Number one: the survival instincts of Labour MPs are telling them to do nothing that might risk triggering a general election and Brown’s whips will be exploiting this ruthlessly. In hundreds of phone calls to backbenchers the message will be the same: if the Prime Minister goes down it will go to the country and you’re out of a job.

And they aren’t exaggerating. I spoke to a Labour staffer who was knocking doors last weekend and received a face full of expenses-pigs-troughs-all-bastards vitriol for her trouble. She told me of the “mortal terror” in her MP’s office and in the party in general at having to fight an election in a climate like this. It’s mutually assured destruction – Brown’s boat may be sinking but backbenchers are all in with him.
Secondly, although Brown may be seriously weakened he is still in charge of Labour’s strongest faction. If the events of the last few days have taught us anything, it’s that the mythical Blairite wing is just that: a myth. James Purnell walked out and nobody followed. David Miliband presumably hid under his desk, as he has during every crisis of the last year.

Perhaps most important is the Faustian pact Brown has done with Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Dark Arts. Mandelson gets the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and virtual control of the government in return for doing whatever black magic does to rebels. Brown has traded his soul in return for eternal life. Or at least eternal until June 2010.

Finally, it is almost impossible to overstate the timidity of the cabinet. Say what you will about the House of Waxworks that made up Thatcher’s final cabinet but at least they knew where the knives were kept and how to use them. The current lot’s capacity for dithering is exceeded only by their abilities at hand-wringing. While we’ve seen fiery resignations from individuals, I would put the chances of an organised cabinet putsch at virtually nil.

By the time you read this on Tuesday I may have been proved spectacularly wrong. Gordon may have joined the back of Britain’s growing dole queue and I will be deeply regretting this column. But, for the moment at least, I would bet Gordon is here to stay.

It is now seven weeks since Lawrence’s daughter Claudia, a chef at the University’s Roger Kirk Centre, went missing. Last captured on CCTV walking through Goodricke College as she left work on March 18, the normally “prolific” chatter of her texts stopped abruptly at 8.30 that evening after she was dropped home by a colleague. Nothing has been seen or heard of her since. Detectives are not even sure whether Claudia went missing that night or the following morning on her way to work. The case has been officially reclassified as a murder investigation and yet despite thousands of police hours searching, widely publicised appeals for information and a £10,000 reward offered by Crimestoppers, there has been little progress since Lawrence first raised the alarm.

It is the so far unyielding silence of the search that Lawrence finds most difficult: “The worst thing all the way through this, and it doesn’t change from whether it’s one week or six weeks, is just not knowing. When there’s no information out there, not knowing is the hardest bit. It just makes you feel dreadful. There’s a little bit of me missing somewhere.”

In an effort to keep the search for Claudia in the headlines, Lawrence, who is gently-spoken and described by friends as naturally “very private”, has been forced to literally throw open the doors to the media and live what he describes as the most difficult period of his life in the public eye. Each week he has invited the press into his home and spoken with quiet dignity about the “living nightmare” of his daughter’s disappearance. He seems to shrink a little in the face of the cameras and questions and I notice he often clasps his hands comfortingly just under his mouth and stares into mid-distance when he answers.

Lawrence seems a little bemused by his media incarnations. “On the outside, I think, from the odd bits I’ve seen [in newspapers], I appear to be fine. On the inside,” he pauses, a half-formed word giving way to a heavy sigh. “You just feel dreadful all the time. You’re just churning.”

Yet despite Claudia’s continued disappearance and the absence of significant new leads Lawrence says he has no choice but to continue to believe she is still alive. “Six weeks can be compared to some very long period when people have gone missing but you’ve got to have hope, you’ve got to have faith and believe.”

He continues to doggedly refer to Claudia in the present tense. “She is relatively small but she always seems to be smiling. Quite bubbly. She’s good with people she knows but she’s very shy with people she doesn’t know. Coming out from the kitchen and bringing food out and things, no doubt chatter occurs between her and students.” She enjoys her work and is well liked although three of her colleagues in the Roger Kirk Centre also include “quiet” in their descriptions of her.

The coverage has made Lawrence, a 62-year-old solicitor, a nationally recognised face and he now avoids town for fear of being approached by well-meaning sympathisers. “It’s so difficult when people are emotional about it. That makes me emotional.” He smiles and looks almost apologetic. “It makes me cry. People are supportive but they have also been restrained. There’s no point in going on television and sobbing your heart out. It doesn’t do any good to the appeal or to me or to anyone else. Even if I feel like it.”

Yet as difficult as he finds his sudden relationship with the media, he insists it is a price worth paying. “You’ve got to keep that outward experience because you’ve got to keep the press interested. We’ve got to keep that going because someday, somebody is going to respond and say ‘Oh yeah, we did see something’ or ‘we did see Claudia’. Somebody has to respond.”

He is also not alone in handling the reality of being at the centre of a news story. Martin Dales, his friend of 25 years and a former journalist turned media consultant, dropped everything to act as Lawrence’s press minder after Claudia disappeared. Dales, who has known Claudia since she was a child, handles the constant stream of interview requests, choreographs the press conferences at Lawrence’s home, and helped set up the new website, Findclaudia.co.uk. When I first make contact with him he is in Italy, on a holiday arranged long before March 18, but is still working feverishly by Blackberry and laptop to keep the press informed and interested in the case.

The last few weeks have not been encouraging. On April 17, national attention was riveted back to York after a body was discovered in the River Ouse. Lawrence was on a train at the time and it was several hours, which he describes as “almost unbearable”, before the police confirmed the body was not Claudia’s. A repeated appeal for information about a sighting of a male smoker and a woman on Melrosegate bridge at 5.30 am on March 19 has, at the time of writing, yielded no new clues. Lawrence says the lack of new developments is “absolutely incredible” while Dales describes the “huge sense of frustration out there, whether it’s the police, the media, us, the family, because there’s just been nothing.”

The Melrosegate sighting has been particularly difficult. Unlike many of the other reports it is at the right time and in the right place. His desperation is palpable as he appeals to the man speaking to “Claudia… No, sorry…” He stops and corrects himself. “Whoever it was talking to him.”

Lawrence, supported by Dales, has been virtually alone in providing the continual emotional oxygen on which coverage of missing persons cases depend. Claudia’s older sister, Ali, has avoided the press in order to protect her young children while her mother, Joan, from whom Lawrence has been divorced for several years has made only a single brief public statement since her disappearance. Despite both taking support from the same priest in Old Malton, Lawrence says he is only “very occasionally” in contact with Joan. Dales describes Claudia’s parents’ media approaches as “separate entities” and says the recent appeal by her mother was “the first thing she’s said in about six weeks, aside from something about taxis after she was door-stepped by a journalist. Each to their own.”

