thought it would appear vindictive to name them, without adding anything to the story. Debate in the office was ultimately rendered academic when YUSU weighed in and told us we weren’t to name the students concerned because, and I quote, “if you name them it might make them look bad. It might make people on campus turn against them”. Well, no shit, Sherlock. But isn’t that kind of the point? Surely the principle role of the media, amateur or otherwise, is to hold people accountable by establishing and exposing the truth about their behaviour, so that they think twice before repeating it?

It sometimes seems that, as crusading student journalists on a valiant expository mission, all the odds are stacked against us. First, there’s not much to expose because, let’s face it, this is York and very little of interest actually happens here. Second, when we do uncover something worth reporting, we have to battle furiously to get it past the wilfully obstructive, Media Charter wielding, SU. Third, and this is a new one, once we do go to print, anonymous campus vigilantes are so intensely rankled by what we publish that they take it upon themselves to steal and dispose of 1,000 papers out of a print run of 3,000. It’s a wonder we don’t all throw in the towel, take a sledge hammer to our miscreant Macs, and join the rest of York’s student population down the pub.

However, just occasionally, something happens which gladdens the journalistic heart and reaffirms the belief that media freedom is alive and well in democratic Britain at large, for all it may be dampened by bureaucratic expectorations at this University. Joyously, the removal of 1,000 copies of Nouse proved vastly counterproductive when, almost as a result of the sabotage, hundreds of thousands of copies of the OTC story were distributed nationwide in the York Press, the Yorkshire Post, the Northern Echo, the Sun, the Daily Star and the Daily Sport following its syndication on Tuesday. And since Nouse was able to dig deep enough into its rather shallow coffers to reprint the copies which had been stolen, so that students at York did not miss out on the story, or indeed the other 43 pages of the paper on which upwards of 50 members of editorial staff had worked so hard, all was not lost on campus either.

Let me tell you, there’s nothing in the world more encouraging that seeing a story you broke nestled snugly between 8,000 pairs of over-sized breasts in the Daily Sport.

So, as I said, it’s been a more eventful fortnight than most, and at the end of it I feel reaffirmed in my belief that, on balance, what we do here is worthwhile. Let me tell you, there’s nothing in the world more encouraging that seeing a story you broke nestled snugly between 8,000 pairs of over-sized breasts in the Daily Sport. It makes it all seem so infinitely worthwhile. Before I sign off, I’ll extract my tongue from its habitual residence in my cheek and say just one more thing. There has been a great deal of debate about the latest edition of the paper, most of which has been conducted in the comments sections on this website; much of which is concerned with two reporting errors in our most recent news section. It is important that readers of Nouse remember that while, as I have said, our principle aim is to expose the truth, sometimes in the process of attempting to do this, errors will be made. When this happens, we are always deeply sorry, and always willing to print apologies, corrections and retractions. It is important, though, that the small errors we occasionally make are not seen to scupper the standard of reporting across the paper as a whole. Nouse is staffed by committed and talented journalists and editors, who work tirelessly to provide students with an informative, entertaining and edifying student newspaper, gratis. Nouse is a paper produced by students, for students. Like every publication in the country, sometimes we make mistakes. What is vital is that you keep informing us of our mistakes, keep holding us to account, keep debating and discussing the issues we raise and, above all, keep reading the paper. Nouse belongs as much to you as it does to us, and Nouse will always want to know what you think. And now I really will stop blathering, and sign off.

Derek Acorah is the country’s leading spirit medium and ‘paranormal investigator’. Heidi Blake watches his York show and talks to him about the ‘world of spirit’, his ability to see into the future and his 1500 year-old Ethiopian spirit guide, Sam.

Derek Acorah, the UK’s leading ‘full-time spirit medium’, has brought his roadshow to York, and the Grand Opera house is packed to the rafters; alive with nervous chatter. A banner across the bottom of the stage reads, in gothic script: “To the believer no proof is necessary. To the non-believer no proof is possible.” A water-tight disclaimer if ever there was one.

Overhead, on a large plasma screen, pseudo-eerie clips from Derek’s new LIVINGtv show, ‘Ghost Towns’, flash across the screen. As the house lights are replaced by swirling disco colours, an expectant hush falls over the audience, and as a deep American voice boomingly invites us to “sit back and allow the only modern-day Merlin to impart paranormal information you never thought possible!”, Derek Acorah strolls onto the stage.

Derek is a self-styled “full time spirit medium”, operating with the help of his ‘spirit guide’ Sam, apparently an acquaintance from a former life in Ethiopia some 1500 years ago. Speaking to me before the show, Derek told me that he first tapped into his skills as a medium when he was six, when his late grandfather visited him at night. It was not till later, however, that he made contact with Sam and fully realised his vocation. When I asked him about the nature of his relationship with his spirit guide he told me that it extends into his personal life as well as being a key part of his work. “Sometimes I speak to him when I need something answering, or when I’ve got something playing on my thoughts, and he’s the first person I turn to. He’s always constantly around, not always showing himself, not always speaking to me, but he’s there. Next to my wife he’s the closest soul to me. He’s a friend, he’s a father figure, he’s my mentor, he’s someone that I can rely on in every role.”

Derek assures me that a terrorist attack on Britain is imminent, and the royal family murdered Princess Diana.

Now, trundling through his well-honed preamble at centre stage in a melee of coloured light and eerie music, Derek’s speech is punctuated by interjections from Sam, which he registers with a hint of irritation, muttering “thank you, Sam”, and “yes, I’ll get to that, give me a minute!” He begins addressing the audience softly, informing us that there is “a supreme place designated for us all, and our loved ones that have gone before: a realm of light and beauty.” His tone heightens when he declares, with apparent indignation, “I’m always surprised at the number of cynical and sceptical minds who, when you’re having a perfectly normal conversation about the afterlife, completely reject the fact that there is a world of spirit!”

