Features

  • Yes We Can?

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Do not be misled by Obama’s decisive Electoral College victory. Like Britain, the American electorate is broken down into constituencies that represent electoral blocs in which the winner takes all. This electoral system means that whereas we may say the American public has spoken, in reality the only people that mattered were those voting in swing states - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia to name but a few that swung the election for Obama.

    I vote in Tennessee, a state solidly Republican in this election by more than 15% and one that didn’t even vote for it’s native son, Al Gore, when he held the Democrat nomination in 2000. So my vote is merely symbolic, contributing to Obama’s national majority that is materially insignificant. Likewise, on the eve of the election I returned from rural Texas, in the heart of Republican territory. In Bush’s own state, that has not voted Democrat since 1976, the level of division will fail to register in election coverage because of a system that does not favour individual voters in pre-determined states. Here, ‘Nobama’ carnivals were held on conservative campuses where students were invited to throw eggs – representing financial savings that they feared would be lost under Obama’s ‘socialist’ policies - at Obama’s portrait. “He’s not even black, he’s half-white, half-Pakistani” one girl misinformed me, as if even that false data excluded an individual from the nation’s highest office. The division that an Obama presidency will breed is real. Despite my pleas, members of my own family in Tennessee have yet to dismiss the horrific circulations that Obama may be a terrorist - or worse, the anti-Christ.

    Conservative America’s greatest fear with the conclusion of this election is likely to be progressive America’s biggest joy. Democrats have made gains in both houses of Congress so, for one of the few times in American history, Obama will preside over a legislature composed by a majority of his party. This is very significant. Party uniformity across the branches of government means Obama should be able to pass most of the controversial legislation he has proposed, from mandatory healthcare to a repeal of President Bush’s upper-end tax cuts. The cry from the artery of Middle America is a fear of socialism, government expansion, taxation that will ‘spread the wealth around’, and let us not forget, women’s right to abortion. An Obama presidency, should it have the opportunity, is likely to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will only further the ideological slant of the nation’s highest judiciary in favour of Roe vs Wade, a decision conservatives have gotten so close to overturning during the last eight years.

    With this election outcome, America will be politically united but still dramatically divided among the populace. In his rousing address before the Democrat convention in 2004, a relatively unknown Senate candidate from Illinois espoused that “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America”. But for Barack Obama, President-elect four years later, that utopia is still far from a reality. He may have a Congressional majority, and have overcome the barriers of race that plagued the USA for so long, but the division in America is still as stark as black and white.

    For some time Americans have longed for a statesman representing America’s diverse heritage as a land founded on immigration and religious tolerance. Indeed, much of the world has waited for such a figure. A global presidential poll run by The Economist found that Senator McCain received less than a sixth of the votes given to Barack Obama. But the reasons for Obama’s popularity abroad are the reasons for much of his opposition at home. Will he pursue a more diplomatic approach to overseas relations and a more regulated economic agenda at home? Will President Obama be the agent of change he has promised for so long? The bar set for Obama over the next four years will be high, probably unattainable considering America’s current foreign policy mess and financial crisis. Nevertheless, he will also have a unique opportunity to implement a significant political agenda. His election is already a milestone in US history; we hope now it will be for reasons more than the colour of his skin.

    Jordan Wilson

  • Leftism

    Published on 27 November 2008

    On the morning of Wednesday 5th November, we woke to learn that Barack Obama had indeed taken his place in history as the first black president of the United States of America.

    His acceptance speech, like all the other speeches of his campaign, was stirring and inspirational, nothing less that what we have come to expect from a man who has branded himself a messenger of change and hope.

    There can be no denying the enormous symbolic significance of this event. The widely broadcast footage of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, veteran figure of black activism, moved to tears at the Chicago rally was an equally symbolic way of conveying that the election of a black man to the Whitehouse is the crowning achievement of a civil rights struggle that has been hundreds of years in the making. Truly a triumph for a country still riddled with endemic racism.

    In the midst of the euphoric cheers that greeted Obama’s words, one line of his speech seemed particularly apt. “Even as we celebrate tonight”, he intoned, “we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime”. And this in many ways is the paradox that he faces. For though Obama’s election may be a great victory, it has also incontestably been made possible by the dire situation in which his predecessor has left the country.

    Although whilst campaigning for office Senator Obama was able to champion the highest ideals, President Obama will not arrive in office with a clean start. He is inheriting two wars, massive national debt, and an international financial crisis, yet despite this he is still expected to pull the American people phoenix-like into a golden era. To think that he will be able to achieve all this without compromising any of his ideals, or disappointing at least some of those that supported him, is simply make-believe.

    There are so many of us who would like to believe that the vision which President-Elect Obama offers for American politics both at home and abroad can become reality, but until we see his good intentions and matchless rhetoric subjected to the realities of office, our optimism must remain tempered with caution.