The day I meet Lawrence in Dales’ daughter’s flat is almost exactly the two year anniversary of the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in Portugal. In the preceding weeks a growing number of newspaper stories had linked the two cases. Without warning Lawrence or Dales, the Archbishop of York mentioned both Claudia and Madeline in his Easter Day sermon, praying: “Lord, please keep Claudia and Madeline safe; take away their fear and anxiety; guard and protect them.” Dales laughingly says they leave the Archbishop, who is notorious for seeking media attention, “to his own devices” but Lawrence stiffens noticeably when I ask if he sees any similarities between the two. “Absolutely none,” he says firmly. As Dales starts to speak again he cuts him off. “Maybe as far as you’re concerned, but as far as I’m concerned absolutely none. There’s a lot of difference between a young child being obviously abducted because she couldn’t have disappeared by herself and a grown up disappearing.”

Yet while rejecting parallels with the McCann case, Lawrence has grown increasingly accepting that his daughter has been abducted. As Claudia’s disappearance dragged into its fiftieth agonising day he released a statement directly addressed to those holding her. “It is now 50 days that Claudia has been away from us. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets for myself, the family and her friends. The strain is intolerable and the sorrow unbearable. I want to make yet another appeal to whoever is responsible for taking her away from her life in York to come forward so that she can be reunited with all of us who love her dearly. You know who you are. Search your conscience. We want Claudia back.”

How much longer Peter Lawrence will be forced to grieve publicly in order to keep his daughter’s disappearance in the headlines remains unclear. While interest in the case remains high, and the police continue to devote significant resources to the search, there is a painful lack of new evidence or significant breakthroughs. Yet for Lawrence, despite the twin uncertainties of his daughter’s whereabouts and the question of how and when his own ordeal will end, the course of action is clear. He will continue to bravely face the media and ensure that Claudia is not forgotten, no matter how long it takes. “You’ve got to. Because that’s the only way the public are going to respond. They haven’t responded up to now but someday, someone will say ‘yes, we ought to say something.’”

Anybody with information should contact North Yorkshire Police on 0845 60 60 247 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111

North Yorkshire Police announced on Wednesday that they were seeking two Asian men seen in the early afternoon March 10 outside Claudia’s home on Heworth Road. The 35-year-old chef was last seen on the evening of March 18 and failed to show up to work the following morning at Goodricke’s Roger Kirk Centre. Her normally “prolific” texting went silent at 8.30pm.

One of the men was seen looking towards the house’s downstairs window while the other was looking at a window on the first floor.

The first man is described as in his 20s or 30s, around 5ft, 6ins tall with a distinctive, long, thin face with a pointy nose and dark circles under his eyes. He had a long, jutting jaw and dark, straight hair with a fringe. He was wearing a heavy coat, despite the heat of the day.

The second man was also Asian, with a heavier build, and around 5ft, 7ins. He was wearing a waist length jacket and jeans that had rivets around the back pockets.

The descriptions were compiled from information received after a public appeal. When the sighting was first announced police believed it may have taken place on March 13, but have since confirmed it was March 10.

Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway, the officer leading the investigation, said: “The dates are obviously at least five days before Claudia was last seen, but we have a situation of a lady passing by Claudia’s home address in very slow moving traffic who has actually seen two men at Claudia’s front door.”

“We would very much like to speak to these two people,” he added.

Claudia’s father, Peter Lawrence, released an appeal directly to “whoever is responsible for taking her” on May 6, the fiftieth day of her disappearance.

“It is now 50 days that Claudia has been away from us. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets for myself, the family and her friends – the strain is intolerable and the sorrow unbearable.”

“I want to make yet another appeal to whoever is responsible for taking her away from her life in York to come forward so that she can be reunited with all of us who love her dearly.”

“You know who you are. Search your conscience. We want Claudia back.”

The appeal is thought to be the first time that Lawrence has publicly acknowledged the likelihood that his daughter was abducted.

Speaking to Nouse, Lawrence said: “The worst thing all the way through this and it doesn’t change from whether it’s one week or six weeks is just not knowing. When there’s no information out there, not knowing is the hardest bit. It just makes you feel dreadful. There’s a little bit of me missing somewhere.”

In an interview last week Lawrence also appealed directly to the campus community, describing Claudia as part of the “University family”. He said: “All we’re doing is asking them to search their memories back to the end of last term. Really we’re just seeking some information to try and get a clue about what has happened to Claudia. It’s six weeks now and it certainly doesn’t get any easier.”

Lawrence also rejected comparisons made in recent weeks between the search for Claudia and the disappearance of British toddler Madeline McCann in Portugal in 2007. He said: “There’s a lot of difference between a young child being obviously abducted because she couldn’t disappear by herself and a grown up disappearing.”

Police are also continuing to focus on a sighting of a man and a woman seen on Melrosegate bridge at 5.35 on March 19, approximately the time that Claudia would have been walking towards the University to start a morning shift.

The man, dressed in a black or dark-coloured hooded top, with the hood up, and dark combat trousers with pockets and buttons on either side, was holding a cigarette in his left hand. The woman was wearing a blue, waist-length jacket with buttons similar to a jacket owned by Claudia.

Police have described the report, made by a passing cyclist, as “a significant sighting, at the right time in the right location”. Lawrence has described the lack of public response to the Melrosegate sighting as “absolutely incredible”.

A third possible sighting of a couple arguing on University Road at around 6.10am on March 19 is also being investigated. A passing motorist said a car had been pulled over to the side of the road and a man and a woman had been engaged in what appeared to be a verbal altercation on the pavement.

Despite thousands of police hours and a £10,000 reward offered by Crimestoppers the search for Claudia has so far made little significant progress. So far nearly 1,100 reports and statements have been taken and around 1,270 properties searched, including hundreds of campus rooms. The investigation is the largest carried out by North Yorkshire Police since the hunt for multiple killer Mark Hobson in 2004.

She wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose

The image emerging of missing University chef Claudia Lawrence is one of a quiet but conscientous woman who enjoyed her work and was well liked by colleagues. Claudia worked at the University for two years, first in Derwent and then moving to Goodricke’s Roger Kirk Centre.

Her father, Peter Lawrence, said: “She’s relatively small but she always seems to be smiling. Quite bubbly. She’s good with people she knows but she’s very shy with people she doesn’t know.

“Coming out from the kitchen and bringing food out and things, no doubt chatter occurs between her and students.” Claudia worked mainly in the kitchen but sometime served food at the front of house and worked on the tills.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, claims to remember Claudia after she served him during the Church of England’s General Synod, which is held on campus each year.

Lawrence added: “When I made the first call to Goodricke on the Friday it was Julia in the kitchen who answered. She said ‘I’m terribly worried, I’m a friend of Claudia’s and she hasn’t shown up and hasn’t said anything and it’s most unlike her’”.