To begin with, it is hard not to be cynical about the integrity of Derek’s work, an impression which is exacerbated by the elaborate showmanship of the production. The swirling coloured lights, booming American voice-over and dramatic clips on screen contribute to a general impression of gimmickry and charade. However, Derek, standing on stage in a simple black suit, is almost devoid of affectation; far more natural in person than the theatrics of his trade suggest. Earlier, when I had asked him what he would say to someone who called him a fraud, he had responded: “Well, people have, and they continue to do so. That’s of no worry to me, because I know that we’re all here on different missions of progression. I don’t scoff at cynical minds: I show them the respect that they deserve, however they might not be in my direction. That’s of no consequence: I’ve got the responsibility of maybe understanding a little bit more than themselves, because they are not ready to accept yet.”

As Derek begins to communicate through Sam with the spirits which apparently manifest themselves on the stage before him, he speaks of them to the audience in such a matter-of-fact way as to lend an air of sincerity to proceedings, albeit against the odds. One lady who appears to him is described awkwardly as “a bonny lady. Not heavy set, but…you know”, all this accompanied by voluptuous hand movements. Later, when he tells us that a middle-aged man has appeared before him, he exclaims “Blimey! He’s a big chap! Huge shoulders!” There is something curiously anodyne about the messages these spirits have apparently come to convey; several of them being largely concerned with DIY. One ghostly apparition brings the message that the plumbing in an audience member’s house is faulty and needs to be repaired, while a visiting father is concerned that his son in law is not keeping on top of the garden. It’s hard to decide if the banality of these messages testifies to their veracity or otherwise. Certainly, contrary to the over-stated theatrics surrounding him, Derek is not interested in putting on a thrilling show.

One thing which seems apparent is that, however dubious the process occurring on stage may appear to an impartial observer, Derek himself is resolute in his belief. When I had asked him earlier whether his preoccupation with the ‘world of spirit’ ever infringed upon his personal life, he had told me: “If you allowed it to I suppose it could do, but I’ve practiced the discipline for a long time, and my lovely wife and my family understand that this is my vocation. But if you didn’t have time out, if you were continually linked to the world of spirit, that would be a hell state to live in.”

The show is not all banality. Some people seem genuinely moved and reassured by the messages they receive.

Speaking of hell, I felt bound to ask what Derek’s take is on the great enigmas of the universe. Is there an afterlife? A God and a Satan? He chuckled nochalently when I put these grand mysteries to him. “Well, there are different dimensions and different realms of the world of spirit. So there’s a bottom realm, which in religion would be called a hell, which houses the not-so-goods, the ones who’ve done horrible things in human time. You can’t really separate a heaven from a hell, because they’re in the same area. The hell as we are taught in organised religion, being down down down in this chasm type thing with fire and stuff, is not real. Our guardian ruler or God has created this realm, but it’s the lowest realm in the world of spirit and in the uppermost realm are the people who’ve done wonderful things. It takes a long time to be in that top realm – it’s like literally being at the right hand side of God. But there’s no Satan.”

I was intrigued by the grave sincerity with which Derek reeled off this ostentatious if convoluted theory, and was driven to ask him, perhaps cheekily, if he was able to deduce something about me which he couldn’t possibly know naturally. He did not appear impressed by this request, and told me sternly, “Well no, of course not, because I’d have to tune in first. All the time you’re in contact with that world there’s a certain drainage, and Sam and I are going to do a show tonight, so I’m saving all my energy for those people who’ve paid for tickets to come in.”

Slightly abashed, I asked him if he knows his own destiny. His response to this was more interesting. “That’s mainly hidden from me, but I do know of one event which will happen in and around my 63rd birthday. At that time I believe I’ll be working a lot in Canada and America, and the plane I go on will come down in icy water. I’m going to be one of three survivors on that plane.” I asked him how he deals with the burden of such knowledge. “When I was told that many years ago, I asked why they had to tell me that. I mean, how am I going to handle it? What do I do? When I get to that point in time do I just not get on a plane? Do I stand in the queue and tell everyone ‘It’s going to come down, don’t get on it?’ Many things, but I came to absolute contentment with it when I realised the purpose behind these things: if on that plane of 179 passengers, 176 have to perish, it is because they have all reached their time, they are ready to pass over to the world of spirit. I don’t go over, and two other people, because it’s not our time. Why do you think it is that when a plane comes down, or in a car accident a handful of passengers will survive? Why? Well, there’s your answer.” Derek also casually imparts a couple of extra pearls of psychic wisdom, in a kind of “here’s one I made earlier” gesture. He tells me that a terrorist attack on England is imminent and vows that the Royal Family was responsible for the death of Princess Diana.

Well, that’s as maybe, but I felt the need to ask what Derek feels he is achieving by “championing the world of spirit”, as he describes it. He cites two examples of times when he really felt his vocation was worthwhile. He told me he was contacted by a mother who asked him to find a healer for her young son who needed a bone-marrow transplant. “I saw with my own eyes the spirit working through healing, and his whole leg, which needed bone marrow or whatever, was healed without any operation. It was complete wonderment to my eyes – it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen.” Slightly more zanily, the other example he cited was of rescuing the spirit of a young woman which had been trapped for hundreds of years in a pub and tortured by the ghost of its former landlord. “Oh, it was a nightmare” says Derek, in a long-suffering tone. “I had to separate the two of them; I finally sent the lovely young lady, who he’d strangled and raped over and over, to heaven. Then I asked for him to be taken to the lowest region of the world of spirit, where he could be properly dealt with. He had been continuing to torment her in the spirit form, it must have been absolutely terrible for her. But she was so so happy that we helped her, and that the angels had come and taken her to her rightful place in the world of spirit.” So apparently it is all worth while, after all.

