Menswear - The Founder

Nicholas
Blazenby
Erection
Special
Page 31
Sabbatical
Interviews
Pages 5-8
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Volume 5 | Issue 9
Wednesday 23 February 2011
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Third Holloway
student attacked
in two months
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2 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
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Third Holloway
student attacked
in two months
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Thomas Seal
News Editor
Another RHUL student has been
attacked near Egham train station,
prompting the college to issue a
safety warning.
The incident took place Thursday
January 27 at approximately 6pm
near the junction of Rusham Road
and Station Road. There, the male
student was accosted from behind
by three men, who, after being refused
his phone, struck him and ran
off with his bag. This follows two
incidents at the end of the Autumn
Term.
The College issued this statement:
‘Whilst Egham remains a very safe
area we take the safety and security
of our students extremely seriously
and advice on personal safety is regularly
emphasised by the college and
Students’ Union.
Personal safety alarms are made
available to students and we have
been reiterating the importance of
sticking to well lit routes home, not
walking alone and using the college
bus service where possible.’
Of the three suspects, one was described
as black, one as Asian and
one as white. The first was said to be
wearing a black Nike tracksuit and
to be about 5ft 7ins. The second was
wearing a dark blue Nike tracksuit
and was described as being around
5ft 11ins. The first was described as
being about 6ft and wearing a white
hoodie. All were said to speak with
southern accents.
DC Ash Mullem, the lead detective
of the investigation, called the
attack ‘vicious and cowardly.’ The
local Neighbourhood Sergeant Iain
Weaving advised RHUL students
‘to walk in groups and try to avoid
walking alone in the hours of darkness
and to report any unusual or
suspicious activity to police’.
However, there are some areas for
students - for example Kingswood -
which are simply not accessible by
lit paths, which causes frustration
and worries for some students, and
often precipitates the route being attributed
the nervously-joking label
of ‘rape alley’.
Photograph: Thomas Seal
Englefield Green ‘second most
burgled place in Britain’?
Vikki Vile
A road located in Englefield Green
has incorrectly been listed on a new
crime-mapping website as the second
most crime ridden spot in the
country in an embarrassing blunder
for a new website, in the first week it
has gone live.
The new website, www.police.
co.uk went live on Tuesday, February
1st and has been designed to
allow the public to see the number
of recorded crimes in the area they
live, ranging from anti-social behaviour
to burglaries. The site was
featured in many national news reports
during the first week of February,
with much attention focusing
on an apparent crime “hotspot” on
a rather unremarkable looking road
in Preston which topped the list in
the whole of the United Kingdom
for reported crimes.
In the case of student heavy Englefield
Green, the site suggested
that Kingswood Close was the second
most burgled street in the UK,
although, when later contextualised
it became apparent that the somewhat
surprising ten recorded incidents
referred to on the crime map,
referred to the one same incident
which in reality took place at Kingwood
Hall on December 22. Robert
Nield, Runnymede Neighbourhood
Inspector added,
Continued on page 3 »

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
News
3
» continued
“Although only one property was
broken into this was a building with
multiple occupants. In total the offenders
gained access to ten rooms
within the one building and as there
were ten separate victims.”
The Englefield Green error was
not the only stutter in the launching
of the new website. On the day
of its launch, so many people logged
on throughout England and Wales
that the site remained crashed for
much of the day, however a spokeswoman
for the site insisted, “we are
delighted with the response which
shows how popular this information
is with the public.”
flickr/Stuart Grout
Egham not on the
level?
Stuart Stone
Network Rail and Egham’s Chamber
of Commerce have called for improvements
to be made on Egham’s
level crossings after they failed on
two separate occasions.
Of Egham’s three level crossings
- one located parallel to Rusham
Road on Station Road another in
Pooley Green, intersecting the B388
and the third on Prune Hill - two
have failed in the past year.
On 8 November last year the level
crossing at Pooley Green failed after
a barrier was jammed after a piece
of the barrier became dislodged.
Another of Egham’s crossings failed
on 27 January this year where it was
discovered that the barrier had been
bent out of shape. The line was kept
open in spite of the failed barrier
due to the fact that the sirens and
warning lights were still fully functioning.
Meher Oliaji of Egham’s Chamber
of Commerce claimed that people
had risked their lives by continuing
their journey either by car or on foot
under the static barrier and stated
that investment was needed to ensure
that the technology didn’t fail
in the future.
Network Rail issued an apologetic
statement to anyone whose journey
was affected by the incident, and
reiterated that that drivers and pedestrians
should always abide by the
warning lights and sirens even when
a barrier had failed.
Courtesy Nigel Cox
Aaron Porter ‘just a Tory
too’ in latest protest
Amy Norman
Yet even more demonstrations have
been lead by students recently in
opposition to the rise in tuition fees
and cuts in public spending. The
protests, held in London and Manchester,
were largely peaceful on this
occasion but nonetheless the police
made several arrests.
In London, thousands of students
marched through Whitehall
and Westminster to oppose the
government raising tuition fees to
a maximum £9,000 per year, which
Cambridge University has since announced
it will be charging. Many
of the protesters showed solidarity
with the Egyptian protesters by
wearing badges and joining demonstrations
outside the Egyptian
embassy.
Students stopped at Topshop on
the Strand to shout abuse aimed at
Sir Phillip Green. The students were
angered by the Topshop owner’s
tax arrangements and chanted “pay
your tax”. Once again a small group
of protesters attempted to break into
the Conservative’s Millbank headquarters,
yet any trouble remained
limited after a handful of people
were arrested.
Events at the Manchester march
proved to be a bit more dramatic,
with tensions rising within student
groups and causing internal divisions,
especially with regard to the
National Union of Students. Many
students have been calling for a
more active approach from the NUS
and even a more militant leadership,
opinions that came to the forefront
at the march.
Aaron Porter, president of the
NUS, had to have a police escort remove
him from angry crowds who
were calling for his resignation. Mr.
Porter was meant to be speaking at
the protest and request unity within
the NUS after dividing opinions on
the conduct of demonstrations and
sit-in protests caused problems, yet
the students turned on him and said
he is “just a Tory too”. When the
NUS vice-president Shane Chowen
tried to address the crowd, he was
greeted with eggs and oranges being
thrown at him by a small group of
protesters.
RHUL’s Levi asks: was Mozart Nazi art?
New evidence shows Mozart’s music may have been
appropriated by Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels
Emily Lees
When one thinks of the music synonymous
with the Third Reich,
the name, which usually springs to
mind, is Wagner, however Royal
Holloway’s Reader in Music and
Director of Performance, Erik Levi
shines light on the use of Mozart’s
music within the Nazi regime.
In his new book, Mozart and the
Nazis, Levi uncovers the Nazi plot
to delete the contribution to Mozart’s
music, by the Jewish librettist
Lorenzo Da Ponte.
Levi explains; “Mozart’s life and
work had become grossly manipulated
by the Nazis to support their
ideological aims.”
Levi continues to show how the
propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
declared Mozart to be the greatest
German genius, and with the
150th anniversary of Mozart’s death
taking place in 1941 a vast celebration
of his works was undertaken to
perpetuate further German superiority.
The celebrations came to a
crescendo in a week long festival in
Vienna, Mozart was immortalised
in speech after speech from highranking
Nazi officials and honoured
with a formal Nazi burial.
Mozart encompassed a German
ideal which the Nazi’s very crudely
used to push forth their racialist
ideals, another master manipulation
which can now be seen thanks to the
work of Erik Levi.

4 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
News
RHUL Computer Scientist Murtagh honoured
Noor Mansour
Royal Holloway academic Professor
Fionn Murtagh from the Department
of Computer Science has just
been elected into the prestigious Academia
Europaea, an organisation
of distinguished European scholars.
The Academia Europaea, which was
founded in 1988, has members from
a wide range of academic fields including
engineering, medicine,
mathematics, humanities, as well as
physical, life and social sciences.
His nominators have declared
that “Professor Fionn Murtagh is
a leader in the field of pattern and
data analysis and classification. He
has contributed a variety of mathematically
motivated methods to
data analysis, often involving massive,
high dimensional data sets, and
has contributed novel algorithms
and evaluated their performance
both by using mathematical statistical
methods such as Bayesian analysis
and by conducting experimental
evaluations and operational deployment”.