Three colleagues of Claudia’s all described her as “quiet”. One, who did not want to be named, said: “Claudia’s a quiet girl who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose.”

Before her disappearance, Claudia was a regular at the Nag’s Head, a pub near to her home in Heworth and often frequented by students living in the area. She is a close friend of the landlord, Simon Foreman. The pub is planning on holding an event for her in the near future.

Anybody with information should contact North Yorkshire Police on 0845 60 60 247 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111

Peter Lawrence set up Findclaudia.co.uk in the hope of generating clues as to the whereabouts of his daughter, who has been missing since March 18.

In the website’s opening message Mr. Lawrence writes: “It is every parent’s worst nightmare when something like this happens and the times the family are living through are indescribably difficult. We have, however, been much supported by people’s prayers and compassionate thoughts and now our only desire is for Claudia to return to her family and friends.”

The site also carries a prayer from the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who mentioned Claudia in his Easter sermon. The prayer reads: “Lord, please keep Claudia and Madeleine safe; take away their fear and anxiety; guard and protect them.” Mr. Lawrence is a member of the congregation at the York Minster.

The website was designed free of charge by David Wakeley, a businessman from Malton.

Wakeley said: “I registered the domain and it’s up and running now. I hope it helps. We all know Peter and anything the community in Malton can do to help we will do.”

Police continue to focus on a reported sighting of a man and a woman on Melrosegate bridge on March 19. Crossing the bridge was part of Claudia’s normal route to work at the Roger Kirk Centre.

The man, dressed in a “black or dark-coloured hooded top, with the hood up, and dark combat trousers with pockets and buttons on either side” was holding a cigarette in his left hand, which is unusual. The woman was “wearing a blue, waist-length jacket with buttons” similar to a jacket owned by Claudia.

Police have described the report, made by a passing cyclist as “a significant sighting at the right time in the right location”.

Despite repeated appeals for either the man or woman to come forward police have so far received no calls from members of the public.

Anybody with information should contact North Yorkshire Police on 0845 60 60 247 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111

The victim, whom police described as “Oriental”, was found on March 20 in the Selby Canal and is thought to have been in the water for two to three weeks. He died from a “severe and savage beating to his head and face”.

Officers have so far struggled to identify the body and have begun a postering campaign on campus in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamese appealing for information. A multi-lingual information phone line has also been set up

In a statement Detective Superintendent Karnail Dulku, who is leading the investigation, said: “This man has a family somewhere, he is someone’s son, brother, father, grandson. He did not deserve to end his life as an anonymous body dumped in a canal. If you believe you can help I urge you to do the right thing and help us identify him or his killers.”

A police spokesman said the victim was not thought to be a student and police continue to suspect he may have been trafficked illegally into the UK.

The victim is described as between his late teens and early thirties, 5ft 7in tall and weighing 10 stone (140 lbs). He was found wearing black underpants with the logo PROEA, khaki green long-john type trousers with the logo UTEJIAO and a Calvin Klein t-shirt with a distinctive white pattern. He was not wearing any shoes or socks.

An appeal for information and a artist’s impression have been broadcast in China in the hope of reaching the victims’ friends or family members.
The postering campaign comes weeks after campus bedrooms were searched and the lake dragged by officers looking for missing Goodricke chef Claudia Lawrence.

Anyone with any information is encouraged to contact North Yorkshire Police at 0845 60 60 247 or the multi-lingual line at 01904 669 120

–
Please ring the multi-lingual answer-phone to leave your message in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean or Vietnamese. Please dial 01904 – 669120 and follow the instructions.

Or North Yorkshire Police on 0845 60 60 247.

Except you wouldn’t know that was what he was talking about as the article strangely contained no references to either publication, guaranteeing that the majority of campus who were unaware of the election remained firmly in the dark. Pearse instead mumbled that “two out of three publications will now operate at the behest of one editor”, forgetting the many other publications as well as the Yorker. The issue of multiple-editorships is important and worth discussing but speaking behind your hands guarantees no one will listen to you.

But he isn’t the only offender. In an article reminiscent of Tony Blair’s rant against the Independent shortly before resigning, former Vanbrugh Chair Matt Oliver took it upon himself to face down irresponsible campus media. Writing in Vision he accused both papers of “having a fixation with student politics that makes Freud look balanced” and of unfairly labelling him a politician. Yet for all he had apparently suffered Oliver failed to name a single article demonstrating the “feral” (Blair’s word, but seemingly on the tip of Oliver’s tongue) journalism he so deplores.

This habit isn’t just the foible of individual columnists. In its editorial, Vision, responding to a Nouse story about an anti-Semitism row involving a staff member, thundered: “the harassment of university staff members by certain quarters of the campus media, and certain societies, is vomit inducing.” Strong, albeit bizarrely chosen, words. But the reader is left to guess which societies caused Vision’s editors digestive trouble. Are they talking about Jewish Society? And if so what harassment exactly? Why is Vision so afraid to make its views known?

Some readers will be convinced this is nothing more than typical campus papers bickering. To that I can offer nothing more mature than “they started it”. But I do think there is an important point to be made: campus deserves better than obscure allusions and shadow play. Having a platform for your views is a privilege, not a right. If you’re going to speak, then sit up and do it properly.

John McCain was famously unable to craft effective sound bites. But one phrase has stayed with me. Promising to publicly out wasteful Congressional spenders, he declared “I will make them famous and you will know their names”. You might not agree with what I’m saying but at least you know what, and who, I’m talking about.

Bushby initially pledged he would refuse the £15,000 sabbatical salary and redistribute the money to campus societies but dropped the policy after being threatened with disqualification by current President Tom Scott, who is acting as Returning Officer for the election.

Bushby defended the policy saying, “This isn’t to benefit me materially, this is to benefit my fellow students of the campus and hopefully to improve the University. I want to redistribute the money to more needy societies.”

Scott said the pledge would violate election rules and give Bushby an unfair advantage. He said: “[the policy] amounts to a form of social bribery – ‘vote for me and I’ll give you money’” and that “candidates who can afford to turn down salary would be at a significant advantage; there’d be nothing to stop someone with significant financial reserves saying ‘I’ll work for free’”.

“We cannot allow candidates to campaign by getting into a ‘price war’”, he added. Scott ordered Bushby to drop the policy by 4pm on Friday or face disqualification.

Bushby confirmed that he would be financed by his parents for the duration of his presidency, saying “I’ve been fortunate throughout my university experience to be supported by my parents and that would continue during my term.” Bushby’s father is a successful California-based businessman in the software industry.

“I’ve had a lot of internships in the media industry and these have all been unpaid internships lasting 12 weeks, so I’m used to working for no money. It’s something I’m not fussed about at all,” he added.