The show itself is not all banality and DIY. There are moments when members of the audience seem genuinely moved by the messages they receive. One woman is told that her grandmother has returned to help her resolve a dilemma which is troubling her. The woman’s face lights up, and she asks excitedly: “Does she know the dilemma is about her? Is it true what they’ve been saying?” Her relief is evident when Derek replies, “No, it is not true. You can put that out of your mind now.” Others seem reassured to be told that their loved ones are present and looking over them. Derek becomes visibly frustrated when the spirits with whom he is conversing are not recognised by anyone in the audience. “They get terribly upset when they’re rejected” he tells us. “How would you feel if you came back from another world and nobody wanted to know you?” One man in the audience who refuses to believe the messages received by his wife is told that her returning relatives will be visiting him in the dead of night to prove their existence. “You’re laughing now” says Derek. “But you won’t be when you hear the footsteps.” At another point, while Derek is relaying messages to a woman from a spirit she does not recognise, another member of the audience pipes up excitedly “Excuse me Derek, I think that’s my Grandmother you’ve got there!” Irked by this, Derek bellows back “No! No it’s not! I’d know if it was for you. You can’t steal other people’s messages!” There are many things one could say about Derek Acorah, but it would be hard to question the strength of his convictions.

Derek winds up the show with an impassioned plea to “unbelievers” to accept the “world of spirit” into their lives. “You can reject it as often as you like, but if you keep searching, I promise that you will be given proof that you’re eternal.” Then, amidst almost rapturous applause, Derek strides off the stage, calling over his shoulder for Sam to follow him. Looking around at the faces of the applauding audience, most appear to be lit up with belief, though some are sniggering behind their hands. It’s difficult to explain away the accuracy of some of tonight’s messages, though it’s also hard to shake off the impression of a lone man talking animatedly to an empty stage. Either way, however outlandish Derek’s beliefs may be, the sincerity of his faith in the ‘world of spirit’ is there for all to see.

Want more Acorah?

Derek Acorah’s Amazing Psychic Stories
Harper, 2006, £7.99
Our favourite medium provides an insight into his spiritual escapades with a series of tales of real-life ghostly encounters and rescues. Derek answers those burning questions we all harbour about the nature of the afterlife and the intricacies of spirit visitations.

Most Haunted Top 50 Moments
www.livingtv.co.uk/mosthaunted
If you’re hankering after another look at your favourite Derek adventures, Livingtv is now providing a download service of the top 50 Most Haunted moments.

Most Haunted Series 9
Livingtv, Tuesdays 9pm
Derek and the intrepid gang return for a ninth series of ghost-chasing. The show tracks the progress of the spiritual adventurers as they travel to various locations around the country, tapping their psychic reserves as they go.

Psychic SMS Readings
84010, £1.50 per reply
If you’ve got a pressing spiritual matter, text ‘tarot’ and then your query to receive advice from a clairvoyant. “It’s a little like having your own personal Angel in your pocket”, says Derek.

Prostitution has been been much discussed recently, in both the media and Parliament. However, there is far more to the industry than street-walking and drug addiction, as Heidi Blake finds out.

When I asked Corinne, an escort working in Yorkshire, which image she thought was most commonly brought to mind by the term ‘prostitute’, her answer was unequivocal. “People think of a mucky young girl, on drugs, standing on a street corner in a dirty area”, she said. “But that’s a misconception.” The issue of prostitution has been brought to the forefront of the public consciousness in recent months, not least by the lurid media coverage of the murders of five women working in the industry in Ipswich in December of last year. The Home Office consultation paper ‘Paying the Price’, published in 2006, pointed to “organised criminality, including trafficking and substantial drug-misuse, and sexually transmitted infection” as being central problems associated with prostitution. In the then Home Secretary David Blunkett’s foreword to the paper, he claimed that it is “vulnerability and need for affection” which leads women to becoming “trapped in a web of fear and deceit in which drug addiction, prostitution and responding to the demands of pimps becomes a way of life”.

My rationale for doing this tells you it’s been calculated. I’ve found myself in a situation and made it something positive.

The attention of the government, lobby-groups and the media is almost exclusively preoccupied with street-prostitution. Those who oppose the legalisation of the industry largely do so on the basis that it is inextricably linked with crime, exploitation and social nuisance. However, in the course of the debate, little attention is paid to the sort of prostitution carried out by well-resourced, educated women behind the closed doors of private residences and hotels.

One needs only to scratch the surface of the industry to discover that the sex trade in Britain today is not all about the drugs, desperation and exploitation which has become synonymous with the highly-visible street-based brand of prostitution. Hidden away behind carefully worded, chic websites and glossy advertisements exists a world of “high-class” prostitution, beyond the range of vision of campaigning groups and government consultations.

I spoke to four women working as what they called “high-class escorts”; all of whom had turned away from mainstream careers in favour of prostitution, three of whom had a degree. Each was adamant that she had never taken drugs, and had not been driven into prostitution by external pressure or financial necessity. So, if not desperation or deprivation, what was it that led these four educated, well-resourced and intelligent women to choose to sell their bodies as a profession? The concept might seem anathema to many, but is it possible they might have made a positive, informed choice?

Adeline was bright, articulate and disarmingly frank throughout our conversation. She told me she had first started working as an escort while studying for a degree in Business Management at Leeds Metropolitan University several years ago. “As with most students, I was skint,” she said. “I thought about getting a part time job and having to work 10-15 hours a week and still fitting in all my uni. work as well, but when I weighed that up against only having to do one or two hours escort work and getting as much money, if not more, it just made more financial sense. It’s not that I love sex or anything, but you’d be surprised how many students do this when they’ve got debts to pay.”