Despite this achievement, Professor
Murtagh stated “I am delighted
to be elected into the Academia
Europaea. The success is, however,
tinged with sadness as my nominator
for this was Professor Robin
Milner, who died in March 2010
in Cambridge. Robin was without
doubt one of the greats of computing
and of scholarship”.
Professor Murtagh’s latest book,
‘Sparse Image and Signal Processing
– Wavelets, Curvelets, Morphological
Diversity’, co-authored with
Jean-Luc Starck and Jalal Fadili, was
published by Cambridge University
Press in 2010.
Professor Fionn Murtagh
Small fire in Gowar
Egham Fire Station, whose fire crew was called in to Gowar Hall
Courtesy Kevin Hale
Elinor Gittins
A few weeks ago, a fire broke out
in Gowar Hall. It occurred on the
fourth floor and was caused by an
unattended pan on the hob. Fire
crews from Egham and Staines ran
in to tame the fire.
No one was seriously injured, and
no evacuations were needed. However,
a female student was recently
treated for smoke inhalation. The
kitchen was also severely damaged
and is not being used anymore.
Most of the fire alarms are set off
in kitchens and caused by students
cooking. These alarms should not
be necessary. This story should be a
warning to us all: do not leave cooking
unattended.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sabbatical Officers 2011-2012
5
Following their recent success
The Founder interviews next
years sabbatical officers
So Dan How does it feel to win?
Fantastic I’m over the moon.
You know I think we won convincingly,
I’m hugely proud of my team
because they put so much into it
and I’m looking forward to working
with the other Sabs.
What’s the first thing your going
to change in September?
For me Royal Holloway University
isn’t going to be immune to the
budget cuts. I think the role of the
students union next year should
be about defending education and
I’d really like to set up education
assemblies, which is something
really quite significant to do. I really
want to make the students union
interesting again with performance,
presentations, theatre nights etc.
Look at different universities, they
have so many events going on and I
think this would all be possible here
and at an affordable price as well.
Do you think students are paying
too much for services on campus?
Certainly yes. I’ve been here for
three years, and for particularly
those coming from off campus or
from Kingswood it’s a huge burden
to pay so much. I’m not entirely
sure my remit and how much I can
influence this but there could be
campaigns about these issues as
well as cuts to libraries, courses and
facilities which can be very effective
an effect change. I know many
people who live of campus and it
causes many problems like where
you leave your stuff, the food where
you pay five quid for a sandwich
and a hot coffee, its ridiculous really.
Libraries are a sticking point for
many people, how would you want
to improve the libraries?
It’s a question of more study
space and getting the appropriate
books in. A lot of people need to
go to Senate House and I think we
should look to that as a supplement
to the library as opposed to being
an alternative. It’s the basic things
like getting access to books, access
to journals and the fines, which I
think we should look into. I think
the union is the place they should
go to as opposed to just talking
about the problems amongst their
friends. It’s about making these
things all quite visible.
Would you push for 24 hour
opening throughout the year or just
keep it in exam time?
I wouldn’t want to promise 24
hour opening I think its something
we should look into, especially
over the weekend. We want to look
for slightly later hours through a
process of consultation with the
current staff. For me its all about
the small things, the bloody plugs
don’t work, printing is a nightmare,
the computers so regularly never
work, just kind of basic things we
need to look into.
No admittance after midnight
on Union nights has created a
huge amount of anger, would you
change this?
We want re-admittance, and
speaking to a lot of people in the
union that’s certainly possible. I’ve
been frustrated many, many times
at the union. My vision of the
students union is to be a cultural
and social centre for it to be a place
where people go to relax and listen
to interesting music, go to see
interesting things, regular talks,
poetry, satire. We are so rich in that
respect and we should celebrate this
diversity as well.
Bake and Bite is set for redevelopment,
how would bake and
bake look under a Daniel Cooper
Union?
We have had a number of discussions
with the students union and
with bake and bite, I like the emphasis
on sort of lounge place and I
think we can make more of it.
But not another Imagine?
No no I don’t think it would be
another Imagine.
The SU President sits on over 20
committees, that’s an average of
3 a day, is that too many and is it
stopping the president from talking
to students?
Yes! I say flippantly but I mean
it in a serious way. I have a lot of
experience in these kind of things,
in terms of organising and I’ve said
time and time again I think the SU
Daniel Cooper - President
shouldn’t be nervous to get out of
the office. There is an importance
to these committees, we talk about
everything from the environment
to putting books in the libraries
and we need that space to discuss
things, though in no way should
that stop us from being active. For
me one of the big criticisms is that
they [Sabbatical Officers] don’t get
out enough and are not physical
and not active enough. They work
incredibly hard and do all of that
admin and bureaucratic stuff, but
we need to be leading the campaigns.
I want to be central in all
of that particularly in the college
council and where things are decided
upon, but that shouldn’t in any
way get in the way of campaigning.
I found speaking to a lot of different
sabbaticals that they have been
told to go to meetings just to shut
them up, and that shouldn’t be the
case. If anything I would prioritise
spending far more time with the
students and being active around
the campus.
If there is one thing you think
college to do, and that you would
lobby them to do, that would
improve student life what would
that be?
There are a number of issues.
Defence of education and stressing
cuts are unacceptable particularly
when they affect students here. We
would call for collective decision
making public and open meetings
on critical decisions. London living
wage for me is something crucial.
I would want to work with the
cleaners and the admin staff, with
lectures, with the workers union
on campus for this. We should be
academically world leading and we
should be ethically as well. To me
it makes ethical and financial sense
to have everyone well paid and in
acceptable conditions and to be
unionised. All of this recognition is
tangible and can be done.
One of the big things is that
we want to introduce a black and
minorities and women’s officer. So
for the women’s officer it would
be about establishing crèches and
advice and services and resources,
especially for mature students.
Health and social care at the moment
is being completely hit, and
a lot of the women here have kids
and don’t know what to do with
them. Also we want to be lobbying
the college about more scholarships
greater bursaries and importantly
to provide access especially for kids
from working class backgrounds
and black and ethnic minority
backgrounds. In British universities
66% of students are British and affluent
you know we should look to
widen access.
For me the significance in getting
the candidacy is really been that we
have run explicitly on an anti cuts
platform and combing that with
making the SU an interesting place,
a cultural and social centre as well
as London living wage, all of these
things, and that for me is the significance.
Royal Holloway has had
a history of un-involvement and
apathy to me this is indicative for a
desire for something different. We
have received hundreds of messages
of support from across the country.
I think this is volcanic. I would use
the term volcanic in terms of the
way it goes and its direction.
In ten words what, in your ideal
world how would the Students Union
look a year from now and what
would it have done?
Defend education. London living
wage. Widen access. SU as a social
and cultural centre. So many ideas.
Something! I do apologise! Something
about the SU that is quite
critical. We have this building with
so many unelected, unaccountable
people, and we have processes that
perhaps have been uncontrollable
for Rachel Pearson but I think we
have to make the general manager
all of the types, and they work
bloody hard, but lets make them
accountable as well for me that’s
crucial. We have general managers
in universities preventing Sabs from
acting. That cant be the case.

6 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sabbatical Officers 2011-2012
Katie Blow
Vice President Education and Welfare
Thomas Seal
News Editor
It’s Valentine’s Day and on a
deserted reading week Monday
morning in Crosslands I meet
up with Katie Blow for a quick
chat about the aftermath of her
victory following the epic Sabb
campaign week.
How does it feel to have been
elected VPEW?
Katie Blow: Very, very weird! I
honestly didn’t think I was going to
win. Me and my team were actually
stood at the back of the bar, and
they were going to put me in the lift
and I was just going to leave via the
lift...so yeah it’s taken a while to get
used to it...and now it’s like ‘I’ve got
so much I need to do!’
How soon do you need to start
doing things? Is there a good
handover period?
Yeah, basically me and Beth start
handing over 1st July and then 1st
August she leaves and it’s...all mine!
(laughs) So basically it’s a month of
meeting everyone I need to meet.
So tell us a little bit about yourself...
I’m technically a 4th year even
though I’m in my final year here,
because last year I went abroad to
Japan. I do Psychology, I rowed,
I’m in RAG, and I’ve done Strictly
Come Holloway! A bit of a mix, I
suppose.