    Impact’s Columnist, Corin Faife

  • Pan Fried Smoked Mackerel with Mashed Sweet Potato and Fine Green Beans

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Judging from the cooking habits of some of those I know at university, I’m assuming many of you don’t cook fish on a regular basis. Let me convince you that not only is this recipe incredibly easy and tasty, but smoked mackerel is extremely cheap to purchase compared to other fish and it counts as your weekly portion of oily fish. You do not need to worry about bones if you buy boneless fillets. As one of the accompaniments, I’ve recommended mashed sweet potatoes as not only will this make your meal appear more classy and colourful, but they have also been scientifically proven to offer more nutrients than the regular potato. If fine green beans do not take your fancy, then you can obtain a 1kg bag of frozen ‘veg medley’ for 82p in Aldi.

    Ingredients - serves 1

    1 or 2 smoked mackerel boneless strips (£1.99 Tesco for a pack of 4)
    Salt
    Oil
    2 sweet potatoes - 89p Aldi for 750g bag
    Butter
    Milk
    A handful of fine green beans, ends snipped off - 79p Aldi for a pack
    2 spoonfuls of yoghurt (optional) - 49p Aldi
    A wedge of lemon (optional) – 30p Tesco per lemon

    1. Boil the kettle first for speed purposes and whilst waiting chop the potatoes roughly into quarters. Once the kettle is done, place a pinch of salt and the potatoes in the saucepan. Then pour enough of the water into the saucepan to cover the potatoes. Turn the heat up to max or high enough to make the water boil.

    2. About 10 minutes into cooking the potatoes, heat a frying pan on a medium heat with only a tiny amount of oil as the fish itself is oily. Once heated place the mackerel in the pan. After 2 minutes or before the fish starts to disintegrate, turn it over to cook on the other side. Place the beans in as well at this point; toss them around now and again.

    3. After one minute, drain the potatoes. Mash them with some milk and a small bit of butter. Place this on a serving plate.

    4. The fish and beans should be done by now, so place these on the plate with the mashed potato. Add the wedge of lemon and yoghurt alongside and voila, you have yourself a ‘posh’ and cheap meal.

    Ben Griffin

  • A SAD, SAD, Situation

    Published on 27 November 2008

    You are poor. You aren’t getting any younger. Your love life is nonexistent – these are all perfectly valid reasons for being sad, but have you ever thought a spot of rain could be to blame?
    SAD, or ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’, is a mood disorder thought to affect half a million people every winter, with seasonal variations in light creating confusion in the body’s biological clock. The less daylight hours, the more likely SAD is to manifest itself.

    Any age and gender is susceptible, but the most common sufferers are women aged between 18 and 30.

    While not being named as an official disorder until 1985, SAD was made aware to scientists in 1845 when they noted that the reproductive and hibernation schedules of animals were disrupted by disturbances in sunlight.

    There are many shades of grey, making it hard to prove whether you’re a sufferer or merely a hypochondriac, but there are symptoms:

    Are you SAD?
    • Do you feel apathetic or lethargic?
    • Do you binge on junk food?
    • Do you seek to avoid social contact?
    • Do you have unnatural sleep patterns?
    • Have you lost your libido?

    Apart from the obvious night-out-in-Ocean trick to cure that last one, there is a range of ways you can get back that happy feeling. Firstly, you can take your mum’s advice and eat right: wholegrain foods, milk, turkey, and fatty acids found in fish all contain nutrients that support the brain’s neurotransmitter function.

    Exercise produces the chemical serotonin, which is another good natural defence; 30 minutes of being active a day should do the trick.

    Finally, if you know where to look, the herbs Ginkgo Biloba and St. John’s Wort, and vitamins B, C and D (found in eggs, citrus fruits and cereal, respectively) are all perfect guards against the winter blues.

    It’s easier said than done in England, but increasing the amount of time spent absorbing natural sunlight has been proven to suppress the secretion of melatonin – a hormone linked to depression and produced at increased levels in the dark. Vitamin D forms naturally under the skin in reaction to sunlight, so if you want, kill two birds with one stone and take a bowl of cornflakes with you sunbathing.

    SAD is a little-known disorder. Sufferers are often accused of being glum but are sometimes genuinely debilitated. Doctors can prescribe antidepressant medication but due to unpleasant side effects, you can’t top these great natural solutions. Just because the sun isn’t smiling doesn’t mean you can’t!

    Ben Griffin

  • Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Button?

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Koumpounophobia: n. A surprisingly common, irrational fear of buttons. Sufferers dislike the sight and feel of buttons and in severe cases avoid saying or hearing the word.

    For as long as I can remember I have hated buttons. Whilst the word phobia provokes ideas of fear I am completely aware of the fact that a button will never hurt me. I can wholly accept the idea that the chances of an evil button lodging itself in my throat in an attempt to choke me to death is near impossible.

    However, the sight and feel of these harmless inanimate objects repulses me. I cannot stomach the smooth texture of them touching any part of my body. Buttons unattached to an item of clothing are particularly distressing; the loose string gleefully waving in the wind, as if overjoyed to be free from the captivity of clothing, genuinely makes me want to throw up there and then. I should point out that this only applies to plastic and wooden buttons, whilst – in utter irrationality - metal ones are acceptable. In my defence, metal buttons don’t have the two holes in the centre and the string passing through the middle, which is a real saving grace in my eyes. Poppers are again acceptable, but to be honest unnecessary fastenings for purely decorative purposes really grind my gears.