She told me that she always intended to use her degree to get a job in management, so I asked her why it is that she is still working as an escort some years after graduating. “When I graduated, I got a job working part-time in management, so I was able to gain that extra experience while doing my escort work as well, which I’ve added to my previous experience and my degree to improve my prospects. I was also able to use the money from my escort work to pay off my student loans, because I didn’t want to start my working life again saddled with debt. It was never a career path for me, but I have made quite a lot of money from it: I own my own home and I’ve been able to have it all refurbished. I’ve also bought an apartment to let and I’m in the process of signing a contract to do some virtual PA work which fits in with my part-time work. Eventually that will be enough to sustain me, and I’ll be able to slowly pack up the escort work and stop doing it altogether. My rationale for doing it tells you that it is not about some pimp pushing me, it’s been quite calculated. Not in a devious way, but I’ve found myself in a situation and I’ve made something positive out of that.”

Adeline told me that the thing she finds most difficult about her work is the secrecy it requires: “The thing I really don’t like about it is that my family and friends don’t know what I do. You have to have a cover story, and I don’t like that because I wasn’t brought up to lie to anybody, let alone my family.”

Denise told me that she made the decision to launch a career as an escort late in life, having first secured the agreement and support of her husband. “I was well over 40 and I just thought ‘if I don’t do it now, I never will’. I’d never had the nerve or the confidence till I got over 40. Earlier in life it would have been very difficult if my family had found out. I had trained as a professional, I had a degree and I had a very nice career, thank you very much, so it was just something I never thought about. But when I got over 40, both my parents had died and I came to the opinion that if anybody did find out then I wouldn’t really be bothered.

Prostitution is prostitution, whether you’re on the street corner or you’re an escort. You’re still being paid for sex.

There are two completely different types of prostitutes as far as I’m concerned. I personally don’t feel associated at all with the poor girls walking the streets of Ipswich. I’ve never taken a drug in my life, I don’t even smoke cigarettes and I drink very little alcohol, so I don’t do it to feed any kind of habit. I just do it because I like sex, and I like pleasing men, and I know there are a lot of men out there whose wives or partners don’t provide what they want, so I just think I’m providing a nice service for gentlemen who can’t get it anywhere else.”
Melissa started working as a prostitute after giving up a career in nursing. “It was the 13 hour shifts that did it. I wanted to have a few more experiences in my life, and I absolutely love it. I built a basic website and took it from there. I never really expected the phone to ring, but it did. I’ve never, ever, ever had a bad experience. Everyone is obviously a different personality, but I’ve never come across someone nasty or arrogant, everyone’s been a true gent.”

On her website, Melissa describes herself as a “dominatrix” and promises she will “use your dreams and fantasies to enter with you into a world of sexual exploration, domination and fantasy”, claiming, rather surprisingly for a former-nurse, “I like to humiliate, watch you crawl and grovel, I like to push you to your limits, to see how far you will go for me.” However, she insists that she is not selling sex. “I never ever, ever get paid for having sex. If, as two consenting adults, that is something that happens during that time together then fine, but I have to be in agreement as much as the other person, and I always make that clear to every and every client.”

Corinne became an escort shortly after she began to appear in adult films and photographs. Before that, she had owned her own business for 20 years. She told me “I’d done some modelling before when I was younger, but films weren’t something I was interested in, although I’d had a lot of offers. But I was having a set of raunchy photographs taken for my partner’s personal use and mine a couple of years ago, and the guy taking the photos suggested that it was a really good shoot and asked me if I’d consider doing DVD work, so that’s how I got into the industry. Once I was working in adult modelling, I started being inundated with emails and phone calls from people who’d seen my pictures on the website and wanted me to provide an escort service for them. A bit of extra pocket money is always useful, so I started doing it. I still run my own business now. The films and the escort work are only a sideline.”

Corinne is not so unequivocally positive about the work as Denise and Melissa. “At the end of the day, a lot of the time you’re an actress. With many of the people that you see, you like spending time with them, but you may not like doing what you’re doing with them, because you may want to spend a bit more time getting to know them first. Some of the time you really don’t want to be with the people you’re with, but that’s what you do. But the majority of time you’re enjoying it. If somebody comes to see me that I really don’t like the look of or feel uneasy about, I just won’t let him through the door. I’m not in a position where I have to do it for the money.”

I was interested to know how the women I spoke to felt about the way prostitutes are perceived in society and the media, and how the reality of their own work differs from this perception. All agreed that women working as prostitutes are stereotyped negatively, though there was a difference of opinion about the degree to which the stereotype is accurate. According to Denise, “The media and public opinion is that somebody who does this sort of work is the scrapings off your boots, although in reality the people I’ve met who do this are usually very, very nice people. Articulate, honest, kind, intelligent, law-abiding people. What the media portrays is a terrible thing.”

Melissa insisted that “being a prostitute and being an escort are a million miles apart. I’ve never taken drugs in my life; that wasn’t the pull for me. I don’t meet someone and have sex in a car. That would never enter my head. There are a lot of gentlemen out there who just want a lady to take for dinner, have a chat or a kiss and cuddle with. Sex isn’t a foregone conclusion. That’s how it differs. I don’t feel associated at all with the poor girls who walk the streets in Ipswich.”

However, Adeline does not perceive such a world of difference. “Prostitution is prostitution, whether you stand on the street corner or you’re what’s deemed to be a ‘high-class escort’. But clearly women standing on the street are open to a whole lot of abuses. They’re quite vulnerable and they’re exploited.

She tells me that she was shocked and dismayed by the media coverage of the Ipswich murders. “Every time it was reported, one of the first things that came out of their mouths was that the women who had been murdered were ‘five prostitutes’. It shouldn’t matter that those women had sex for money: they’re still human beings; they’re still somebody’s daughter, and somebody’s mother; they’re still somebody’s partner and somebody’s friend. Their being prostitutes doesn’t give someone the right to murder them, it doesn’t give the media the right to report them in a less positive light, and it didn’t give the police the right to take it less seriously when they disappeared from the street. It was not taken as seriously or reported as seriously as it seriously as it would have been if they’d been five middle class women, and that is really quite dangerous, because I suspect that if it had been, not as many of them would have died. It’s almost as though those women’s lives were not worth anything because they did that for money, but the harsh cold reality is that all kinds of women, from all kinds of backgrounds, do this sort of work. It’s not just ‘crack-whores’ as people call them.”