What’s happened so far postelection?
Have you had a chat with
[current VPEW] Beth Rowley?
Yeah it was really nice, because
Beth and I are actually best friends.
We didn’t talk the whole of the
election period and so the next day
it was just like ‘I’m so glad to have
you back in my life!’ We’ve had a
chat and she’s told me not to think
about anything until handover and
not try and feel like I have to do
anything, so that’s quite cool.
So you can concentrate on finals!
Yep! (nervous laugh) All the work
that’s been neglected for the last
three weeks!
What are you most looking forward
to about being VPEW?
Umm...I think meeting people.
And being able to have my manifesto
in front of me and being able
to tick things off it, so I’ve done this
or put that in place. Feeling like I’ve
achieved stuff. ...I’m excited about it
all really!
Regarding a couple of your manifesto
points: firstly, how will you go
about changing the lighting?
Well, obviously outside of campus
is a lot more difficult because
you have to liaise with the community
and police and stuff, but on
campus there are still a few dark
spots. Even motion lighting would
do...for example, if you walk from
Bedford library to the Union - past
the physics building - there are
some steps, and that’s just pitch
black, and it would be great if there
was just something so you could
see where you were going. A lot of
the time it is just about persuading
people and getting the ball rolling
but hopefully I can smile my way
through!
One of your other promises is to
have 48 hours between each exam
for students. That sounds quite
ambitious...
Yeah, everyone said that! We had
a big chat with my campaign team
when I printed my manifesto and I
said ‘do we think this is too high?’ I
felt that if I go in with a high number
and then negotiate down then I
can achieve something, rather than
to go in with 24, and get 24, and be
like ‘actually I could’ve done better’.
I know it will be difficult and there
will be a lot of subjects where it
might not be possible yet - especially
for joint honours students - but
I definitely think something needs
putting in place. Holloway has a
whole term of exams, and there’s
got to be something done so that it’s
easier and less stressful. That’s my
number one thing.
So would you say that’s what
you’d do first? If you had to choose
one thing?
Definitely. And also making
students more aware of the services
that are available to them. For example,
I live in Founder’s now, and
there’s a little sticker on my mirror
that says ‘Nightline’, which is really
out of date, and I think something
like that, put in every single room,
something that isn’t obvious, that
you can look at and think ‘actually
I might need some help’, is a subtle
way of getting these messages
across.
Is there anything else you’d like to
add? Anything you’d like to say to
those who voted for you?
Yes, thank you very, very much!
Thanks for taking the time to read
the manifesto, and watch all the
videos, and thank you everyone for
coming to Question Time. It was
hard this year because you had to
register online and there were issues
there so...thanks so much!

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sabbatical Officers 2011-2012
7
Sarah Honeycombe
Vice President Communications and Campaigns
dreams lie?
Thomas Shore
Editor
It must feel good to win, how has
the week been since?
It feels amazing. It took me twentyfive
minutes to walk from the front
gate to the hub the day after I won
because, I kept getting stopped by
people congratulating me.
Do you think more people got interested
in these elections more than
previous years?
Well last year’s turnout was over a
hundred people higher. It was 1200
in 2010 so I think maybe online
voting got people angrier.
Does online voting work?
It’s too early too tell. I do like online
voting because it saves the union
quite a bit of money, but I think the
problems with registration were
a real pain. The fact that so many
people tried to register on the last
day and the system struggled is
quite depressing, but that won’t
happen again.
What do you think gave you the
edge over everyone else?
I have no idea. Ben and Claudia
were both really strong candidates
and I think it was such a close election
for a reason. Maybe my experience
with Insanity and the Orbital
might have just pushed it ahead. I
got some really positive feedback
after candidate’s question time so
maybe that.
How do you think your experience
with Insanity will help you next
year?
I think it’s going to be brilliant. One
third of the job is student media
and I’ve been one of the section editors
of the orbital and I’m currently
one station managers of insanity so
there is perhaps less of a handover
to do there as I’m fairly well versed
in how it all works. I also know
how tough it can get and how time
consuming it gets for the assistant
managers so I should be able to
help out there.
What about the other two thirds?
I’m really looking forward to it. In
the Ethics and environment side
I’m really looking forward to talking
to Ed Resek, “Go Green week”
was a massive success, and today we
found of we have been nominated
for an ecologist award which is really
cool, so there is a good foundation
to work from there. The union
has some really good campaigns it’s
just about getting the word out.
How do you get the word out?
Oh wow. Facebook, twitter, the SU
website. I cannot wait to get my
hands on that sodding website.
Are you going to personally do it or
is the union going to hire someone
to do it again?
I’m going to try and get the computer
science department to help
me. They offered last year and were
turned down, one of the students
who offered is the guy who created
the insanity website and I think
that website is brilliant. So if I can
get people like that involved it will
hopefully save a lot of money and
make the website easier to use.
How does The Founder fit in next
year?
I really like The Founder, I’ve contributed
to The Founder. I think the
union and The Founder’s relationship
could be better and I’m hoping
that maybe I can push that along. I
think The Founder is a really good
newspaper and a source of news
and if the union can talk about
things through The Founder that’s a
really good idea.
What about The Orbital?
It’s fairly upsetting. As a former
contributor and editor the fact that
it’s not out as much anymore is
quite depressing. It’s about looking
at money and working out a way to
get more issues out more quickly
and keeping the online presence up
to date. The Orbital turns twenty
five next year there is no way it’s not
going to be huge. I actually took the
first issue to candidate’s question
time.
Beyond Holloway where do your
I put off a masters degree to take
this job so I am going on to do a
masters in history the year after.
You said you wanted to use electronic
media to communicate, does
this mean that general meetings
and others forms are not being
utilised enough at the moment?
It’s almost defiantly not being used
to its maximum. It is being used
and that’s a really good thing but
at the General Meetings you get a
turnout of thirty, I know because
I go to every single bloody one of
them and while it’s three hours of
cutting through red tape you cant
really expect more people to get
actively involved unless they have
a reason to or unless they have
another way to get involved. The
union will be utilising a lot of electronic
media next year I will make
sure of it because I think more
people want to get involved but
don’t know how. One of the major
things of my campaign is that there
are so many opportunities being
given that students just don’t know
about and you can’t expect students
to take up these if they don’t know
what they are
Any particular campaigns your really
keen on?
I think it’s about time we opened
up campaigns to the students. I’ve
never been consulted on them. I
know what they are because they
are on the wall planner but I’ve
never been asked what campaigns I
think the union should get involved
with. And the sabbatical jobs are
representative roles so I would feel
a bit weird if I was to decide on
campaigns on my own. Obviously
SHAG week will stay because it’s
exceptionally popular and “Go
Green Week”, they had a guy making
smoothies with a bike during
the campaign, they were great!
If there were one thing you could
change during your year, what
would it be?
Insanity getting its FM licence, if
it kills me. Though admittedly we
should be having that soon.

8 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sabbatical Officers 2011-2012
Jake Wells
Vice President Student Activities
Jessica Phillipson
News Editor 2011-2012
I’m also Vice President of Cricket.
Sports are my passion, not to say I
will neglect societies!
On a quiet Wednesday morning in
Coffee and Cake, we meet up with
newly elected VPSA Jake Wells to
discuss elections and the future of
the union...
First of all, how does it feel to win?
Brilliant, actually! Really good
because it’s something that I really
wanted and having worked so hard
for it and having actually done it
feels really good.
Are you happy with the other
elected candidates?
Yes! There’s not a single candidate
who was running who I would’ve
been unhappy with. Throughout
the course of the campaign you
spend a lot of time with everyone
and get to know people really well.
I’m really pleased.
Is there anything that Victor’s doing
that you would do differently?
When did you decide to run?
It was in election time last year because
I helped my friend to run for
VPSA. Unfortunately he didn’t get
it, but the whole experience really
made me interested in it. I know
Victor so I spoke to him throughout
the year and that just reinforced
how much I wanted to do it.
Were you expecting to win?
No, I think there are some things
that can be tweaked, but as far as
I’m concerned Victor’s done a fantastic
job. I don’t think there’s anything
that needs to be overhauled.
All the ideas they’re running with
are really good. Hopefully I can
continue their good work.
What do you think the result of the
wrong person getting the role of
VPSA would be?