    My family had always been pretty understanding, but naturally labelled me a bit of a fruit-loop. All this changed at the age of about ten, when a newly-married couple moved into the house next to mine. The woman told us that she was expecting a baby and so was currently on the hunt for baby clothes. My Mum kindly offered her some of our old baby cardigans and coats, but she politely declined explaining that her husband Nick couldn’t have buttons on his baby due to an irrational phobia of his. Suddenly everything was easier; a sensible, sane, full grown man had a similar problem and from that day my family no longer laughed it off so easily.

    My first attempt at therapy was in a dark and dingy room above a pub in my hometown. The woman was a five-foot, nervous wreck who spoke in little more than a whisper. I lay down on the clichéd leather sofa whilst she informed me that when she got dressed that morning she had been tempted to wear her new button-embellished shoes. Already a bad start. She then asked how my mother responded to the fear. I told her she’d always been supportive, purchasing a lifetime supply of Velcro and using it to replace any buttons I came across; my school skirts, for example, were fastened with Velcro strips. A new duvet cover I’d chosen (a poor judgement on my behalf) was fastened with ten horrendously large, purple buttons. I spent weeks curled up in a tiny ball in bed trying to keep my feet as far away from the end of the duvet as possible until eventually she created a Velcro haven at the foot of my bed.

    When she asked me how my father responded to the fear, I explained that he’d lightly teased me when I was young. The remainder of the £60 session was spent trying to construct a theory in which Dad was held responsible for the entire phobia. It was all a bit too Freudian for my liking.

    The next logical step was hypnotherapy. Whilst I have heard cases of it revolutionising people’s lives, it just didn’t happen for me. I remember lying on a bed whilst the therapist played typically ‘relaxing’ music, spoke to me in a ‘relaxing’ voice, and described scenes such as lying on the ground in a forest looking at the sky whilst sinking into the soil and falling “deeper and deeper into relaxation”. I may have been in a boat according to her, but in my cynical mind there was no hiding from the fact that actually I was still lying on a bed in a room, fighting the urge to fall asleep.

    In an article about a student who suffers badly from Koumpounophobia, The Sun estimates that 1 in 75, 000 people suffer from the phobia, a surprisingly high figure considering the irrationality of it. The article also cites other bizarre phobias, such as Arachibutyrophobia, a fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth, Symmetrophobia, a fear of symmetry, and Aulophobia, the fear of flutes. Although several attempts at therapy have failed, at least I can take comfort in the fact that there is always someone out there who is a little more unusual than me.

    Hattie Hamilton

  • A Students’ Guide To Househunting In Nottingham

    Published on 27 November 2008

    It’s the depths of November. The weather is closing in, deadlines are looming and hall food is deteriorating into mush. And lo! Through the gloom, a chirpy acquaintance from Freshers’ Week whispers in your ear: “Have you not found your house for next year yet?! Oh my goodness! I found mine three weeks ago!”

    Within hours friendship groups are torn apart, Lenton is swarming with desperate Freshers and the countdown to Zero Hour has begun – the day, according to your friends, when all housing will be gone (probably sometime around mid-November).

    These people are however the people who around October in your second year will be regretting such drastic behaviour. No matter what Unipol, your friends, your halls or even your relatives tell you, there is absolutely no rush to find a house. Instead of signing a binding contract with people who you met a mere month prior, why not wait until the second semester when you have managed to maintain a friendship past the initial highs of your first term?

    “The first and most important thing to make sure is that you find the right group of mates to live with”, says Natalie Tomalie of Shields & Co. Student Letting Agency in Lenton. There are countless examples of people who signed early and now barely communicate with their housemates, let alone want to pay for the extortionate rent often pressed upon the early birds in the housing search.

    Your mate with the taste in music that leaves a little to be desired, or his girlfriend that seems loud in halls, believe you me, they will be all the louder in the enclosed environment of a suburban house - perhaps they should be avoided in your housing considerations. Equally, your ultra-tidy friend whose OCD tendencies, while quirky at first, may not take so well to your ‘eat first, wash a week later’ ethos.

    According to ‘M-S’ and ‘Shields’ , both student letting agencies, the average house price a student should expect to pay is approximately £67 per person, per week. However the range varies from £40 in some of the cheap, less popular areas to approaching £100 for a fully refurbished Victorian mansion in The Park. It is also true that the earlier you try and find a house, the more likely it is that you will end up paying through the nose for a mediocre pad, the likes of which you could find for a much more student-friendly price later in the year.

    Quite apart from this, you are far more likely to find a warm reception at the houses you wish to view if you wait until the January exam period has ended. The last thing all second- and third-years want to hear while preparing for their looming exams is the incessant knocking and echoes of “Shotgun not me” from outside; believe us, you will appreciate this next year.

    Having said all this we, along with almost all of our friends from halls, fell into this exact same trap last year. The dramas unfolded as we held group meetings to discuss housing, perhaps some of the most singularly awkward situations any of us have ever had to go through. Houses fell through, people fell out, and for a few days an almost Eastenders like quality touched our lives. It is a similar situation for many thousands of people in their first year and something that, looking back, was completely pointless!