Adeline is right about at least one aspect of the way in which the Ipswich murders were reported. Trawling through the archives of four national newspapers, including two tabloids and two broad-sheets, I found that the vast majority of the articles pertaining to the murders contained the word “prostitutes”, or in some cases even “whores” or “hookers” in the first sentence. Tony Parson’s 18 December column in the Mirror refers repeatedly to the five victims in these terms, at one point even describing them as “poor little cows whoring themselves on the backstreets.”

Adeline told me that she feels “choked” by this sort of prejudice. “I live an ordinary life; none of my family or my friends know what I do. As far as most people are concerned, I’m just an ordinary, law-abiding citizen. They’ll pass me in Tesco’s, or I’ll sit on the bus next to them, and they’ll have no idea. I don’t shout about it; I hide my face on my website and I’m discrete about what I do. At the end of the day, people can make all kinds of judgments about the person that you are, but they don’t know you. Actually, I did have a good upbringing, and even though I do have sex for money it doesn’t make me a bad or an immoral person. I know that deep down I’m a decent person, and I know that a lot of those preconceived ideas are just prejudice really, so I just have to try and accept it.”

Corinne, like Melissa, told me she feels little affinity with women working as prostitutes on the street. “I don’t agree with girls working on the street; I think that’s the wrong way of operating altogether. I don’t agree with the pimping side of things where girls are having to work to fulfil their partner’s monetary requirements, I don’t think that sort of thing’s right. But in my situation I’m lucky, because I don’t have to do it for money, I do it because I enjoy meeting people. I enjoy sex: it’s a laugh, it’s a business transaction, it’s a contract between two consenting adults, and that’s as far as it goes.”

Despite the difference the women I spoke to perceived between their own work and that of street-based prostitutes, all four expressed grave concerns about the safety and welfare of such women. However, none were clear that the legalisation of the industry would prevent women from taking to the street and entering into unsafe and exploitative situations.
According to Denise, “It wouldn’t make much difference at all to the sort of thing I do. And the poor girls who do it at 16 to feed a drug habit would still continue to street-walk and pick up nasty people, whether it was legalised or not. They’re desperate girls, because they’re drug addicts, and that’s not going to change. So I don’t think it would make any difference to them to legalise it, but it certainly wouldn’t make a difference to me. And I don’t think it would have saved those poor girls in Ipswich.”

Although Adeline is adamant that prostitution should be legalised, she does not feel it would remove all the dangers entailed in street prostitution. “You could argue that some of the pimping that goes on might stop, but personally I expect women would still be at risk of exploitation, and that’s my major concern about this industry. Particularly for the girls working on the street or in parlours, many of the reasons why they do that will remain. Either they’re addicted to crack, or they’ve got a pimp pushing them. Well, just because he can now legitimately send them out to work and take all their money doesn’t mean he’s not exploiting them. I think the dynamic of that industry doesn’t lend itself too well to legitimising it and making it more safe and secure. It would take a long time for people to get out of the mindset of “I’m standing on a street corner because I can’t afford to feed my children”. If you can’t afford to feed your children, you can’t afford to feed your children. That doesn’t change.”

One of the key issues highlighted by both “Paying the Price” and the resulting “Coordinated Prostitution Strategy” was the need to extirpate the demand for prostitution before the industry itself could be properly tackled, so I asked the women what they thought were the main reasons men came to them. The issues of loneliness, sexual-deviance and commitment-phobia all came up, but the consensus was that by far and away the most significant reason men visit prostitutes was to supplement what they perceive to be inadequate sexual relationships with their wives or girlfriends.

Perhaps the last accusation of social nuisance which could be levelled at women working as prostitutes in a way which is invisible to the surrounding community is that it encourages deviation from functional, loving partnerships within society, by creating the possibility of sex in the form of what Corinne describes as “a business transaction; a contract between two people.”

This is certainly not the way Denise perceives her work. “A lot of men who come to see me are in happy marriages. They’ve got kids, they love their wives, and they don’t want anything to spoil it. They don’t want to have an affair; they don’t want to get emotionally involved in anyone else, but they can come and see me, and I don’t put any pressure on them. They can see me every week or every month if they want; they can see me once and then not see me again for six months if they don’t want; it’s an easy way of going about things for them. They know I’m not going to ring them at home or contact their wives, and I think from a health point of view they think it’s safer to come to somebody like me who has regular health checks and HIV tests. They know I’m going to use a condom all the time, so they’ve got safe sex, but they’ve got the sex that they want. I think I’m actually helping to preserve marriages through providing that service.”

As far as most are concerned, I’m just an ordinary citizen. They sit next to me on the bus and have no idea what I do.

Adeline, however, told me she struggles with the knowledge that many of the men she sees are married or in relationships. “I try not to think too deeply about the clients, because obviously many of them have wives or girlfriends. I know this may seem like a bit of a paradox, but in my personal life I believe in monogamy and when I’m in a relationship then I’m in a relationship with that one person. I certainly wouldn’t expect infidelity from my partner, especially if I did ever get married, which is why I’ve steered clear of being in a relationship while I’ve had this job. So ordinarily I don’t look too kindly on men who think it’s all right to play away from home. But I have to remember that this is a separate part of my life and I’m not really here to judge them. I just need to let that go and see it for what it is: it’s a very brief encounter and, yes, he’s cheating on his wife, but quite honestly that’s not really my concern. I mean, I don’t want to sound like some kind of hard-faced bitch, but it’s his relationship with his wife or his girlfriend and he’s responsible for that, I’m not. It’s purely about business, really. So you have to be able to compartmentalise your life, though it takes a while to get used to it.”