No, no, no! You speak to anyone I
spoke to that day from 1pm when
my lectures finished, I was an absolute
mess!
What have you been up to since the
election?
To be honest, getting my sleeping
patterns back on track has been
quite important! Two hours a
night is not conducive to any sort
of health. Catching up on degree
work, chatting to the other Sabb
elects and the other current Sabbs,
seeing what there is that needs to be
done, trying to better understand
the role that I’m going to be taking
on.
What do you think the best thing
about being VPSA will be?
Getting to interact with the sheer
number and variety of students in
all the clubs and societies and feeling
that I can actually help out as
many of those as possible. I’m really
looking forward to it.
Is there an advantage of sports men
and women who run for VPSA over
those in societies?
Numerically, sports teams here are
huge. That’s not to take anything
away from societies, but in terms
of football teams here, you’ve got
six teams with seventeen people in
each, that’s a lot of people straightaway.
I wouldn’t say it’s an advantage,
it doesn’t mean those numbers
should vote for that candidate.
People should go to the website and
read the manifestos to make their
own mind up.
What’s the first thing you’re going
to change?
Well, I’m meeting Victor about a
ULU-wide competition, sort of
like ‘Strictly Come Holloway’, but
with all the dance societies. That’s
not a change, but it’s something
that’s being implemented. One
thing I want to do is possibly have
a ‘Refreshers Fair’, like Freshers fair,
but in second term. You walk into
Freshers Fair and there’s all these
Presidents shouting at you and it’s
a little bit intimidating. I hope to
get a ‘Refreshers Fair’ with stalls
manned by Freshers who joined
in the first term, as that’s more accessible.
Hopefully that will boost
membership for everyone.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself,
outside of your VPSA role?
Well, I work in Crosslands, I’ve
been there for nearly two years now.
I study Politics with Philosophy and
I really enjoy it. I play football and
I think they’d be found out pretty
quickly and I’d like to think something
would be done if the person
wasn’t up to it. I think the role
would suffer in that it would lose
a lot of credibility and more and
more people would go down the
popularity contest route in future
elections, which I would personally
hate to see. Societies and sports
clubs would suffer because the necessary
things would not be done.
Simple things like the budget, the
membership lists, all those kinds
of things would be poorly organised
and all the events that are held
would not be as good as they deserve
to be. The little things would
have a huge knock-on effect.
Is there anything else you’d like to
say?
Basically, I’d just like to thank
everyone who voted and make sure
people remember that elections are
an important time.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Comment
9
&
Debate
The Damaging Effect of
Pornography
Alex Boardman
Now some of you may be wondering,
what is the problem? Pornography
seems to have become a part
of modern day life, due to the instantly
accessible nature of it at the
click of a button. The debate around
the issue is becoming more prevalent
in society, as psychologists are
learning more and more about the
negative effects it is having on our
generation. With smart phones
and the increasing ease of Internet
access it is becoming easier and
easier to get hold of pornographic
content. In November, the House
of Commons debated Internet
Pornography’s effect on society. As
Claire Perry states, “A third of our
10-year-olds have viewed pornography
on the internet, while four
out of every five children aged 14
to 16 admit to regularly accessing
explicit photographs and footage on
their home computers,” she said in
the debate. We are in a generation
of people, where 87% of young men
and 31% of young women reported
using pornography.
Here are some of the main issues
that have been raised in the debate.
Deforming of our sexual development
Have you ever wondered why
you, or your partner, may not have
been able to ‘get it up’ during a
night of passion? Research is showing
that porn is indeed addictive,
especially to men, and that it damages
their libido in the long-term.
The abundance of free and available
erotica has been linked to the
relationship between people who
eat processed foods and obesity. If
your appetite is stimulated and fed
by poor-quality material, it takes
more junk to fill you up and the
research suggests that men need
higher and higher levels of stimulation
to become aroused. Experts are
seeing an epidemic today of healthy
young men who cannot perform
easily with their partners because
they have been overexposed to
pornography.
More worryingly is that to fill
the increasing need for stimulation,
men need more and more extreme
situations for arousal. The Witherspoon
report expresses concern
about the “brutality” of much of the
imagery on the web and the way it
gives young men a “rape-like” view
of how to have sex with women
from the offset. Pornography works
in a Pavlovian way on the brain
i.e. if you associate orgasm with
your girlfriend, a kiss, a scent, a
body, that is what, over time, will
turn you on. On the other hand if
you open your focus to an endless
stream of progressively more antisocial
activities, that is what it will
take to arouse you.
Porn isn’t a good foundation for
developing relationships
A lot of our generation,
are being contaminated by
Internet porn before even getting
the chance to have sex or enjoy a
genuine relationship. In one study
of 718 Swedish students around the
country, 29% said that pornography
had actively influenced their sexual
behavior. I remember when I came
round to my first real sexual experience,
my mind was full of a pretty
inappropriate mixed bag of fantasies
and scenarios and the girl’s feelings
weren’t ever really taken into
account. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
when it came to having a sexual
relationship with a real person,
someone I actually cared about,
rather than images on the screen, I
had no idea how to behave.
Firstly, porn isn’t just affecting
young men’s views about sex, but
is also having an affect on their
attitudes of relationships. Increasingly
men are using porn as the
model for what relationships are
about and believe that real women
behave like the ones they see on
the Internet, which can cause a lot
of strain on relationships. In porn,
women are always up for it. Even
if they initially say no, they don’t
mean it, and within minutes they
are gasping and begging for more.
This gives men extremely high
expectations of what a girl should
be like in the bedroom and has led
to a proliferation of what we might
call “non-procreational sex”. This is
leading to confusion between both
sexes about appropriate decorum in
relationships. For instance, will my
partner be up for anything or will
my view of sex, shock or horrify
them?
Is it all bad?
In a recent Times article, a young
female student wrote “It’s good to
have some of those images in your
head. I find I look at something,
and then maybe a week later I’m
having sex and it comes back to me
and — hey! — that’s really helpful
just when I need it most.” Also,
Frankie Boyle, the controversial
comedian, summed up many men’s
views on the subject pretty conclusively:
“If you have a very high
sex drive, which I do, and you’ve
got a kid, you can’t just go and shag
people any more. So you watch pornography.”
Hedonists who embrace
porn, carry on surfing because it’s a
free country and in porn world they
don’t have to justify themselves to
the perpetually hot females on their
screens. In real life relationships
are risky. Although they can bring
great joy, comfort and security,
they can also bring humiliation
and pain and, comparatively, porn
allows you to swap uncertainty for a
virtual world that is predictable and
controllable.
What can we do?
In Confucian thought there are
five ‘key relationships’ to bring ‘Social
harmony’, which are supposed
help society learn and teach
Continued on page 10»

10 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Comment
& Debate
The Damaging
Effect of
Pornography
Let them eat cake, it
didn’t work before,
it won’t work now
» continued from page 9
one another how to navigate life’s
difficulties. These relationships
are ‘ruler and subject’, ‘father and
son’, ‘husband and wife’, ‘elder and
younger sibling’ and ‘friend and
friend’. ‘Social harmony’ is supposed
to result from every individual
knowing his or her place in
the social order, and playing his or
her part well. David Cameron has
highlighted new research which
showed that what matters most to a
child’s life chances is not the wealth
of their upbringing, but the warmth
and input of their parenting.
Pornography on the other hand
is mostly an anti-social, selfish
activity, which is hurting our
generation’s ability to promote
healthy and mutually rewarding
relationships. Politicians have been
trying to look into ways of regulating
pornographic content on the
web, such as the MP Claire Perry,
who has called for the nine main
Internet service providers [ISPs]
to limit access to porn unless their
customers specifically request it.
There are problems with regulating
the porn industry, such as where do
you set the boundary of what can
and cannot be regulated? What
effect will this have on our ability
to surf on what we want on
the internet. Cyber-libertarians’,
suggest that the Internet should
be the ultimate domain to shape
our lives free from the control of
the government and suppressive
forces.
I think we need more debate
and information in our society,
especially about the negative
effect that new technologies and
websites can have on our wellbeing.