    Speaking from the experience of having lost my house over summer and starting the process from scratch in early August, I can assure you, it is not, as I was quoted at the time, “the end of the world”. As is transpired my landlord gave my house away to another group of tenants from whom he could make more money, leaving us potentially homeless. But upon looking online it was clear that not only were all the houses we viewed in August cheaper, but they were bigger and nicer than the house we’d lost.

    Thus while Unipol dealt with our complaints concerning our ex-landlord, I discovered that some houses aren’t even considered for letting until mid-April, when landlords are dramatically lowering the rent. So lucky for me, this story has a happy ending. A nicer, more centrally located property was found, using the help of a managing agency which is located less than 30 seconds away from the house (so they cannot escape us tenants if there are any house complaints to be made!) Very few if any of you will have to go through this worst case scenario, but it clearly demonstrates that there is no need to hasten into renting a house.

    This also shows the importance of making sure your landlord is the genuine article. While Unipol provide guidance, let us impart some of our acquired (and in our humble opinion, far greater) wisdom onto you on dealing with the ever-feared landlord:

    Landlord Wisdom

    1. Get EVERYTHING in writing – make sure that any promises and commitments are signed and dated (in blood if necessary) as many landlords, no matter how pleasant they seem at first, have very little intention of making your life any easier.

    2. DON’T buy your house on the premise of the lifestyle created by the landlord’s vivid imagination or its current tenants. Our house was basically a stoner’s den when we first viewed it, so this doesn’t apply to us, however many see the current luxuries owned by tenants and don’t realise that, come August, all of these will be gone.

    3. Be prepared with a CHEQUE BOOK and PEN for quick signing in case you happen to fall into your dream scenario of love at first sight and don’t want to be passed over by the keen beans who have already bought your potential landlord chocolates and a holiday in Spain.

    4. If you can, try and build a relationship with your landlord (although you don’t necessarily have to buy him/her an exotic trip). He/she will very possibly have to get you out of some sticky situations in the coming months and can provide a valuable lifeline when boilers, pipes, ovens or housemates explode.

    5. Check for – burglar alarm, fire alarm, washing machine, dryer, fairly equally-sized rooms, well-maintained furniture and any damage caused by previous tenants which your landlord may suggest you shell out for.

    Of course, it is often the case that dealing through an agent removes the need to be so careful when dealing directly with landlords. If you do choose this path, then it removes the need for you to examine in detail every little aspect of your potential abode, but don’t forget the agent’s fees! (You may also get a tour from the agency hottie of the office.)

    In short, your chirpy little acquaintances from Freshers’ week may soon not be as smug as they seem at the moment. We advise a short smirk, a toss of the head and the response “I look forward to seeing your overpriced hovel and listening with delight to the stories of your horrendous housemates”. Savour their response. It will give you hours of pleasure in the months to come.

    Lenton
    Pros: Amazing location for shops, students and pubs
    Cons: Slightly higher crime rate and prices

    Beeston
    Pros: Cheaper than average, local shops
    Cons: Miles away from town and the hustle and bustle of Lenton.

    Wollaton
    Pros: Nice neighbourhood area, near the lovely Wollaton Park
    Cons: On the opposite side of campus to all other student locations

    Dunkirk
    Pros: Ridiculously close to campus, particularly the hospital for the medic in you
    Cons: A long distance from town = expensive taxis!

    Radford
    Pros: Very cheap, quite close to town
    Cons: High crime rate, a long way campus

    Sam Booth and Laura McKeith

  • Uganda: An Insight Into The Developing World

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Walking around University Park, attending lectures, going out for a couple drinks at night and relaxing with friends and family is my life. It is my reality, and the reality of most of the people reading this article. It is so different from what I would describe as the real world, as in, the world that the majority of its population has to live in.

    I got an insight into this ‘real’ world last summer, when I went to volunteer in Uganda. The entire time that I was there I kept thinking that there were so many stories that people in the UK just don’t hear, that there was a level of suffering that you can’t get your head around. I hope that the names and pictures in this article will help combat the desensitising effect that a bombardment of statistics can have on people.

    So what is Africa like? This is the most common question people have asked me since I got back. I normally answer with a standard “amazing”, because it’s easier than going through the details of what it really is like. But then I’ve been thinking that this doesn’t really do justice to the people that I met. So what is it like? In parts, it’s pretty horrific. I saw children as young as two years old begging for money on the streets of Kampala. I heard of the abuses that are everyday happenings in Uganda, the murder, sexual assaults, prostitution, child abuse, beatings and neglect. I met families who had fled from the Rwandan genocide over a decade ago. I saw the poverty in the shanty towns. People live without water, without proper food, without security, without an education.