By and large, the women I spoke to were positive about their experiences of working as escorts, but I was interested to know what they felt were the major pitfalls of the industry. Some were more forthcoming that others. Melissa flatly denied that there were any pitfalls at all, while Denise said it was the best job she’d ever had. Of the four only Melissa, however, said she would unreservedly recommend escorting as a career, and that she would be perfectly happy for her daughter to do it.

Adeline, ever frank, told me “If you’re not in a good place in yourself, doing this can really mess your head up because it’s not always the nicest job to have to do. I’ve seen that happen to some girls, many of whom were quite vulnerable already, with low self-esteem or abandonment issues. You’ve got to be quite tough, take your money and use it constructively. The money itself can be damaging, because you can try to self-medicate by drinking yourself into a stupor or taking lots of coke, and you’ll still be able to pay all your bills. But at the end of the day, you can’t make yourself feel better, because you’re doing something that you’re not au fait with.”

It is unsurprising that the weight of research and consultation is heavily focused on street-based prostitution. Here the uglier side of the industry rears its head; here aid and attention is most sorely needed. However, beneath such benign intentions, there is a degree of hypocrisy in this single-minded approach. For those who believe that the act of selling sex is fundamentally immoral, it is convenient to conceive of prostitution as being synonymous with crime, addiction and abuse.

All the while middle class society convinces itself that prostitution occurs exclusively in the distant echelons of an anonymous social underclass, it is easy to perceive a comfortable degree of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’. No doubt the sex trade is a hazardous industry; no doubt there are moral and societal concerns to be discussed. But if those engaged in the discussion first allowed ourselves to conceive that some women choose to sell sex from a position of financial strength and intellectual empowerement; if we were willing to hear their voices, the whole debate would surely be blown wide open.

Having money problems? Don’t sell your body, try these:

University Student Financial Support Unit
This service offers various funds and bursaries to help out any York students who are in financial difficulty. For information or advice, email them at student-financial-support@york.ac.uk, call (01904) (43)4043 or visit them between 10am and 4pm in the Sally Baldwin Building, block B.

NUSonline.co.uk/info/money
Provides information on the new student finance system and compares different credit cards, bank accounts and insurance in terms of their benefits for students.
Unidaid.org.uk
A charity designed to help students deal with financial barriers to entering and completing higher education. As well as helping students access financial advice, and featuring a student budget calculator, it provides free or supported accomodation to students at risk of dropping out of university due to money problems.

National Debt Line: 0808 808 4000
Will discuss your debt problems and provide advice on the various ways to resolve them.

We were sitting in Goodricke bar one dark and stormy York night when a male acquaintance said something which got us thinking. Out of nowhere he volunteered, “It’s so disgusting: my housemate doesn’t see her boyfriend for two weeks at a time, and she doesn’t shave her legs in between. I can see her hair poking through her tights. It makes me feel sick!” And from the small seed of righteous indignation he thus planted in our minds, this whole sordid scheme was soon to grow.

Photo: Rachel Holloway

Why is it, we asked ourselves, that men expect certain aesthetic standards from women without having the slightest inkling about the extremities of work and pain which go into the beauty process? When men watch a beautiful woman walk into a room, all they can see is a desirable physical product, whereas women (sad as it may be) see botox, a boob job and breathtaking over-application of make-up. So, we got to thinking, would the attitudes of our otherwise liberal male friends change if they were made to experience in full the tortuous beauty process to which women are subjected almost daily?

So it was that, with the aid of 30 disposable razors, 18 waxing strips, a pack of Poundland French knickers and a crude concoction vaguely resembling a facemask, we decided to answer this question.

Our first recruit was Sam, a rather androgynous fellow with a penchant for hair straighteners and firm-hold hair spray, who was almost unnervingly willing to take part, claiming to be sympathetic to the plight of women already, not to mention having been on huge amounts of drugs when he agreed to it. However, once we had torn the first wax strip from his leg, his confidence in his femininity dissolved into tortured shrieks, as he wailed, “I used to sympathise with women, but I’ll be a misogynist by the end of this!”

None of our subjects managed to push past the pain barrier beyond the half-way stage with the leg-waxing.

Second was Dan, perhaps the manliest of our subjects (complete with coarse facial hair, a thick Lancashire accent and a macho swagger in his step) who, contrary to our expectations, became absorbed in the process of beautification to such an extent that he emerged the only one of our four guinea pigs with faultlessly hairless legs, and was to be heard bemoaning his stubbly regrowth for days afterwards.

Then came Nicky and Raf, an inseparable duet of machismo, who cheated by using a large bottle of vodka as a makeshift anaesthetic throughout the operation. This pair began by thwarting our ruthless ambitions to cause grave pain by professing the process of waxing to be not painful in the slightest, saying, “if childbirth’s anything like this, you lot are making a fuss over nothing.” Needless to say, after the fourth or fifth strip had been torn vigorously from their legs, they were shrieking like dyed in the wool girly-boys.

Photo: Rachel Holloway

It’s no secret that men find the process of leg waxing painful, borne out as Sam punched the wall after one particularly vicious attack with a Boots Sensitive Skin waxing strip, and Dan proclaimed: “No, slow down! My heart can’t cope with this!”

More interesting, however, were the various insights which emerged during the session. John, who had managed to gain entry to our hall of pain without being roped into the process, reflected that his views on female beauty had changed as he watched his male friends being subjected to the process it entails, saying: “I think if my girlfriend stopped shaving and dressing up now I’d understand having seen what it involves.” However, before we’d had time to feel victorious over having struck such a blow for feminism, he added, “But that’s only because I love her. Don’t expect me to sleep with any random mingers out of pity!” Not quite the outcome we were looking for, but a step in the right direction nonetheless.

