Campus Watch

News from campus' around the country

By Lizzie Edmonds

Bath

Amy Williams, a student at Bath University, has taken Britain’s first gold medal of the 2010 Winter Olympics in the bob skeleton discipline.
    Not only is she the first British champion of the sport, it is the first Gold to be won in an individual event for the Winter Olympics for nearly 30 years.
    On winning, Williams stated: “I’m not very good at statistics so I didn’t realise I’m the first gold medallist for a long time.”
    Williams smashed course records in the heats and was in pole position when entering the finals. Her victory comes in light of the fatal accident of Georgian sportsman Nodar Kumaritashvili a few weeks ago, which happened on the very same track.
    Williams is already tipped to take the Sports Personality of the Year award for 2010 and will certainly feature in a number of record books due to her success.

Loughborough

Detectives are investigating reports that a 19-year-old man was sexually assaulted on Loughborough campus.
    The attack allegedly took place over two weeks ago on February 11, but police have only just released details of the incident.
    The student victim had been out to the union bar before the incident and was walking home when the assault is said to have happened. He was attacked sometime between 1.50am and 2.30am on Haselgrave cricket field.
    Detectives have appealed for anyone with information to get in touch and have also warned students to be especially careful on the campus late at night.

York

Graduates of the University of York have been given the bad news that they are over 11 per cent less likely to achieve ‘graduate level’ employment than those of peer institutions.
    The University is ranked among the top 10 universities in the UK, meaning its graduates should theoretically have similar employment prospects to the graduates of institutions such as Imperial College London and Bristol University.
    The figures have led to major questions into whether the University is investing enough time and money in student job prospects.

Queen Mary, University of London

A Queen Mary researcher has written in the Guardian arguing that the only way to stem the tide in the rise of infections like Chlamydia was to make testing compulsory.
    Rosa Freedman, a researcher on human rights at Queen Mary, University of London, says that current strategies of raising awareness and encouraging testing are not enough and that “the spread of sexually transmitted diseases – including HIV, which is again on the rise in England – can be classed as an epidemic.”
    Freedman has stated that she is aware that the idea could be unpopular, and that many may see it as an infringement of human rights. However she counters this argument by claiming that the right to choose if you’re tested is trumped by the right for others to know the risk of infection.
    Students from the University of Lincoln were questioned on the idea and a vast majority concurred that Freedman’s idea was the right way to deal with STI’s.