Bushby denied that the policy would give him an unfair advantage over other presidential candidates whose personal finances would not allow them to make a similar pledge. He said: “I think when it comes down it, this isn’t about buying people’s votes, this isn’t about social bribery, this is about benefiting the University… I think we’re all on a level playing field.”

Two other presidential candidates, YUSU Policy and Campaigns Officer Tom Langrish and Fusion President Tim Ngwena, were divided in their reactions.

Langrish said: “In my opinion the ability to donate £15,000 to the union is not what makes a good YUSU President. However I don’t see why Charles shouldn’t be able to make this promise, regardless of its relevance/irrelevance to the campaign. I am sure all candidates are wanting a campaign based on the issues that impact on students and not one based on cheap gimmicks.”

Ngwena said: “If you can support yourself then fair enough but I don’t think it should be something that you should put as a policy because it doesn’t look at the underlying problems in the Union. We all come from different backgrounds and other candidates can’t offer that sort of pledge. I personally couldn’t offer that sort of pledge. I need to live also.”

While saying he accepted the ruling, Bushby has promised to revisit the issue if elected.

“If elected I would strive not to take the money. I don’t want it. I don’t want to benefit materially from this, I want to work to make the students’ union better and hopefully, ultimately, the University.”

George Papadofragakis, a candidate for Democracy and Services Officer, confirmed to Nouse that he had also approached Scott with a similar proposal to donate 50% of his salary to the Union, but had been similarly cautioned.

Papadofragakis, who was informed by Scott that the YUSU salary amounted to “roughly the minimum wage”, claimed that even without external financial assistance he could survive on half the salary.

“It’d be difficult but it’s certainly possible. The message that I wanted to get across is that this sum would still keep me above the poverty line, while 13 million people in the UK live below it,” he said.

This was surpassed by the next election in which both presidential candidates were disqualified for breaching election rules. We are now in our fourth round for positions that should have been filled last summer.

But the problems seem to run deeper than shambolic elections. A consultant’s report from September said the GSA’s “lack of connection with the membership is unacceptable for a members’ organisation”, and claimed there is “no clarity of who is in charge of what’ from either a democratic or managerial perspective”. Last year’s Executive achieved virtually nothing aside from nursing a long-term grudge against the over-funded undergraduates at YUSU (Former President Anne-Marie Canning was allegedly told to “run along” after one meeting).

All of this begs the question: Why not scrap the GSA and bring it under YUSU? The idea is tempting. Staff salaries and administrative costs last year were in the region of £70,000. There are huge economies of scale to be had in a merger. A single student representative body would also close the gap between YUSU and the GSA into which the University can divisively wedge in negotiations.

Ultimately the question is: could YUSU effectively represent the needs of postgraduates? Do you know what a Thesis Advisory Panel is, or a PGWT? The difference between an MPhil and a PhD? I don’t and I’m a final year undergraduate, the same as many of those now poised to become sabbaticals. While it’s dangerous to talk of ‘typical’ undergrads, the postgraduate community is far more diverse and so are their needs. There is a real danger they would get swallowed up by the concerns of an undergrad majority. Even if there were a sabbatical postgrad position it’s unlikely a high-calibre person would take it and risk having their PhD topic printed elsewhere.

In recent years the GSA has  failed as an organisation. The current field of candidates is promising and the pace of reform is picking up. Cooperation with YUSU is increasing and handover procedures are being strengthened.

Regardless, for whoever takes over the stakes are high. A choice between imperfect representation by YUSU or none by the GSA is no choice at all.

There are a number of implications to this but by far the most important is that it means YUSU and the media are legally one identity – so if a media organisation gets a story wrong and is sued the Union as a whole is at risk.

From this odd umbilical relationship, the Media Charter is born. If the Union is funding the newspapers and is liable for them then there will necessarily need to be a set of rules governing the two’s relationship. The Charter gives union sabbatical officers the power to pull articles on two separate grounds.

The first is liability risk management – as a way of protecting the Union, sabbatical officers are empowered by the Charter to review content prior to publication and remove anything they believe creates risk of a lawsuit. It sounds like censorship, and it is. But it’s also necessary. At the end of last term the Union forced Vision to remove a libellous centre spread article about a JCRC chair. A senior University official, uninvolved in the decision, told a Nouse reporter that had the JCRC chair decided to sue they would have won – meaning the article would have put at risk not just the paper but funding for societies, clubs and welfare. Allowing untrained editors to risk their own money is one thing, but not the cash of others. 

The second justification for censorship is a much greyer area, allowing officers to pull articles if they pose a threat to the ill-defined “social, academic, physical or mental” welfare of a Union member. There are certainly grounds for some sort of welfare provision in the Charter. In an extreme case, Union-funded papers should not be able to report on the sex lives of individual students. More realistically, papers need to be careful about jeopardising students’ futures with online articles that remain up long after an individual graduates.

However, the necessity of some welfare provision does not justify the Union’s current power to censor in this area. Two immediate changes would start to redress the balance. 

Primarily, as in national media law, we should define at what point a student is in the ‘public eye’ and hence cannot reasonably expect to be shielded from the media. This should include Union officers, JCRC chairs and other key decision makers, as well as those occasional rabble rousers who thrust themselves into the public square for a cause or (as it seems in some cases) mere celebrity.

Moreover, the welfare clause should not apply to those who have been charged with a criminal offence while at University. To my knowledge on at least two occasions the Union has prevented the media from reporting on cases in which students have been accused (and subsequently found guilty) of serious crimes. In 2005, President James Alexander famously said he would “[use his powers to] defend a rapist if they were still a student.” This attitude, even in much less extreme cases, puts the ‘welfare’ of the individual before the public’s right to a free media.

Venue:  Leeds Grand Theatre 

Rating: **

Skin Deep is an operetta written by British comedy-heavyweight Arnando Iannucci (The Day Today, In the Thick of It). His target is the (arguably already over-satirised) world of Hollywood and plastic surgery. It tells the story of the famed clinic of Dr. Needlemeier, who is busy “putting right what nature got wrong”, cuckolding his wife with his scarred assistant, and creating an elixir of youth out of the chopped-off bits of famous people. After plucking a bullock from aptly named Hollywood star Luke Pollock and swapping his wife’s and lover’s faces, Needlemeier is forced to flee to California. Not quite hilarity ensues.  

It’s clear from the start that for Iannucci, the operetta is not a liberating format, and the characters seem to trudge through the treacle of undulating notes to get to their punchlines. A musical, giving him more scope to drop in dialogue and for sharper, more incisive singing, would have been a much better choice. While there are some notable individual performances, especially Gwendoline Christie as a ditzy Hollywood reporter, the show overall drags and the jokes are rarely worth waiting for. The few moments of tittering were at the knob jokes that Iannucci includes with increasingly desperate frequency towards the conclusion.