Aside from Dan, whose meticulous nature and surprising enthusiasm led him to spend upwards of an hour and a half painstakingly removing every last hair from his bony little legs, none of our subjects managed to push past the pain barrier beyond the half-way stage with the leg-waxing. However, despite admitting that the process was painful and arduous, our subjects refused to accept it was as bad as we’d made out. As we lied that this was a process that women go through not just once but on a daily basis, we began to realise that perhaps not all of our techniques were as justified for the experiment as we initially claimed.

Dan was heard on more than one occasion, having stuffed his bra, to declare, “Gosh, it’s quite nice having titties”, and inviting people to feel them.

Chief amongst these was the homemade facemask we prepared for them, composed mainly of mulched avocado, glutinous honey, flour, oatmeal, sugar and a few glugs of vinegar for good measure. It was this that raised the most objections, and perhaps fairly, as Sam protested “I feel like I’ve got Shrek’s jizz all over my face!” It was at this point that we realised the experiment was, for us, more about taking our pseudo-sadistic revenge on the opposite sex for the pressure we feel they place upon us than about scientific curiosity.

Having smeared the concoction liberally over their freshly shaved faces, we moved onto the process of dressing. Motivated by our sadistic frenzy, earlier in the day, we had purchased the itchiest looking red-lace French knickers and and the most vicious control-top tights on the market. On first sight of the red lacies, Sam declared: “I can’t wear those; my knob’s going to pop out!” A logistical difficulty us women don’t have to face, but nonetheless we pressed on. Nicky – the most obdurate of our male guinea pigs – declared them to be not uncomfortable in the slightest, which momentarily disheartened us, until we discovered he was wearing them over the top of a pair of soft cotton boxer shorts. Hardly in the spirit of the exercise.

The next challenge for our soon-to-be-reformed male chauvinists was the donning of the brassiere, a task which some took to with some relish than others. Dan, for example, enlisted the help of John (our objective onlooker) in stuffing his bra, and was heard on more than one occasion having done so declaring “Gosh, it’s quite nice having titties”, and inviting people to feel them. Nicky and Raf, however, couldn’t quite believe the feat of engineering involved in putting on a bra, even declaring that the process was more painful than waxing. At least they felt they gained some insight on the behaviour of the opposite sex (however erroneous), saying: “This must be why you lot always want to live together. Is it so you can all meet up in the corridor in the morning and do up each other’s bras?”

Photo: Rachel Holloway

Another amusing spectacle was that of four swarthy gentlemen attempting to squeeze themselves into the control-top tights we had so thoughtfully purchased for them (particularly useful for Nicky, whose fresher’s beer paunch nevertheless showed unappealingly through the white cotton dress we put him in). Dan was touchingly keen to learn the tricks of the trade, as our more benevolent photographer spent some time showing him the technique of bunching tights in the hand before pulling them onto the leg. Sadly, even this cautionary action failed to prevent him from laddering them while violently dragging them over a horny toenail.

All that was left to complete the transformation were the skirts and tops we’d carefully picked out for them from our own wardrobes, and it was not without consternation that we heard their proclamations of “I look like somebody’s aunt!” or “I feel like a prostitute!”.

Then onto the make up – potentially the most time-consuming aspect of the process. By this stage even we, hardened glamour queens that we may be, were growing weary of the process of beautification, but we were heartened to notice that our chaps had been transformed into discerning charges, as they implored us to “go easy on the eyeliner!” and to ensure that their foundation was applied evenly. Dan, however, having become increasingly self-assured in the pursuit of physical perfection, declared” “I don’t need foundation – I don’t have any blemishes! Do I?”

After the process was complete, we took the opportunity to discuss gender stereotyping with them while they were still attired in the get-up of the other sex. Nicky and Raf maintained that the process wasn’t as arduous or painful as they’d been led to believe, though Dan – who seemed to have become completely immersed in his feminine role by this stage in the evening – pointed out that none of them could appreciate how tiresome the process could become when repeated daily, a point which was acknowledged by all.

Despite this, they maintained that the process is something which rightly comes with the package of femininity, just as hunter-gathering or jousting for sport comes hand in hand with the ownership of a penis. They were also at pains to proclaim their own innocence in the placing of expectations upon women, attributing it to the pressures imposed by the likes of Heat and Glamour magazine, as well as to general female bitchiness and paranoia.

We were, then, forced to question the extent to which expectations of beauty are self-imposed. The women in the room then begain to unpack the sources of motivation behind the imperative to look good 24 hours a day, every day. Why is it, we asked ourselves, that we feel we will be taken less seriously as people if we are not as close to aesthetic perfection as it is possible to be on a student budget? Particularly since it quickly emerged that none of the men in room could indentify whether we were wearing makeup, and if so how much and where. Could it be that the beauty process is almost entirely self-imposed?

But then we thought back to Nick’s admission that he would be reluctant to become involved with a ‘minger’ who failed to meet his pre-supposed physical standards. And of course the comment which inspired this whole article, reaffirmed our belief that whatever the pressures placed on women by women, men are heavily implicated in the creation of unrealistic expectations. Afterall, surely the bitchiness over beauty which exists between women is a product of patriarchal expectations; perhaps a throwback to a time when women were made to feel that physical beauty was all they had to offer in a society where a woman’s chief goal was marriage.

So in the end, a salutory lesson was learned by all. Although John has no current plans to “sleep with any minger out of pity”, at least his girlfriend might have an easier time in future. And a swift kick in the crotch reminded Nicky and Raf that childbirth is no laughing matter – and that women on a mission will stop at nothing to see their ends achieved.

Some choice moments from the evening’s revelry

Heidi: “We don’t want to waste good wax.”
Dan: “Yes we do! I don’t care about dying kids in Africa, I care about my legs!”