    In Uganda AIDS is everywhere. It has wiped out families, and left numerous social problems. I was brought to see the family grave of one member of the community. He explained that the vast majority of his family had died within the last five years from AIDS. I counted 21 graves.
    Junior was a student in the school where I worked. He couldn’t afford to get an HIV test, but it was clear from his constant illness and his infections that he had AIDS. He is a very gifted student and football player, but will he ever see his graduation day? That is the reality of his situation. Anatolie is a five-year-old boy I met off the dirt-beaten track in Kamuganja. The first thing that I noticed about him was the huge infected cuts on his limbs. I was told that this was the effect of AIDS and that he would probably require an amputation. When you look into the innocent eyes of someone that young, who has no idea why he is suffering, it makes you question the type of world that we live in.
    Don’t get me wrong, not all my experiences in Africa were negative. I have some very fond memories of the trip. Squeezing four people onto a motorbike, sharing my seat in a four-hour bus ride with a chicken, watching the sunsets, playing football with the children and sharing a badly brewed Guinness with some of the locals. One of my favourite memories is meeting a little girl called Alithra after arriving in Entebbe airport. She sang nursery rhymes for the whole half-hour trip to Kampala. However, while these memories make me smile, they are not the dominant memories of the trip.

    Can we make a difference to the lives of these people? The group I was with set up a foundation for the education of children moving into secondary school, but is this the best way to help the people on the ground? Our foundation will hopefully put 10 children through school in the first year and will expand over the next couple of years, but this is obviously very small scale. Furthermore, while education is vital, there was nothing we could do for those with AIDS. Should we have directed our time, effort and money to supporting a global organisation that could put money into, for example, research or prescriptive drugs? If the answer to this is yes then surely as young people there is nothing directly that we can do to influence global problems. I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. The children who will go to secondary school next year because of our foundation made the trip incredibly worthwhile for me, but at the same time it has become difficult to not become demoralised by the scale of the problems that I saw in Uganda. We have to realise our limitations, but at the same time do not use these limitations as an excuse for doing nothing.

    Chris Jenkins

  • What The Flock Happened To Bird Flu?

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Remember Bird Flu? It was due, about two years ago, to come in and kill us all. The media had us writing our wills, calling our loved ones, culling birds - they had us weeping with fear. People were genuinely scared; although humans couldn’t pass on the disease, scientists spread the word of a possible ‘mutation’ that could occur that would trigger a future human flu pandemic. While newspaper headlines worldwide conjured nightmarish images in the innocent bird-fearing public at the time, since then little has been heard about this apparently not-so-imminent plague. In fact, whilst researching for this article, few of the stories available online were more recent than early 2007. So, are we still supposed to be worrying about it? Or is no news good news?

    The effect of the flu could have literally been the end of the world. Apparently the 1918 influenza pandemic, you know, the one that killed more people worldwide than the First World War, that infected a fifth of the world, was a type of bird flu. Worrying, isn’t it? Apparently we’re due a plague, just not this one. But Bird Flu is not alone - there have been other things in the news in recent years that were going to kill us…

    SARS, for example, where’s that deadly virus been hiding lately - not that anyone’s looking for it, but shouldn’t we at least know? No one wants to stumble across that respiratory disease in a dark alley somewhere at night. SARS is the real deal: it killed 774 people worldwide back in 2003, it reached, according to Wikipedia, near pandemic status. So why doesn’t Trevor McDonald or John Snow or anyone really just let us know, from time to time, how SARS is doing, and whether or not we’re still at risk. Whilst we’re on the topic, remember Osama Bin Laden? I’m pretty sure he’s running a small chippy in south Wales now, I could’ve sworn he gave me too much vinegar last summer. And the Large Hadron Collider that was going to end the world? One German scientist, Professor Otto Rossler, forecast that the black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider would grow uncontrollably and “eat the planet from the inside.” I guess that hasn’t happened then. MRSA used to be quite a big deal; not any more. Foot and mouth, mad cow disease, these things didn’t really happen, they’re just rejected Hollywood storylines now.

    So now that we don’t hear about them, does that mean they’re not around? Not that I want to start a conspiracy theory or anything but how do these subjects, which are so monumental and fatal at the time, just disappear from the newspapers? On a more serious note, it’s worrying really, the power of the media. Who decides which articles are worthy of front page status, and which ‘near pandemics’ to put to the back pages, and where do they get their authority? Because, genuinely, you could go crazy with that sort of power. The responsibility of a news editor is vast, they can control the fears of a nation. Some have blamed the media for hyping up economic problems recently and effectively creating or at least exacerbating the ‘credit crunch’. Their argument is, if there hadn’t been as much media attention given, people wouldn’t have panicked and our economy wouldn’t be in such a bad way. So where’s the line between spreading the news and creating unnecessary worry? Because, equally where the media can worsen a problem, it can relieve one. I haven’t heard much about SARS or bird flu lately, does that mean they’re extinct, or lying dormant somewhere waiting to pounce, or does it mean the media have bigger scares to threaten us with, for example, the weakness of the economy, because cynically, money is more important to us than health? Maybe there’s so much bad stuff happening right now the media are easing up on the old ‘end of the world’ stories at the moment. They are so last year.

    Alice Fisher

  • Private Eyes: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Constant Surveillance

    Published on 27 November 2008

    Ever since - in fact well before - George Orwell spun the threads of paranoia, surveillance and propaganda together into the masterful 1984, people have harboured concerns that ‘they’ were watching ‘us’.

    We used to live in a time when these kind of concerns were the domain of gaunt, hollow-eyed men who drank too much coffee, and could safely be dismissed as fantasy.