By the play’s end we are led to conclude, guess what, that beauty is only skin deep. That and a joke every now again would have been no bad thing.

The Executive Committee announced on November 11 it would reopen voting for the sabbatical positions of President and Welfare Officer, as well as the non-sabbatical positions of Overseas Officer and Treasurer.

Both the GSA and the office of University Registrar and Secretary Sally Neocosmos received complaints after the election event, held in Wentworth Edge on October 31, unexpectedly reached capacity leaving some members unable to enter the venue to cast their vote.

A member of the GSA present at the event said: “there were probably 15 to 20 people left outside”. The numbers are thought to be large enough to have swayed the result in the tightly contested race for President, in which Rui Huang defeated Luke Martin by 132 to 118, a margin of 14 votes.
Neocosmos pressured the Executive to reopen voting in a meeting days the election results.

Necosmos said: “I received a number of complaints and after discussion with some of those involved in the elections it became clear that they were not without foundation.”

A member of the GSA Executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “I’m obviously very pleased that [Neocos­mos] urged the Executive to rerun the elections. It’s pretty clear to me that if she hadn’t stepped in there weren’t enough officers who truly understood the flaws in the process and we would have been left with the result of an unfair election”.

Weaknesses in the GSA’s election procedure were specifically noted in the Govern­ance Review commissioned last year and carried out by external consultants. The report was delivered in September, nearly two months before the elections. Nouse twice contacted the GSA for a copy of the report with no response. A copy was eventually leaked by an officer who said: “the public need to know how badly the GSA is doing”.

It states: “a review of the election procedures needs to take place to make the system more robust and transparent.” The report also advises looking into electronic voting and clarifying the role of the returning officer.

Acting President Davita Gunbay is currently the GSA’s only sabbatical officer out of three constitutional positions. Dan Carr, who was elected President last term, resigned in August before taking over his role, while Academic and Welfare Officer Nabilah Halal resigned in October after attending a £450 training day paid for by the GSA.

Gunbay, who also acted as Returning Officer in the election, admitted the organisation was “in chaos”. She claimed she received no training and little support from GSA staff in the run up to the elections and “was literally finding out about stuff I should be doing as an internal officer, stuff I should be doing as an acting President, stuff that I should be doing as a returning officer a minute, sometimes half a minute before I had to do them.”

Gunbay has refused to release the Governance Review to members until after the elections, claiming that it was important that the new Executive Commit­tee discuss it first. She said: “If we just present it to the members then it is impossible to control the reaction that we’ll get and that might be harmful rather than positive… If we were bombarded with negative comments then we would spend a lot of time dealing with that and not be able to follow the Governance Review through. After the elections the first thing will be to have an Exec meeting and discuss the governance report.”

The report claims the GSA’s “lack of connection with the membership is unacceptable” and that the “governance structure is weak, with ambiguity regarding responsibility and decision making processes.

The report also highlights poor relations between the GSA and YUSU, stating: “The attitude amongst the majority of officers and staff of the GSA towards [YUSU] is obstructive and not one of co-operation.”

Music Society, the largest Union society, received a grant of £1,245 last year but will receive no money from YUSU this year. Campus magazine Bad Taste saw its budget cut from £4,094 to £2,765 while Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans (LGBT) Social’s budget was more than halved from £1,100 to £493.33.

Many societies have suffered budget cuts after the overall amount available for allocation fell. In the 2007/08 academic year £35,817 was allocated amongst 56 societies, an average of £639.59 per society. In 2008/09 £31,100 has been divided amongst 67 societies, giving an average of £464.18.

In previous years society treasurers have been invited to draw up a budget to present it to a meeting of Union Finance Committee for approval. The meeting was originally scheduled by former Societies and Communications Officer Sam Bayley for Monday, June 2. It was then cancelled by email on Sunday night and rescheduled for June 9. The rescheduled meeting was then also cancelled.

On Thursday, June 19 Bayley emailed societies to inform them that he and Service Finance Officer Matt Burton had made a series of “prudent cuts” to budget proposals and that the cut-down budgets would be submitted to Finance Committee instead of the original grant requests made by treasurers.

In the email Bayley described as the proposals made by himself and Burton as a “fair, balanced offer for all interested societies.” He asked treasurers to “be reasonable and sensible about this – this budget is a hard job to put together and we feel we’ve done it as well as possible. Changes at this time still are possible but are difficult.”

Society chairs reacted angrily to the handling of the budget. Former LGBT Social chair Michael Rutherford said: “From start to finish, the communication from Sam Bayley was appalling. We were never told when the meeting was going to be, and it was only through hounding him that we got any information. Then, our meeting was cancelled and YUSU opted to do the full process without any input. Our budget was more than halved from the 2007-08 figure without any consultation.”

“LGBT Social and several other societies were the victims of a lazy process,” Rutherford added.

Music Society treasurer James Harper said: “The entire process was poorly managed and we were marginalised in the process without any attention paid to our needs. Sam Bayley just did not care.”

In a statement the Zahir, which lost £680, said: “We were disappointed to find that our own society grant had been slashed by almost half without any warning or any satisfactory explanation.”

Rutherford and the chairs of Lazerus, Fragsoc and Science Fiction & Fantasy Society sent Bayley a joint statement on June 25 claiming “the procedure undertaken made it impossible for many societies to present an effective and accurate budget proposal.”

Labour Club Chair David Levene, a society that was given the funding it requested, said: “There was very, very little consultation and it was very disorganised.”

Speaking to Nouse this week, Bayley rejected claims that the societies had been shut out of the budgeting process. He said: “The Finance Meeting was not cancelled altogether, all of the society budgets were presented to a Finance Committee which had the final say on how funds were distributed. Societies were able to attend the meeting if they so wished, and in fact some did. The team was busy but did not neglect its duties to society budgeting.”

“When people say that communication was poor what they actually mean is that they didn’t check their emails,” he added.

Burton said: “I think we could have been better at communicating what we were doing and about some meetings being cancelled but there was still the opportunity, and some societies took it, to come and say why they needed more money. We could have been better at communicating how that was done.”
Burton said that the smaller amount of money allocated directly to societies this year was the result of a number of factors, including rising overhead costs, but was largely down to the decision to hire a new staff member in the Student Activities Office. The office will provide “front of house support to committees and societies.”

He denied that the cuts were linked to the YUSU bar project, currently budgeted at £300,000.

In case you haven’t noticed, things in the world aren’t going that well. Every day the photo editors of national papers struggle for some new way to illustrate the scale of human suffering caused by the credit crunch. “A distraught stock broker bursting into tears as he realizes he’s out of a job and is going to lose his house? Angelic children patting their mother’s heaving shoulders as she learns that the family savings have gone the way of the Titanic? Get real, the Dow Jones lost a quarter of its value this morning. I was thinking more along the lines of a banker impaling themselves on the prongs of their Blackberry charger.”