The problem is that we
are only just learning about the
effects on ‘our generation’ and
more needs to be done to combat
the proliferation of porn on the
Internet. My belief is that we
need more self regulation, as we
are ultimate in charge of our own
actions. For those of you who
have read A Picture of Dorian
Gray, all of Dorian’s bad actions
in his life show up on a portrait
of himself. What I worry about is
what effects of what we see and
view on the Internet are having
on our development and for
lack of a better word our “soul”.
I don’t know the answers, but I
hope to see this debate develop.
tf Comment and Debate
Comment and Debate is always interested in
the opinions of RHUL students
Simply write an aritlce of 400 - 700 words and
sent it to:
comment@thefounder.co.uk
Best before midday Monday 28th February
Nicholas Coleridge-Watts responds to Sam
Hancock’s Response...
Before I begin let me nail my colours
to the mast: I am not a member
of Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts
Alliance, and I’m not familiar with
their programme aside from the
obvious objection
to the Coalition’s
education policies.
I am however
of the opinion
that university,
being a service,
should be free at
the point of access
like the NHS. It is
with this in mind
that I will critique
Sam Hancock’s
response.
Firstly, Mr
Hancock mentions
that there
are fundamental
flaws in the procedures
and actions
of RHACA. I
feel bound to
point out that
this organisation
is not subject
to a hierarchy,
and represents
an independent
initiative of likeminded
students.
Consequently it
doesn’t need to
toe any kind of
party line, and is
free to set its own
agenda.
I wasn’t present during the
specific incident, but it seems to
me that if anything the antics of
RHACA were restrained within
the normal parameters of student
protest. A sit-in, like all peaceful
protests, is supposed to be disruptive.
That the Choral Scholars were
allowed through at all seems to
me to be an indicator that student
demos have gone soft. If nonviolent
protesters had never made
a nuisance of themselves we’d still
have Apartheid, people would’ve
just ignored Ghandi, and the Civil
Rights Movement would have been
left in the hands of white American
liberals (and we all know how few
of them there are).
Later Mr Hancock says that
RHACA’s (alleged) chanting of
‘fascist’ and ‘bourgeois’ justifies
the (not necessarily pejorative)
assertion that they are ‘left-wing
radicals’. Well, that’s just mudslinging.
You can’t condemn partisan
activity one minute and then go on
to participate in it the next.
I’m sure RHACA, like all political
organisations, sometimes resorts to
emotion in the prosecution of their
struggle, but the real question is:
why is that so bad
Sam? The SU are
elected to serve,
and it can’t have
escaped your notice
that when it
comes to the cuts
your electorate is
divided into two
distinct groups:
those who don’t
want them and
those who don’t
care. If you throw
a rock out of any
window on campus,
chances are
you’re not going
to hit someone
who thinks what’s
going on is a good
thing.
So why is the
SU so passive
about the issue?
Questions have
been raised in
General Meetings
you say.
Well, I’ve been to
GMs; the turnout’s
poor which
reflects what the
students think of
their usefulness,
and one gets the
impression of admin for its own
sake. The whirligig of town hall
politics makes the occasions more
about procedure than achievement.
Maybe if you they had something
to fear then they’d take a greater
degree of interest.
As for Mr Hancock’s comment
about RHACA being a minority
which claims to represent the majority:
take a look in the mirror.

E X T R A
Julia Armfield gets the inside
scoop on Drama Society’s
upcoming production of...

12 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
Arts
Interview: Drama Society’s
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Q: What made you choose this
play?
A: We both share a passion for
both Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the
ideas of existentialism present in
works such as Waiting for Godot.
This play presents us with a fusion
of the two. Through Stoppard’s
reworking of Hamlet we felt there
was a great opportunity to manipulate
Shakespeare without our own
emotional connection to Hamlet.
We can at once make fun of, and
protect the beauty of the original
while also playing with more of our
favourite ideas, that of existentialism,
discordance and alienation.
Q: The play is comparatively short
on female principals – was this at
all a concern when you first chose
to bid it?
A: While there is a striking lack
of female dialogue in the play, this
does not mean that the female
characters do not play an important
part in the unfolding of events.
Furthermore, we cast the part
of Alfred to a female actor (Sian
Mayhall-Purvis) and changed the
host of attendants and Tragedians
to unisex roles. This enabled us to
further subvert Shakespeare in a
play so obviously preoccupied with
reimagining tradition.
Q: There have been a variety of
high-profile productions of this
play in the past – not least the
movie featuring Gary Oldman
and Tim Roth. Have you been
more concerned with taking inspiration
from or deviating from
past productions?
A: We are both aware of previous
productions of the play but
there has been no sense of strong
influence in regard to our own
interpretation. We have strongly
advised our actors to develop their
own characters according to both
our and their own reading of the
text giving little or no consideration
to previous productions. We
believe that our interpretation is
solely unique and, to prove this,
have invited Gary Oldman, Tim
Roth and Stoppard himself to Jane
Holloway Hall.
Q: The play is going to be performed
in the Jane Holloway Hall.
You say that you want to use this
space to create an “existentialist
Arts Editor Julia Armfield takes an opportunity to remove her
ranting hat (for once) and have a little internet Q&A with Douglas
Gibson and Robbie Brown, the directors of the latest Drama Society
play: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
void”. What exactly do you mean
by that?
A: The play will be performed
entirely in the promenade style,
meaning that the audience is ‘free
to roam’ the space at their discretion,
under no influence from the
actors or ourselves. There has
been a deliberate choice taken by
ourselves, in conjunction with Kim
Williams (Props and Costume) in
destroying the idea of a clear historical
context, lending the production
a timeless and accidental feel.
Q: The idea of metatheatre – i.e.
plays within plays or scenes that in
some way acknowledge their own
Doug Gibson (left) & Robbie Brown (right) who are directing
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Photos: Tom Shore
theatricality – and the interaction
between actor and audience is
hugely important to Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead. Have
you attempted to highlight this in
any way through your direction?
A: The promenade staging,
merging actor and spectator, only
serves to exaggerate this theme, and
there are many moments of direct
interaction and even manipulation
of the audience to serve our
needs. The fact that the actors will
remain in character, in the space,
throughout the performance, as if
in a ‘haphazard rehearsal for a bad
production of Hamlet - learning
lines, moving props etc. - provides
a further level of meta-theatricality.
However, these two examples do
no justice to the depth of meta-theatre’s
influence on both the script
and the staging of the play, and to
answer this question fully would
require a two page spread. At least.
Probably more.
Q: The play focuses a great deal
on the nature of art and reality
and the idea that an event can
only truly be construed as real if
it is witnessed. Do you think that
Stoppard is using his characters
in this way to comment on the
believability of theatre?
A: ‘Audiences know what to
expect, and that’s all their prepared
to believe in.’ The reality is that,
on stage, everything is witnessed,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
never alone - they have each other,
and as soon as they don’t, they die.
To add to this, an audience is always
present, in the knowledge that
they are witnessing actors pretending
to be characters. In this way art
is not reality. Life itself is not always
witnessed, whereas theatre always
is.
Q: How do you think your production
will differ from anything
else we’ve seen from the Drama
Society?
A: As far as we are aware, there
has never been another production
at RHUL to declare ‘the era of seats
is over!’ This audience/performer
relationship will present a completely
new theatrical experience
and hopefully kick start a new wave
of contemporary theatre, drawing
influence from performance
companies who are relevant right
now. No longer do we expect an
audience to be passive, stagnant,
and possibly bored by orthodox,
repetitive theatre. This is also a
genuinely funny play which ranges
from base slapstick and farce to
high level punnery-something that
a play very seldom focuses on when
performed at RHUL.
Q: Do you think your production
will be accessible to everyone,
whether or not they are familiar
with Tom Stoppard or Shakespeare’s
Hamlet?
A: Although knowledge of
Hamlet will be of benefit to the
audience, it is by no means essential
as this play stands alone as
a classic, consisting of great jokes,
deep intellectualism, ponderings of
mortality/fate/probability, perverse
desires, emotionally charged
dialogue and poetic language, along
with revolutionary staging, physical
theatre, an energetic cast, a focused
crew and above all an incredible
rapport between two great actors
(Dan Collard and Alex Burnett).
Q: When is it on and where do we
buy tickets?