    Over the past few months, though, numerous articles in the mainstream press have highlighted the range of government surveillance projects which are currently either under consideration for approval, or in the course of being implemented, and frankly their extent and implications are reminiscent of the future depicted by Orwell himself.

    Let’s pull back for a second, though, because this is a problem which has two parts, both faces of the same proverbial coin; and one face at least is of our own making.

    Anyone that has grown up in our generation will know that we are becoming digital creatures. Our physical bodies are no less present, but our very notions of the construction of identity and self, and the nature of relationships, are vastly different to generations that have gone before. Electronic communication in general, and the internet specifically, has changed everything.

    Most of us are now completely at ease with the concept of social networking sites. You build yourself a page which acts as a portal for your family, friends, and the rest of the world to interact with you. But by offering us new modes and methods of communication, the medium has changed the nature of the message. We have all become social broadcasters, comfortable with transmitting details of our lives in a variety of different formats – hourly updates on our thoughts and feelings, weekly photographic documentation of our exploits, mass messaging to harness the attention of hundreds or even thousands of people for whatever cause takes our interest, be it a political protest or the hottest new video on YouTube.

    Whilst a lot of young people almost instinctively understood the new possibilities, not to mention fun, afforded by making certain aspects of our lives public, maybe the lightning-fast rise of Facebook and similar sites has not left us enough time to develop a similar instinct for the need for privacy. Most of us have, at some point, face-stalked someone that we had a crush on, or virulently disliked, or maybe just found interesting. And what we commonly find is that it can be frighteningly easy to piece together a comprehensive picture of someone’s character, background, opinions and regular hang-out spots just by using Facebook and Google.

    The lifestyles we lead today are leaving ever-greater traces across cyberspace. If you have a Googlemail email address, a computer program automatically scans your messages for key words which might help to tailor advertising to your interests. Amazon.com keeps a record of all the items you buy and view on the site. It also knows where you live, this being a necessity for delivering anything bought online. Loyalty cards of any kind will keep a record of exactly what you have bought at the store issuing them, and Oyster cards, now made as good as compulsory by the prices of one-off fares in London, keep records of all of the journeys made by the card, though they are no longer registered to the name of a single user as was originally intended.

    The thing about all of this is that it makes perfect sense. Facebook can be a great way to keep in touch with friends in geographically distant places, just as Amazon’s CD recommendations can be a great way to discover artists you might not otherwise have heard of. But any organisation able to draw together all of this information from different sources and centralise it would have access to a massive amount of information on any given individual.

    With that in mind, it’s time to focus back to the government.

    Just a few weeks ago, the Guardian published a story stating that the government is currently drawing up plans which will give security services far greater powers to access the information being held by online services. Under the pretense that terrorists may be using these websites to communicate, the legislation would compel service providers to store more information on their clients, and to disclose this information to the government when deemed necessary.

    Far more worrying than this are the plans being laid out by an innocent sounding four letter moniker: GCHQ. Government Communications Headquarters is the branch of the intelligence services charged with communications surveillance, or, essentially, spying on the population. Their recently announced Interception Modernisation Programme, the exact details of which are top secret, aims to build a single database in which will be stored the details of every piece of electronic communication in Britain.

    Every piece of electronic communication in Britain.

    That’s emails, text messages, phone calls, faxes, records of every website visited by every internet user, all brought together under the same roof to be stored, cross-referenced and analysed: cyber-spying raised to the power of ten. Even for those who profess to have ‘nothing to hide’, this must set alarm bells ringing.

    Very well, you might say, the world of digital communication is always going to be conducive to spying, and better the government does it than the terrorists; there’s no way the same amount of surveillance could be conducted in the physical world, so we should appreciate the privacy we have here and get on with our lives.

    Well, here’s another four letter acronym for you: RFID. Radio Frequency Identification is, for better or for worse, the future. You might have already come across a RFID chip in pretty much any object you can ‘beep’ across a scan point to operate something without a laser having to read it optically. A biometric passport contains one of them, as does an Oyster card, as do anti-theft tags in CDs. They can be tiny, millimetres across, are only set to get smaller in years to come, and can be produced at a very low cost.

    The RFID is a tiny radio circuit which encodes a small amount of information, readable to an appropriate receiver. In terms of its applications, comparisons can be made with another piece of commonplace identification technology, the barcode. Many large retail companies are now aiming for the adoption of RFID in the near future, and it’s expected that within the next decade or so it will have replaced the barcode as the primary way to identify consumer goods. It is also poised to become successor to the currently contact-dependent chip-and-PIN system in modern bank cards, facilitating ‘wave-and-pay’ systems.

    The use of these chips changes the balance when it comes to surveillance. Whereas barcodes require direct line of sight to transfer their information, RFID, being based on radio waves, does not, and chips can be read through layers of fabric, wood, living tissue and even brick walls. Though designed with a standard operating distance of a few feet or less, demonstrations have shown that specially adapted devices can read them at distances of over 50 metres.

    Hypothetically speaking, if the government did introduce compulsory national ID cards involving RFID tags (as is probable), then anyone with the right equipment would be able to scan a crowd of people and bring up the precise details of everyone in it. In government hands, this sounds suspiciously like the makings of a police state. In criminal hands, it sounds like a massive gateway for identity fraud. And once RFID is integrated with every consumer product, then anything we buy could become a miniature beacon potentially signalling our whereabouts, linked to our name by the bank card used to pay for it. We would be surrounded by a web of smart-objects, each feeding back information about us to any system capable of collating it.