Yet for the wall-to-wall gloom I would hesitantly venture there’s some good news. For starters, the state of the housing market means we may be able to afford homes one day. That we will never ever, ever be given a mortgage is entirely beside the point. Better still, Obama is riding high in the polls as result of the economic gloom. He looks set to serve a good three weeks as president before the total collapse of Western civilization. But most importantly the global financial crisis gives us all a chance to practice that most invaluable of Freshers’ Week skills – talking loudly and passionately on topics of which we are spectacularly ill-informed.

I have a friend, let’s call him Julian, who never met a conversation he didn’t like. Over the years I have watched him again and again rush audaciously into discussions about which I know for a fact he knows nothing. With breath-taking bravado he holds forth on the intricacies of ice hockey or the suitability of the governor of Kansas as a vice-presidential nominee. Risking life, limb and crippling social humiliation should he be caught out, he lectures others without so much as a correct fact to lean on.

For some time he’s been able to supplement this thrill seeking addiction by lurching into seminars, proud of having read the least yet spoken the most. But this was mere crystal meth in comparison to the medical strength of opportunity provided by the credit crunch. Julian dropped Economics AS after three weeks because found it dull. Yet today with eyes rolling madly he howls about the incorrect pricing of risk, the impotence of our liquidity policy in a globalised economy and the weakness of sterling-denominated corporate bonds. The flight of passionate discourse, unencumbered by clunky and overrated knowledge, is truly a beautiful thing to behold.

Let us all learn from Julian. This Freshers’ Week don’t quietly pretend that you’re busy cooking Pot Noodle King Size while your new housemates are animatedly discussing some classic hip-hop group you’ve never heard of. Confidently assert that Flava Flav sold out after ‘Fear of a Black Planet’. Pound the table as you insist that Notorious B.I.G. had it coming. And sneer with contempt at any who challenge your view that creative foundations of all contemporary rap can be traced back to Vanilla Ice. What do they know? Probably only quite a bit more than you.

Raf Sanchez worked on the Obama campaign for two months.

I went to Virginia in search of a Southern experience. I wanted to see the United States at its Bible-bashing, gun-toting, red-white-and-bluest. I wanted to sleep in a caravan, eat grits and have endless arguments with Republicans who would accuse me of being a “pansy-ass Limey”.

On paper Virginia isn’t a bad bet for this kind of thing. It hasn’t voted Democrat in a presidential election since 1964. The state’s Republican senator George Allen kept an antique noose in his office and referred to an Indian man as “Macaca” at a rally.

But the reality is a more complicated. In a country often divided into “red states and blue states”, Virginia is increasingly purple. Its current governor is a Democrat, as is Senator Jim Webb – who defeated Allen in 2006. The technology firms setting up shop in the north of the state have brought an influx of young professionals who are both highly educated and liberal leaning. It also among the top targets of the Obama campaign in 2008.

A lot of my time on the campaign was spent doing voter registration. It’s a pretty low tech affair. You stand at high-traffic areas like Metro stations and ask people whether they’re registered to vote. All that’s required is a clip board, a stack of registration forms, and a willingness to be ignored for hours by hundreds with varying levels of politeness in return for the five or six people you register.

Voter registration was easily the most rewarding part of my work on the campaign. It’s here that you really feel how much Obama’s candidacy means to people, especially many African-Americans old enough to remember the Civil Rights struggle. People don’t just agree with him. He is cherished. His “improbable” success is something people draw personal pride and happiness from, as a parent might from the success of a child. To be allowed in on a little bit of the solidarity people feel for the man is incredibly empowering.

Yet as empowering as it can be ‘voter reg’ can poses some difficult questions. Black people are statistically less likely to be registered than white people. Young people less like likely than old people. A young black man in jeans is many multiples less likely to be registered than a white man in a suit. But to what extent, for yourself if not for the outward appearance of the campaign, is it acceptable to act on those statistics? You don’t always feel great when you take an awkward sidestep to make sure you’re positioned to ask a young black woman if she is registered to vote for the candidate she statistically should support.

Although northern Virginia is growing ever more Democrat the love for Obama is far from universal. Every day on the doorstep and on the phone you would get abuse from Republicans as well as Clinton supporters who were unable to let go even after their candidate apparently had. One night when I was alone in the office a large gentleman wandered off the street and urinated on the floor. His even larger friends convinced me to shrug the incident off as a policy disagreement. We laughed the next day but several nights later a group tried to break down the locked office door while a number of people were inside. Staff members who had worked in other states previously told me about death threats they had received for being a white person working for a black candidate.

The international character of the campaign reflects the stake the world has in the election. By the time I left there were seven Brits, as well as a German and an Italian working in our office. All were greeted with a mixture of gratitude for “coming to help us save our country” and the usual curiosity with which foreigners are treated in the US. Like me they had come out to fight for Obama and for adventure, but stayed, working thankless hours, out of loyalty to the field staff who put their lives on hold for the election.

On my last day before leaving for the UK I met Obama on a tiny airstrip in New Hampshire. His jet, adorned with his mantra of ‘Change’, looked comical amongst the Cessnas and Piper Cub light aircraft. He seemed tired but glad to see us. He asked me about Virginia, nodding in quiet approval as I told him about our field work there. He is more substantial, tougher looking than his trademark slim suits make him appear on television. There is a swagger as he walks. He thanked us for our work and within minutes his jet roared off. For those of us left on the runway it was a moment on which we would giddily compare notes until hours later. For him it was just one more campaign stop on a long and difficult road to the presidency.

Visit Palestine

Laura Payne visited Israel and the West Bank to work in a refugee camp for a month.

For all the alleged spiritual power of Jerusalem, it is not a calming place. It’s a city under siege, where the air is thick with tension. School children on outings are accompanied by armed security guards. Police and Israeli defence force soldiers with M-16’s strapped to their back seem to outnumber civilians. I spend a lot of time trying not to look suspicious. When I stand on a crisp packet there’s a loud bang. People jump. A gun cocks. I freeze. Anywhere else that would be funny. Throughout my week, I struggle with the pathological security and remain scared that I’ll stand on another crisp packet.

Not so in the West Bank. The atmosphere changes immediately and tangibly. The volume increases. Music blasts out; people shout rather than talk; cars honk and screech. Finally I feel like I could jump on a crisp packet and nobody would notice. It strikes me now as ironic that even though Palestine is the occupied territory and Israel the occupier, I felt freer in the West Bank than I did in Jerusalem. Not safe, but free. People might watch me here as they did in Israel, but open curiosity replaces inherent suspicion.