Sam: “I need to get battered to regain some dignity after this.”

Raf: “Dan, your leg looks like a chihuahua that’s been on fire.”
Dan: “What happens if the hair removal cream starts chafing and going all red and then my leg falls off?”

John: “I know what unshaven legs look like. I have an aunt who’s Italian.”

Sam: “My skin feels remarkably good after that face mask.”

See photos from this feature.

Rich Croker, SU President, has confirmed that several sabbatical officers were involved in drawing up a bingo card for the two then single sabbs, Amy Woods and Ben Griffiths, aimed at “pulling” students from various courses, colleges, societies and years, in a variety of locations such as at a campus event or in Ziggy’s, during Freshers’ Week.

Croker acknowledged that, while the “joke” was not specifically aimed at freshers, they were not excluded from the categories. Micky Armstrong, the former YUSU President, is also alleged to have been involved.

Sam Marsden, a University Welfare Advisor, spoke out on Friday against the actions of the sabbatical officers involved: “As a welfare advisor I can appreciate how comments like that would upset people: It’s not constructive in terms of building good relationships with students, or as a demonstration of how the SU thinks of its freshers. Sometimes you do things that you think are a joke without thinking about the consequences, but at the end of the day you have to take your role seriously.”
An anonymous JCRC Welfare Officer said: “I believe that the bingo card made was intended to be fun, but it’s a sad time when upper echelons of YUSU feel it appropriate to pray on the vunerability of students upon their arrival in a new place.”

When questioned, Griffiths claimed that no card was made, but added “it was being bantered around during Freshers’ Week that this is the perfect time to, you know, as it were… it was almost like a matchmaking thing, but nothing ever came out of it.”
Matt Burton, Goodricke JCRC Chair, claimed that the game was “a joke”. He said: “Obviously abusing your position for a game is wrong, but I think it was never carried out. It was meant as a joke, but I guess it’s fallen flat on its face.”

Woods said “it’s a standing joke that you can pull in Freshers’ Week, but I would never ever do anything like that… I have a fair background in welfare things, and no-one has done anything inappropriate in my book.”

The YUSU Academic and Welfare Officer, Amy Foxton, was unwilling to condemn the situation, claiming that it had been “blown out of proportion”. She said: “to say that there is a culture of inappropriateness is completely unjustified with our sabbatical team this year. If there was anything that I did feel was inappropriate or unnecessary I would have stepped in with my welfare hat on and said no guys, don’t do this, but nothing did happen.”

Dave Jones, Derwent JCR Chair said: “It was just a joke, just a stupid jokey gesture. It wasn’t as if the card was passed on to all the lads; Amy [Woods] was involved as well. It was tongue in cheek. They’re stupid enough to run for an SU position but they’re not that stupid.”

When asked what the implications of freshers hearing about the bingo game might be, Griffiths replied: “It was supposed to be between the six of us, because obviously we’re really good friends, so the welfare concerns it brings up put us in a very compromising position. If we’re having to work with students we don’t know then something like that would be fairly concerning, and detrimental to the hard work we do.”

Rich Croker, the SU President, said: “Any situation where anyone’s welfare is placed in jeopardy I would not consider funny. The fact that it was just a joke about two sabbs who were single, at the time was funny to us.” Croker claimed that the current sabbatical team are the “most clean-cut in years” in terms of sleeping with freshers, claiming: “I think we’re the only sabbs who haven’t.”

The sit-in, which lasted four hours and delayed up to 1,000 passengers, was part of the ‘Plane Stupid’ campaign aimed at drawing attention to the environmental damage caused by flying.

The 25 participants, who breached a parameterfence before holding a sit-in on the taxi-way between two cargo holds, were subsequently arrested and charged with aggravated trespass and causing a public nuisance. Five are also charged with causing criminal damage. All 25 will face trial later this year at Leicester Crown Court.

Several of the protesters, including Rose and her sister Ellen Rickford, say they were held in solitary confinement for 36 hours without being allowed to make a phonecall to inform anyone of their situation. Their houses were raided by police, and computers, mobile phones, diaries and address books were confiscated.

Rose Rickford claims that her 15,000 dissertation was stored on a computer which police seized from her student house in York.

Francis Rickford and Brendan Martin, parents of Rose and Ellen, spoke out on behalf of their daughters last month in an interview with The Observer.

The pair claimed that their daughters had been released at separate times late at night on September 25 following 36 hours of solitary confinement in a police station in Leicester.

The two were allegedly told not to talk to one another as a condition of their bail. Their money, keys and mobile telephones were confiscated. Frances Rickford said she was “particularly horrified at how the girls had been released in a way that seemed almost calculated to put them in the way of harm.”

Rose Rickford spoke to Nouse on Monday of her commitment to the battle against the aviation industry. She said: “Aviation is a hugely important issue if we’re going to save the planet and save human life.

“It’s the fastest growing source of C02 emissions, releasing 80 million tonnes of C02 per year, which is more than 10% of the UK’s total. Aviation on its own will exceed the government’s 2050 emissions target by 134%, even if we turn off all the lights and shut down all the factories.

“The fact is, 45% of the flights that leave Europe travel no further than 500 km, which is less than the distance between London and the Scottish border. There are obviously many far more sustainable ways of travelling that kind of distance.

“Despite this, the government is investing massively in the aviation industry, and obviously that’s just mad.”

When asked if she would be willing to face arrest again in the fight against aviation, Rickford said: “Basically, my attitude is that the situation of the planet is urgent, and we have to do all we can using peaceful means to get it on the agenda. Direct action is the way to do that, so yes, I will continue with this.”

‘Plane Stupid’ wants to bring short-haul flights to the fore in the battle against the aviation industry. To this end, it called a “day of action” for Monday November 6, during which the group claimed a number of national organisations planned major disruption to airports nation wide.