    This may be starting to sound like borderline paranoia, but it is not idle speculation. These developments are all already here in some form, they just can’t yet be harnessed for the type of surveillance suggested. Richard Thomas, the UK Information Commissioner, famously said that we were in danger of “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”, and this is a fitting description; it is not so much that our privacy is being taken from us, more that we are letting go of it complacently.

    We need to be more aware of the information that we are transmitting about ourselves both directly and indirectly every day. Though social networks and online shopping are a big part of modern life, we are often not obliged to give away half as much information as we choose to, nor do we have to passively accept the creation of a national identity register or other government sponsored schemes. If our right to civil liberties is to be a key battleground for the new century, then we can’t risk losing it without putting up a fight.

    Corin Faife

  • Are You Satisfied?

    Published on 27 November 2008

    How many hours’ contact time do you have every week? How regularly do you see your Personal Tutor? If you do see them, how often is your conversation with them in-depth? When you do assessed work, how often do you receive truly meaningful feedback?

    If you’re an arts student, probably, the answers to these questions will be variants on “not a lot”. Instead, we study for our degrees anonymously over WebCT and in the library, focusing on achieving that magical 60%. Those who strive to do better find that they struggle with poor feedback and inconsistent marking. Are the dual pressures of being a ‘research-led’ institution and the desire to push through more undergraduates meaning that Nottingham students are taught less? If so, what is the University planning to do about it? As much as we might love the student lifestyle devoted to wine, women and song, we are also paying more than three thousand pounds a year for an education. We are, therefore, customers of the University, and have some right to insist on a decent standard of service.

    This is reflected in Nottingham’s performance in nationwide league tables. Alastair McCall from the Sunday Times University Guide, while acknowledging that we do fairly well, told Impact that “Nottingham’s scores are less exceptional” when judged against other Russell Group universities.

    How big is the problem?

    A quick look at the league tables suggests that, while some students have very good experiences, a great many have distinctly average ones. Over the past few years Nottingham has been suffering from comparatively low levels of Student Satisfaction. In the National Student Survey (NSS), conducted every year, the University almost always falls down on the final question - the general, “how satisfied are you with your university?” This is a particularly important question and, as McCall points out, is the statistic that universities are most likely to quote to prospective students. It also affects our standing in the league tables, with all twenty-two questions on the NSS being taken into consideration, contributing to our positions of 19th and 16th over the last two years according to the Times. While we have certainly improved, we are still below our legitimate expectations to be in the Top 10. Indeed, in the 2009 tables the only institutions in the Top 20 with lower levels of Student Satisfaction were the LSE and Edinburgh.

    Students’ Union President, Nsikan Edung, told Impact that “the real barrier to Nottingham progressing every year has been the NSS scores and, in particular, those relating to the Student Experience”. He believes that “it is in the University’s interest to work with the Students’ Union more closely and actively in order to improve scores and to improve the life of students”. A hard hitting challenge, some might say.

    But why should we care about the league tables? As much as we may dislike the simplicity of them, they are incredibly important to the University. They may be one of the first things looked at by prospective students deciding which universities to apply to and so will affect the quality and number of applicants. Furthermore, they may affect the way in which employers view modern Nottingham graduates, meaning that they matter just as much to us as to the University.

    Some members of the University hierarchy have criticised the NSS and its importance to the league tables on the grounds that it is unrepresentative of the student body, and that the timing of the survey – during the January exams – catches students when they are least likely to be satisfied with their experience. However, this argument seems like a bit of a cop-out, and certainly last year’s SU Exec seem to agree. A leaked memo from last year’s SU Education Officer, Matt Gayle, says of the University’s complaints that they “could be true, but I doubt it - this is just another excuse.”

    So what is the cause of all this dissatisfaction? It seems the answer lies principally with the feedback and pastoral care system within the academic experience. At the moment, contact with Personal Tutors is limited to only a few short meetings a year. This can lead to a lack of understanding or communication between the tutor and tutee. Without this, the tutor system becomes a waste of time for both parties. For example, one joint-honours student described how, at the first meeting with their Personal Tutor, the conversation lasted around ten minutes before it became obvious that the tutor had no idea what degree the student was actually taking. It is hard to believe that either party gained much from the conversation. One tutor we interviewed explained that, with fifty undergraduate tutees, most of whom they will never teach, they “never develop any relationship to them [sic]”. This calls into question the value of having any form of personal tutorial system at all. Asked whether students would benefit from more contact time and whether the system needed improvement, Edung was unequivocal in agreement: “that’s really true because I’ve seen it myself…in my last year I never even saw my Personal Tutor all year”.

    A further problem highlighted by students is one of seminars conducted by seemingly apathetic tutors. The University is unashamedly research-led, and rightly too in my opinion. However, some students have pointed out that seminars are often conducted by tutors (particularly PhD students) who have no specific interest or knowledge in the area under discussion. One History student describes having to explain a key concept to their tutor during preparation for an assessed presentation. They left wondering whether their work would even be accurately assessed. Tutorials are frequently student-led, sometimes resulting in little or no involvement from the tutor. While these remain undoubtedly useful for some, others have questioned whether they would have gained more from working on their own or with the active involvement of a tutor.