We were staying in Aida camp, one of the biggest refugee camps in West Bank which houses around 4,600 people in cramped conditions. We slept in a school just outside of the camp in the shadow of the separation wall. It feels safe enough, until a fight breaks out down the road. We hear gunfire and run upstairs to the classrooms we sleep in. The local volunteers get caught in the fighting, and run to the relative safety of the school. We sit it out. Eventually the police come and tell us we should all go into one room at the end of the school. They ‘have the situation under control now’.

The most volatile region in the West Bank is Hebron, where the Israeli settlers have built their settlement right in the middle of the Palestinian old city. 700 Jewish settlers live under massive Israeli army and police protection, disrupting life for the 180,000 Palestinian inhabitants. They are about as fundamentally Zionist as it is possible to be, and harass, abuse and victimise anyone who is not also a settler, including internationals.

We are supposed to be meeting with the Christian Peacekeepers, a group of observers that patrol Hebron to try to prevent violence, and walk down one of the city’s most contended roads, one that is officially shared, but is in reality controlled by the settlers. As we walk, the settlers tail us, shouting abuse. This road was once a bustling marketplace; the heart of the Hebron economy. Now it’s like a scene from a war movie. Soldiers are positioned every 20 meters or so. Another settler comes out and starts to put up Israeli flags. I follow the example of our guide and offer him a friendly ’shalom’, but he just spits onto the ground.

None of this phases Terry Boulatta, a Jerusalem born headmistress, filmmaker and activist. Married to a Palestinian man, she believes that both communities should start building links with each other: ‘If they build a wall, we should build a bridge’. I had heard many such sentiments, but her hopefulness managed to catch me off guard.

Since I left, local volunteers I worked with have been imprisoned, the UN are still distributing food aid in Aida camp, and the daily fight to survive continues. My trip didn’t change that; I never expected it would. But it did change some small things. We left a garden for the children to play in at Aida Camp, and murals depicting the children’s original villages. Helping Kholoud, a local volunteer, apply for a Visa means she’s now studying Peace Studies in the UK. It’s these small things that endure, that made the trip worthwhile. It might not have been pretty all the time, but would I recommend it? In a heartbeat.

Perform in Edinburgh Fringe

Jamie Wilkes went up to Edinbrugh Fringe with York performance company ‘Belt Up’.

This summer, the York theatre company ‘Belt Up (nothing to see/hear)’ planned to invade the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with our venue ‘The Red Room’. Armed with truckloads of red fabric, old carpets and Victorian paraphernalia, we transformed a hotel function room into a run-down bohemian boudoir. The idea was that this venue would be an immersive theatre environment hosting a ridiculous amount of shows from butchered French classics to unabridged Shakespeare’s stretched over three days in fragmented episodes across the entire city of Edinburgh. It was a mammoth project, and one that had dominated our lives since January.

It was hard work, very hard work. I began to forget what sleep felt like because there simply wasn’t time. Our venue was running around 25 shows over the festival with at least 7 every day. Naturally, after a hard and draining day’s work, the only sensible thing to do is go out and get plastered. This, of course, made the following day harder – I don’t think I will ever live down a podcast interview for ‘threeweeks’ in which I was still drunk from the night before and started ranting about “fucking the fourth wall”.

As the festival gathered momentum, audiences started to pick up. With larger audiences came more press interest, and soon the reviews started coming out. We had novelty to our advantage – not many shows could offer being shown to your seat by a dwarf or saving you from an invisible falling grand piano. By the end of the fringe three of our shows were listed in the top 50 by ‘The Scotsman’, with ‘The Tartuffe’ making its way to the top five.

This was my first experience of the festival and to say I was thrown into the deep end is an understatement. It is a weird place, like some sort of alternative reality. My most memorable moment was post-final Red Room party; we decided to climb ‘Arthur’s Seat’, a small mountain overlooking the city. I excitedly decided to run ahead of the rest of the group despite not knowing where I was going. After several minutes of shouting, I realised that I was in fact going up the wrong hill. To make up for lost time I ran, as the crow flies, in a straight line from one mountain to the other. I was invincible. I was that superhero in the ‘drinking doesn’t make you a superhero’ advert, and I survived. We eventually reached the top and watched the sun rise whilst burning flyers for warmth.

As the festival drew to an end, our hard work and overly ambitious ideas were rewarded. We received two awards for ‘The Red Room’. One was the ‘Threeweeks’ editors awards’ for our “prolific 2008 programme”, one of 10 awards given out by the magazine. Interestingly, one of the other winners was a 75 year old stripper. Belt Up was also awarded the Edinburgh International Festival award, in the form of £5,000 towards developing a workshop for next year. Although before the Fringe I had dreamt of a transfer to the National Theatre, or a Pulitzer or two – I never thought we would actually achieve such recognition. It was an incredible feeling.

Clarke was sent down for academic reasons and was advised that by the University that an appeal had little chance of success. Speaking to Nouse, he said: “Their response was cold and quick considering the number of hours a college chair puts in for the University. I don’t think it was even taken into consideration the amount of work I put in.”

Clarke admitted that balancing his chairmanship with academics had often left him “overstretched”. He said: “I think that the people who get into position of college chair are people who want to take on a challenge and do everything they can for their college. When given that amount of work they do it because they want the best for the college but in hindsight you realize it probably is too much for one person.”

Clarke’s responsibilities have been split between former Vice-Chairs Katie Saunders and Becky Turnbull. Clarke clashed with Saunders last term when Saunders attempted to bring a vote of no confidence against the JCRC’s Social Secretaries after a trip to Belgian lost £2,000. The vote failed after the meeting in which it was proposed was inquorate.

Following the meeting Nouse received an anonymous letter listing a number of serious accusations against Clarke. The letter, believed to have been written by a member of the JCRC, read: “I have passed this on to you as I believe the University and the College must be made aware of the conduct of this Goodricke’s Chair since being elected. I believe most people would be shocked with polices and remarks that have been made [by Clarke] this year.” None of the allegations in the letter could be substantiated.

Clarke dismissed rumours of a no confidence vote, saying “I fully engaged what was going on in the college. I think if a vote had been made it would not have succeeded. The issue was sorted out an open meeting and the feeling there was that everyone was happy with the outcome.”

Goodricke Treasurer James Smallwood said: “It was a big shock that Joe left but the committee came together over the holidays and got everything sorted for Freshers’ Week. Hopefully things should all be fine this term.” Smallwood said there was “no chance” Clarke would have faced a vote of no confidence if he had remained at the head of the JCRC.

Clarke said the University did not recognize the work done by college chairs. He said: “On an institutional level I don’t think the work of a college chair does is recognized at all by the university. I think very few people at the higher levels of the University have any idea what college chairs do.”