A: Tickets will be available from
our launch night (24th February,
Stumble Inn - 8 till close) and from
the SU box office from thereon in.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
13
Arts
Review: (the revamped) Love Never Dies
Vikki Vile
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom
sequel, Love Never Dies was cruelly
dubbed ‘Paint Never Dries’ by fans
of the original when the show
opened in March of last year. Just
months later, the press reported
that tickets were selling for as little
as £3 and the show was heading
for disaster. No surprise then that
the good Lord saw the need for a
re-think, controversially closing the
show for a few days over the Christmas
period for readjustments.
Noting the teething problems, I
approached my visit to the Adelphi
with mixed feelings, concerned
that this allegedly underwhelming
follow-up would sent me running
back to Her Majesty’s Theatre
where the original is still packing
in the tourists. That said, I believed
that Lloyd Webber was not foolish
enough to put on a sequel to a renowned
original if it was not up to
scratch. The rearranged show now
begins with one of the big songs:
‘Til I Hear You Sing. There is no
lead-up, just bam, there it is before
you’ve even had time to get comfortable.
I found this confusing, it
was like going to see The Sound of
Music and starting with the Nazis,
but despite this, I believe it worked.
Many have asked whether Love
Never Dies is an accessible watch to
a Phantom virgin and the answer
is unquestionably yes, though the
content of the sequel will mean less.
The plot is touching, rather than
taxing. We meet Christine and Raul
ten years on, now with a son named
Gustav. The family are captured on
arrival in New York by the Phantasma
Freaks (go with it) and are
taken to Coney Island, a down-atheel
land of sleaze and mystery. The
Phantom reappears to haunt Christine
and demands she sing for him
one last time, whilst Raul insists he
will leave Christine if she does. In
addition, there is the added intrigue
of the subplot involving Meg Giry,
now a washed-up dancer for the
Phantasma troupe, and her mother,
still bitter that the Phantom fails to
notice Meg’s talent. Reading that
back, it is easy to see where all the
criticism has come from with such
a thin-sounding plot. However, I
would argue that the music saves
the show; unquestionably Lloyd
Webber’s greatest achievement
since the Phantom of 1986.
The set is a feast for the eyes with
big projections, acrobatics and impressive
costumes creating a sense
of life at Coney. The moments between
Christine and Gustav in the
first act are endearing; Look With
Your Heart is a heart-warming
number; and she and the Phantom
share some thrilling romantic arias.
In a peculiar role reversal, Love
Never Dies encourages us to side
with the Phantom as we see Raul’s
character take on a new darkness
in his dejected, drunken state.
Never have I seen so much tension
injected into a title song as in this
show’s climax, but Sierra Boggess’
talent makes it worth the wait.
I loved it, there’s no denying. It
is obvious that Love Never Dies is
a show that has had a lot of money
thrown at it, but I believe that after
a nervy start, this is a wonderful
and genuinely spooky show that
can run the course. It is a show with
heart, intent and meaning, and after
all, if the insipid tackiness of shows
such as Dirty Dancing can still pack
in the punters, why can’t this?
Student Workshop
Review:
Pool (no water)
by Mark Ravenhill
Knowing nothing of the play, I
entered Sasha Haughn’s production
of Mark Ravenhill’s Pool (no water)
with a completely empty slate of
expectations. Unfortunately, when I
left I still held an empty feeling.
The stage was bare; a tiled floor
and three white flats were the only
Tim Berendse
set. The audience (well, about ten
of them) was seated around the
tiled floor, with the actors sitting
in between them. The rest of the
audience, including myself, were
placed in raked seating behind the
three-sided audience/performance
area. From the offset this made
me, as an audience member, feel
very detached. The small amount
of audience members seated in
between the actors were addressed
throughout the performance, but
the majority of the audience were
excluded from any interaction and
forced to simply watch, almost
voyeuristically, as a story was told
to other audience members; a confusing
situation to find oneself in.
Perhaps this was intentional, but it
didn’t work. I did not feel engaged
in the performance at all, and as a
result was not shocked when the
actors used crass language or took
their clothes off.
I have never been a big fan of
plays that try to tell an audience a
story without interaction between
characters. I don’t think it works,
and I feel it never will. The whole
play sounded like one long monologue
split and given to different
characters. I was thankful when the
actors finally started moving after
ten minutes of telling a story to the
audience members next to them.
Again, the majority of the audience
in the raked seating was excluded
from these seemingly private
conversations and as a result, it was
extremely difficult to understand
what was happening.
Even the actors seemed confused
as to who they were meant to be
saying their lines to. Some said
them to each other, some said their
lines to the audience seated around
them, and others seemed to say
their lines to themselves. When one
of the actors eventually took on the
role of protagonist, there was a brief
sense of hope that there would be
some character interaction, but to
no avail.
I can imagine that the play could
be performed more interestingly,
perhaps using physical theatre to
add some relief to the dry speech,
but the actors, who seemed more
like narrators, were unfortunately
left to perform their insular lines in
an unengaging and detached way.
I think what let this performance
down was the lack of movement
and interaction between the characters,
whose acting was at no fault
at all. What was most important, I
feel, was the lack of consideration
for the audience, who may have
seen a great play if they were sat
in amongst the actors. However,
the largest part of the audience
was excluded, something that was
highlighted perfectly in the climax
of the play, where one of the actors
delivered a highly emotive speech,
but with her back to the majority of
the audience, hiding any expression
or emotion from view, summing up
the entirety of the play.
tf Arts
We don’t hear very much about arts and theatre events on campus, but we’d certainly like to!
If you’ve been to see something on campus that you have something to say about, why not write
us an article? You can bank on it that the productions will appreciate your efforts.
It doesn’t have to be long, a couple of hundred words will do.
Write to Auntie Julia at
arts@thefounder.co.uk

14 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
Arts
Screwing up your daughters, the
Twilight way
Julia Armfield
The other day, I read an article so
asinine that it made me spill coffee
down my dress (although saying
that, I don’t generally need an
asinine article to spill coffee down
my dress. All I need is coffee.). I
happened to be trawling the Empire
movie website, as you do, when I
came across an article by movie
blogger Helen O’Hara, entitled
The Case for Twilight’s Bella Swan,
Feminist. When I regained consciousness,
some forty-five minutes
and an exorcism later, I found that
I had not, alas, hallucinated and
that there was, in fact, someone out
there willing to make a case for the
heroine of Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenally
popular Twilight books’
right to stand alongside Mary Wollstonecraft
and Hermione Granger
and give us the womanly word.
The gist of O’Hara’s argument,
from what I could make out
through bleeding eye sockets, was
that: “Bella’s relationship with Edward,
while starting from a place of
(unhealthy) obsession, evolves into
something that’s still obsessed (on
both sides) but actually rather balanced
between give-and-take. He
may try to control her life, but she
simply doesn’t let him.” Well step
back, Mrs Pankhurst, there’s new
money in town.
Let me just hark back a bit here.
The Twilight novels, for those of
you who have been living on Mars
(in a cave, with your eyes shut) tell
the story of a girl, Bella, who falls
in love with a vampire, Edward,
whose only defining characteristics
appear to be bouffant hair and
an incurable thirst for her blood.
Over the course of the series, the
two argue interminably over Bella’s
desire to be changed into a vampire
so they can be together forever and
make mixtapes of My Chemical
Romance songs or whatever, whilst
peppering their bickering with
intermittent battles for their lives
and scenes in which they compare
themselves to Heathcliff and Cathy
without, I’m fairly certain, even
the most basic knowledge of what
Wuthering Heights is about, who
wrote it or where England is. Also,
there are werewolves and everyone
talks about their cars. All pretty
clear so far. As far as Teen Fiction
goes, Twilight exploded in a style
unheard of since Harry Potter. The
books have sold over 100 million
copies worldwide and three movies
have already been made, with the
final instalment set to be released
in two parts. Twilight fans, or
“Twi-hards”, are certainly not agespecific,
ranging from preteens to
the faintly disturbing “Twi-Moms”,
who make me yearn for the days
when nobody’s parents could even
pronounce “Dumbledore”. Age
discrepancies aside, however, there
are still two incontrovertible facts
to be gleaned about Twilight, the
first being that its fan demographic
is almost exclusively female and
the second being that, whoever
happens to have latched onto it, its
target readership has always been
teenaged girls.