    The issue here is one of emphasis. Following the introduction of tuition fees, should we not be getting more from our education? One of the conundrums facing research-led institutions as a result of the introduction of tuition fees is that students now have higher expectations. Now that we are personally paying, at least in part, for our education, we expect more from it. Universities have opened themselves up to a whole new customer base who demand more contact time and more focused tutorials. This does not sit well with the attitude that says research is paramount. Many students wonder why there is such a disparity between the Oxbridge tutorial system and that of other institutions. While they acknowledge that funding is significantly different, they also point out that they still end up paying the same for a markedly different experience. Surely there is some middle ground. Perhaps there is a fundamental problem with the intake of the University. One tutor we interviewed pointed out that the tutor-student ratio made the type of relationship called for an impossibility.

    It’s not just the tutor system that has come under fire; the quality of feedback also needs to be improved. Essay feedback usually only comprises a series of ticked boxes and a scribbled paragraph, somehow culminating in a grade. Exam feedback is even more obscure. According to Unistats.com, less than half of students receive detailed comments on their work or have found feedback helpful. This is backed up by Craig Cox, this year’s SU Education Officer, who identifies the quality of feedback as an area in which “Nottingham University is struggling more than it should be.” As a result of this inadequate feedback system, many students feel they are not being properly supported by their University. Edung commented that the lack of contact time can make “students actually feel like it [their degree course] is quite impersonal”. As a result, he feels that “the University must make more effort to reconnect with students.”

    Similar issues have been identified with the consistency of marking schemes. Cox highlighted to Impact the problem of helping students to understand the distinction between performances more fully. According to Cox, we need to be “looking at getting consistency amongst markers within one school…on an average classification sheet [within the School of History], for example, you’ve got layout of essay, Historiography, quality of sources…one is bad, five is good. You get one marker who would give you straight fives and a mark of 68 and you get one marker who would give you straight threes and a mark of 67. For me, that creates a problem, because you can be doing excellently and only just not getting a First or doing good and still only just not getting a First.”

    So what can be done?

    It is acknowledged that it’s impossible for Nottingham to ape the Oxbridge teaching model. One Cambridge academic interviewed by Impact pointed out that the Oxbridge collegiate systems “subsidise the cost of teaching to quite a considerable extent”, an option not available to Nottingham. However, several ways of restoring the situation have been mooted within the University. The ePars system was designed to improve the amount of information shared between tutors and tutees. However, according to a leaked SU memo, “largely ePars was a flop across the University.” The software was “cumbersome” and students and staff have failed to use it. The idea has stuck, however, and morphed into a new concept: Personal Development Goals (PDGs). Students in several schools, including Civil Engineering and the Built Environment, will already be familiar with these. The idea is that at the beginning of each year students will be given the opportunity to set a personal goal. This can be anything, but is typically non-academic. Then, during the year, students are encouraged to meet with their tutor to reflect on their achievements against their stated goal. The Students’ Union feels that “personal development goals have been majorly beneficial to the students taking part in them”. Furthermore, during last year’s University Quality Audit of the Civil Engineering Department, the school was strongly praised by the panel for its implementation and integration of the PDGs.

    So why have they not been rolled out across the University as a whole? Perhaps partly due to the failure of ePars, which was an initiative ordered by University management. Again, according to the Students’ Union, as a result of the failure of ePars “the University management are very nervous to order such roll-outs, unless they are more than certain of guaranteed success”. It would seem that ePars has led to a dangerous risk aversion on their part. However, there might also be resistance from tutors themselves. When asked whether academics should be a bit more hands on with their tutees, one social sciences tutor responded that they didn’t “think it would make much sense if the University pressured us from above to do it”. This suggests that the University management is stuck between the rock of disgruntled students and the hard place of intransigent academic staff.

    Another possible palliative measure is the Registrar’s Nottingham Award. This is designed to make the Nottingham Graduate a more reflective, mature individual who will be more employable as a result. The suggested framework is to provide credit-bearing modules that do not affect degree classifications but do build up to a separate ‘Nottingham Award’. Credits may be available for, amongst other things, work experience and society management. It is hoped that the Nottingham Award may go some way toward improving Nottingham’s NSS scores. However, according to a confidential SU memo, Matt Gayle believes “that…is bollocks”, an opinion shared by this writer. There is also a fear that the Nottingham Award may be hampering the progress of Personal Development Goals. Both ideas deal with similar areas, possibly leading to conflict between the two.

    It is clear that there are major issues with feedback and the tutor system as a whole. These problems are damaging the University’s performance in the league tables and so too its image both nationally and internationally. However, it is similarly clear that there are no easy, quick or cheap fixes. Of the two detailed ideas suggested, it seems that what is needed is not a new certificate that may only be attained by a small number of students, but a genuine attempt to tackle the problem at its source. Personal Development Goals have led to genuine improvements for many students. This writer stands full throat behind them.

    James Torrance

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