Clarke becomes the second college chair to be removed from their position after James Chair Chet Khatu lost a vote of no confidence in June. Khatu was voted out by a margin of 10-2 following a public falling out with James Provost Dr Neil Lunt. He had previously been embroiled in controversy after taking part in an event in which a stripper was brought to the JCR and subsequently refused to apologise.

At an October 2 meeting the City of York Council Planning Committee deferred approving plans for the new Department of Theatre Film and Television (TFTV). Councillors claimed that the University had failed to provide sufficient evidence of how it planned to meet its commitment to produce 10% of its total energy requirements from renewable onsite sources.

Liberal Democrat Cllr. Christian Vassie said: “We are simply not convinced that the University is committed to renewable energy for that site. We expect the city’s leading academic institution to help in that regard and not appear to be ducking and diving in helping the city go forwards.”

Cllr. Ruth Potter, Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, said: “It is very disappointing that the University isn’t coming forward and showing leadership on this issue. There have been words but no action.”

The committee had the option to approve the application on the condition that an energy plan be presented at a later date. Vassie said the committee refused to give approval to send a “strong message” to the University.

Councillors raised a number of specific concerns, claiming that the design of the TFTV building would not allow for the placement of solar panels on the roof and that no effort had been made to include water source heat pumps in plans for the lake. The University has as yet made no application for wind turbines.

The University was represented at the meeting by Director of Facilities Management Keith Lilley. Lilley told councillors that the University was taking a “holistic” approach to renewable energy which could not be judged on the design of a single building.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor Elizabeth Heaps, who is responsible for overseeing the Heslington East project said that coucillors’ criticisms were unfair.

She said: “We are taking a University wide view of energy provision and consumption, and are committed to being energy efficient in a broad sense. We have a robust, effective long-term energy strategy. We acknowledge, however, that we may not have communicated our strategy to councillors with sufficient clarity.”

No records of votes are kept at meetings of Planning Committee but both Potter and Vassie said the approval was refused by a wide, cross-party majority. The University is expected to return to the Planning Committee on October 23 with updated plans.

The University committed to producing 10% of its energy requirements from renewable onsite sources in the Heslington East Master Plan, released in April 2008. The plan also commits the University to a reduction in carbon emissions across the entire campus of 10% by 2010 from 2004 levels.

After a poor showing last year in which the University was ranked 16th, York came one spot below Durham and one above Bristol, with a final score of 736 out of 1000. The table was topped by Oxford for the second year in a row.

YUSU President Anne-Marie Canning welcomed the news, saying: “This is excellent news for the university. I’m absolutely ecstatic. I’m dancing.”

A University spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

York scored 77% in the student satisfaction category. Writing in the Guide, Editor John O’ Leary said: “Adding the new measure to the existing set of entry scores, research grades and graduate destinations has brought big changes in some tables because the most satisfied students are not always at the most prestigious universities.”

York did not top any individual subject tables but performed well in many. The Department of Chemistry was ranked fifth in the country while History came sixth and English eighth.

The departments of Electronics and Education Studies, which both saw a 44% drop in applications this year were ranked 21st and 34th respectively.

Full information is available on the Times Good University Guide website.

Khatu was removed by a vote of 10-2. One of the JCRC’s three Vice Chairs is expected to take over.

One source on the JCRC said the vote did not come as a surprise and “it had been coming for a while”. The source said Khatu had been removed due to “the combination of a lot of unrest amongst JCR members.”

The vote of no confidence comes days after Khatu engaged in a public argument with James Provost Neil Lunt.

In a series of emails forwarded to Nouse by Khatu, the James Chair accused his provost of not caring about the needs of students. In the opening of one email he wrote: “Thanks for your responses (despite your response consisting solely of butchering my previous email to you), it is clear you are not interested in certain topics of which I am very disappointed, however I wish you all the best when you feel the times are appropriate to discuss these points.”

When contacted by Nouse about the allegations, Lunt said: “I really am not quite sure what the young man is on about. Virtually all the issues that he wanted to put on the agenda were put on the agenda. He has the opportunity to raise each and every point but chooses not to even attend.”

In a thinly veiled swipe at Khatu, Lunt said: “We have already had enough damage done to the College by the actions (and frequently the inactions) of certain individuals.”

Khatu was embroiled in controversy earlier in the year after being involved in a party in the college JCR to which a stripper was brought. He was later forced to apologise for the incident.

Entwistle, who graduated from the University in 2002 with a degree in Electronic Engineering, is accused of murdering his wife Rachel, 27, and their nine-month-old baby daughter, Lillian, in the family’s rented home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

The couple met while Rachel, an American national, spent a year at York in 1999. Both were members of the University Boat club. They married shortly after his graduation in 2002 and moved to the United States.

Rachel and Lillian’s bodies were discovered by police on January 22, 2006, after friends of the family became concerned. Entwistle flew home to the UK just hours after his wife and daughter was killed. He was arrested by British police in London on February 9, 2006 and extradited to the United States.

Jurors in the double murder trial, taking place in Middlesex Superior Court, were shown a 20-minute-long video made by a police forensics team as they investigated the couple’s bedroom, where both bodies were found with gunshot wounds.
Entwistle, who has made no public displays of emotion since the trial began on June 6, broke down in tears shortly after the video began and wept throughout its duration.

A post-mortem examination of the bodies found that Rachel had been shot in the forehead at close range while Lillian had been killed with a bullet that passed through her chest and lodged into her mother.

Both were killed with a .22 revolver belonging to Rachel’s stepfather, Joseph Matterazzo. State prosecutors allege that Entwistle stole the gun from his in-law’s home in nearby Carver and used it to execute his wife and child and returned it immediately after the killings. Entwistle’s fingerprints were found on the gun along with those of 25 others close to the case, including members of Rachel’s family.

Testifying on June 8, Matterazzo claimed that Entwistle had asked him to bury the two bodies together because “that’s the way I left them.” Matterazzo said: “He asked me if Rachel and Lilly could be buried together because ‘that’s the way I left them, I mean found them.’“ When pressed on Entwistle’s wording, Matterazzo claimed: “That’s exactly what he said.”

Matterazzo claimed Entwistle made the slip during one of a number of telephone conversations between the two in the three days after the killings. Entwistle called from his parents’ home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, which he returned to after the killings in January 2006.

During one of the conversations Matterazzo said he asked Entwistle: “Neil, did you do this, or do you know who did this?” Entwistle allegedly said he did not.

Earlier, the court heard from Lloyd Cooke, Rachel’s uncle that he and Matterazzo had taught Entwistle how to use a gun, including the weapon used in the murder. Cooke said: “He handled the firearms well.”

Papers submitted to the court by the prosecution allege that a number of pornography and pyramid scheme websites were hosted by a domain registered at Entwistle’s former student house on Heslington Road, just minutes from the University of York campus.