Teen fiction, as a genre, is endlessly
problematic. The fact that
the word “teen” can encompass
anything from Upper Fourth to the
end of university creates untold
problems in terms of appropriacy
and relatability and the highly
gendered lines along which youth
fiction is divided are certainly no
help. Fiction aimed at those aged
thirteen to nineteen is, as a general
rule, aimed either at girls or at boys.
The Alex Rider books and anything
to do with sports or underpants are
aimed at boys. Twilight is aimed at
girls.
Now, let’s wander back to that
Empire article for a second. O’Hara
claims that Bella Swan makes “wise
decisions” and “follows her own
path”, surely the founding tenets
of feminism. This is, I should
point out, the girl who obsesses
so continually over her undead bf
that she contemplates suicide when
he leaves her; who is so near-mute
in his presence that almost all her
dialogue is followed by the words
“I mumbled”; who allows him not
infrequently to carry her around;
who loses all interest in family and
friends when in love; who tries to
forgo college in the name of said
love; who marries at age nineteen
(oh yeah, spoilers); who has some
seriously questionable violent sex
afterwards; who gets pregnant
with what I can only assume, from
six-hundred pages of vomituous
description, to be some kind of
human incarnation of a Saw movie;
who willingly has the thing; who
loves it because she’s a lady and
who waltzes off into the sunset with
Saw baby and her Abusive Vampire
Hottie like that’s all just how she
rolls. Neat.
O’Hara argues that “Feminists
don’t - or shouldn’t - demand that
every woman on screen live up
to some feminist ideal when the
population as a whole doesn’t”.
Well, this I absolutely must contest
when it comes to Teen fiction. A
while ago, I wrote an article on
how children’s books help fashion
whoever we turn out to be and I
would argue now that books aimed
at teenagers carry just such a social
responsibility. Admittedly, readers
of thirteen up have a more rounded
view of the world and a more fullydeveloped
ability to interpret what
they read, but the fact remains that
at fourteen/fifteen, you’re a gibbering
mess. Hormones, peer pressure
and stress combine to create the
Perfect Storm that is adolescence,
and it is at this point more than
ever that you start looking around
for anything to latch onto that
gives you a tangible identity. That’s
why people become Goths (that’s
why I joined Greek Myth Club).
Literature, during adolescence, is a
touchstone and Teen Literature is
a means of searching for identity
through relatable characters and
issues. The importance of Twilight
purveying a positive, empowering
message for teenaged girls,
however “idealised” O’Hara might
think that, should consequently
be pretty apparent. Teenaged girls
are a vulnerable lot and frankly,
the last thing they need is the most
popular book in the world dangling
a dream-scenario of perfect,
vampire love over their heads as the
way to opt out of a dreary life. Bella
is made infinitely happier, prettier
and more appealing by and marrying
Edward, and if you have any
problems with your sad teen life,
then you should just get yourself
a boyfriend too. One who carries
you up stairs and fills in your
Dartmouth applications, because
it’s always best if you let the man
take charge of the really important
things, like college applications and
motor skills (though obviously you
don’t really want to go to college).
Don’t worry if he slaps you around
a bit, either, or randomly takes the
engine out of your car – it’s only
because he loves you. For all its
inherent pull upon the sparkling
escape fantasies of teenaged girls,
Twilight is so woefully backward in
its approach to essential teen issues
that it is difficult to see how it could
be more damaging. Opportunities
to approach domestic violence, selfimage
and suicide as anything but
the trials of young love are sorely
wasted, whilst abortion, as an issue,
is as good as outright lambasted.
An abusive boyfriend is presented
as the absolute ideal (he sparkles,
kids) and female characters are defined
almost solely by the men who
surround them.
Bella Swan, for want of a better
closing statement, is not a feminist.
She’s a teenaged girl in dire need of
a book to show her the way. And
that book is most definitely not
Twilight.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
15
Arts
‘The Holloway Players have been upstaged’
Thomas Mayo
When the Holloway Players stand
up to perform, they generally have
no idea what they’re doing. By
which I mean they won’t know
what they’re doing until they’re
doing it, and by then the spotlight
is on and the show is in full swing.
The compere gives them a game
to play, the audience calls out a
relationship, situation or location
to adopt, and then they stand up in
front of a minimum of 100 people
and begin. And they’re bloody good
at it.
The shows themselves are a series
of games, a la Whose Line is it
Anyway; improvised comedy on
tap. The society has been performing
for several years now, doing a
couple of shows each term, filling
Tommy’s Bar on Thursday nights
with a crowd of tipsy onlookers
(yes, there will always be a bar).
And now, after their sell-out first
SU show in mid-January, they’re
stepping it up, performing two or
three times a month. Their next
show is on Feb 21st, which is soon,
in case you were wondering. In fact,
what you were more likely wondering
is what exactly you’ll be getting
when you buy your ticket – and
trust me, you should buy one.
What you’ll be getting is varied,
unique, and kind of masochistic. In
the eyes of the Players, every new
way of making things more difficult
for themselves is a new game. There
are games where they can’t speak
and games where they can’t move.
There are games where three people
must become one, or where one
person ends up being four, games
where they have to guess who their
fellow improvisers are, or even who
they themselves are, games that test
their storytelling, acting, memory,
mime, or which demand that they
sing an improvised song (in tune)
on the spot. And half the time, the
slightest stumble from a performer
will result in the entire audience
yelling ‘die’ at them with tremendous
vigour. And then there’s the
strong likelihood that they’ll be
asked to become the moon, or
Pulls-Fishes-From-His-Armpits-
Man, or simply the concept of
taxidermy.
Okay, guess who’s biased? You
caught me, wily reader, I’ve been
a RHUL Player for almost a year
and a half now, and dammit I’m
proud. Obviously, I can’t review
myself, but I can review the rest of
them. I am, as I’ve said, ‘biased’ but
luckily, as I type, my aching hand
reminds me of exactly why they’re
so good. No, it’s nothing sexual.
It’s just that we spend a minimum
of 6 hours a week workshopping,
discussing, practicing, and yet still,
two days ago, I managed to bruise
my hand through embarrassingly
over-enthusiastic clapping, a wound
which joins my three Player-caused
scars (two heavy carpet burns and a
stab wound) as a badge of honour. I
still enter a state of unseemly mirth
when a game begins, because it’s
never the same thing twice, and
these people are brilliant.
And if that’s not enough in the
way of critical acclaim, don’t worry,
there’s a reason we’re mounting the
main SU stage and putting on more
shows than ever before. It’s partly
that Tommy’s has started to be filled
to capacity, partly that in all the
time I’ve watched the Players there’s
never been a bad show, but mostly
that no-one at Royal Holloway, noone,
dare I say, in the great county
of Surrey, is quite so dedicated to
making prats of themselves for
your enjoyment. Of course, it helps
that you, gentle reader/soon-to-beaudience-member,
get to call out
suggestions just to make our lives
more ‘interesting’. But don’t worry,
we can handle it.
The Holloway Players have several
shows coming up, their main
performances being Feb 21st in
Tommy’s, March 10th in Tommy’s
(Free!), and March 22nd for their
second SU Main Hall show.

Holloway View
Please send in any photographs you’ve taken
of scenes around campus, and we’ll print one
or two in each edition. You can email your
images to pictures@thefounder.co.uk - include
“Holloway View” in the subject line and send
them in the highest quality possible. Also,
please include a few lines telling us a little bit
about the photo and where you took it.
Thomas Jackson sent us in this photo by the path
to the Stumble Inn: “This shot I call “Vale of Sunlight.”
It’s a beautiful image of the sun shining through the
trees, which is set in a vale. Incidentally, the rays of the
sun look almost like a veil, giving an interesting play
on words.”
My housemates stuck their heads into one of
those flower-ball-light-things in ‘Imagine’ (the
new Ikea-explosion under the Hub). Not for any
photographic purpose; their reasoning was that
“it’s almost some sort of, like, weird-trip-thing.”
Bruce Asher

I took this photo on a rather rainy afternoon in Covent
Garden Market. I had gone into a covered area beside St.
Paul’s Church and turned back to capture people walking
past the archway. This photo only happened because I
clicked the shutter at exactly the moment the lady and the
umbrella walked past. I was very lucky.
Tamsin Bell

18 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
Film
Hannah Riekemann
Disney, as in old Walt, has been a
constant source of speculation as
to whether he really is cryogenically
frozen and if so, when he is
going to make his re-appearance.
One can almost hesitantly say that
the return of the ‘proper’ Disney
film was what many of us craved
after years of, to be fair, rather good
movies. I was horrified to learn that
many people of our generation have
never seen an old-school Disney,
no 3-D CGI thank you very much!
It is a shame especially as many of
us regard Disney films as a corner
stone and key developmental
process that is as much a tool in
class (comparing the 18thcentury
to modern Disney characters) as
well as an icebreaker at parties. As
a firm champion of the better form,
I was delighted when The Princess
and the Frog came out last year and
positively leaping with excitement
when I learned of Disney’s newest
venture Tangled.
I was rather disappointed at first I
must confess. The opening credits
looked suspiciously like a touch of
CGI had been added to the mix but
then soon realised that the animator’s
pencil drawings were visible.
Phew! Tangled tells the story of
Rapunzel, albeit a highly modified
one, who is stolen away from her
royal parents by an evil gypsy intent
on using her hair for regeneration
purposes. Sound familiar? On her
18th birthday, Flynn Rider the thief
Review: Tangled
steals away into the tower to escape
from Royal Forces and manages to
get Rapunzel to escape with him
so that she can view the Chinese
lantern display. What ensues is the
usual boy/girl dilemma complete
with all the songs you could possibly
ever want to sing along to.
Indeed I must confess that I did try
much to the amusement of the Flatmate
who ended up patting me on
the head before turning resolutely
back to the screen. The dialogue
is witty and incredibly sharp with
laugh out loud moments that leave
you gasping, tears running down
the cheeks et al. It may not be a
*****
total Disney classic but it proves
that Disney can create a winning
formula without relying too heavily
on Pixar for the extra bits. The plot
relies on the old fairytale without
trying to be ‘cool’ and including
popular modern day references or
songs that will date the film as was
the case with Shrek. The revival
of the fairytale for Disney’s 50th
animation is ingenious and intelligent,
returning to the classic story
telling that made the studio famous.
They have carefully placed hooks at
agreeable points so as to keep you
entertained and the dam-busting
sequence leaves your heart in your
mouth; the fact that the characters
are animation is of little consequence.
Rapunzel, voiced by Mandy Moore,
is the typical teenager, although
she has never previously left her
tower, and the see-sawing emotions
she displays will be scarily familiar
to those of us who had similar
arguments with our parents. One
slight niggle may be that Moore
sometimes gives very little depth in
certain scenes but this is swiftly rectified
by the excellent Flynn Rider,
Zachary Levi, who shows that the
narcissistic thief does have a background
that leaves one reaching
for the Kleenex. We get characters
who have a little heart and soul,
returning to the classic Disney of
yore. The real star of the film, in
my opinion, is Rapunzel’s sidekick
chameleon who picks up the slack
left behind in the scenes and despite
having no voice, proves to be
the voice of reason; his expressions
left me falling into my seat grasping
my sides. You can almost see the
spin-offs that this little chameleon
will be getting soon. The evil gypsy
is as dark as the villains of old and
her regeneration, using Rapunzel’s
hair, is as terrifying as Ursula in The
Little Mermaid.
Now this may not prove to be a
classic Disney film with proper
old-school hand drawn animation,
but it does show a link can be
made between CGI and animation
without losing the integrity of the
story. I absolutely adored the film
and would happily go and see it
again and again. Embarrassingly I
nigh on floated out of the cinema
still singing the songs to myself and
flicking my hair about; it makes
every girl feel like a princess. I
felt sorry for my Flatmate who
trailed behind me watching with an
amused stare as I joined the countless
little girls who were similarly
twirling about pretending to be
Rapunzel. Tangled is seriously good
fun and I would even go as far as to
say a strong contender for winning
in this season’s award ceremonies.
All I can say is please go and see
this film and remind yourself of
believing in your dreams.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
19
Film
The King’s Speech (insert pun
here) at the BAFTAs
Daniel Collard
Film Editor
...reigned supreme, rang out the
loudest, was crowned ruler...There’s
a few to get you started. Whatever
predictable tabloid headline you
read, none will be exaggerating
when they speak of the phenomenal
award success of Tom Hooper’s
film about King George VI’s
struggle to overcome his speech
impediment and his relationship
with Lionel Logue, his Australian
speech therapist. Having already
been excellently reviewed in a
previous edition of The Founder, I
shall merely reiterate that this film
is a very entertaining and moving
tale of friendship, trust and
responsibility. It came as no great
surprise to myself, at any rate, that
the film came close claiming a full
house of the top awards – Hooper
himself missing out to The Social
Network’s David Fincher in the
Best Director award. It picked up
the coveted Best Film gong, as well
as the Outstanding British Film,
Best Original Screenplay, and Best
Original Music awards, while Colin
Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena
Bonham-Carter won the Best Actor,
Best Supporting Actor and Best
Supporting Actress awards respectively.
All in all, a pretty good night
for them, then.
Yet what might the cynics make
of this near white wash? Might
BAFTA have been buttering-up The
King’s Speech for a less Anglophilic
reception at the Oscars? It would
make sense to beef up the film’s
critical credentials in the hope of
it following in Slumdog Millionaire’s
footsteps and beating a host
of noteworthy films to the king of
all little gold men. Especially when
considering that many of the other
big contenders will be going into
the ceremony with other less grand
but still impressive BAFTA awards,
while The King’s Speech (and remember,
I’m only being a hypothetical
cynic here) will not have the
benefit of a British bias. The Social
Network left the BAFTAs with the
Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay
and Best Editing awards under
its belt, and was one of a number
of films that beat The King’s Speech
to a ‘lower-tier’ award. This might
suggest that, while the performances
of the film and the quality
of the dialogue outshone all others
in British cinemas in the last year,
it may not pack as much of a solid
punch Stateside when it comes to
be a fully-rounded film that ticks
the boxes on all levels.
Now, I personally think that incredible
performances can/should
be enough to win a film the top
award at the Oscars – There Will Be
Blood, for example, being just one
of the films robbed of this award
despite its lead, Daniel Day-Lewis,
receiving the Best Actor trophy.
Yet I wonder whether or not The
King’s Speech will lose something
in the translation. At the core of the
film lies an arguably universally applicable
relationship story between
two phenomenal actors, but I
think certain facets of the struggle
(such as the begrudging equality
imposed on a member of the the
British Royal Family by an Antipodean
immigrant) might well not
completely come across. And even
if they do, I fear that an American
audience may subconsciously side
with the ‘oppressed colonial’ – as
Mel Gibson has encouraged time
and again in ham-fisted style with
Braveheart, The Patriot, etc – which
may undermine the classless beauty
of their friendship. It is not a victory
of one over another, but their
joint victory of what makes them
different.
Of course, I may be talking utter
rubbish (again, not saying that I
actually believe it in the first place)
and The King’s Speech may clean
up across the pond as convincingly
as it has over here. Perhaps the only
reason I’m voicing a hypothesis
towards the contrary is because
I’m hoping someone beats Helena
Bonham-Carter to the award so
we can avoid her giving another
long, drawn-out, dull-as-dishwater
speech.

20 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
Music
Review: Hereafter
Music News
Johanna Svensson
David Bowman
Music Editor
*
The story sounded interesting and
with Clint Eastwood in the director’s
seat and Matt Damon as one
of the main characters, my hopes
were, if not high, then at least above
rug-level. Hereafter has received
good reviews and having seen all
the good ones, I thought I might as
well. We follow the three protagonists:
Cécile de France as a French
journalist who falls victim to the
2005 tsunami but survives; Frankie
McLaren as a young boy who loses
his twin brother in an accident; and
finally Matt Damon, an ex-psychic
who struggles to reconcile with
his rare ability of communicating
with the dead. In the first three
quarters of the film, the audience is
shown how the three characters all
interact with death on some level
and consequently their fight to deal
with the inevitability of it. Hereafter
is in essence built up by two
hours of backstory and half an hour
introduction to the plot. And then
the film ends. As the lights came on
I looked at my companion with a
slight, no make that considerable,
frown. I felt cheated, but was in all
honesty quite happy to finally get
out of there. Where was the story?!
The only reason Hereafter gets one
star rather than a minus with a
huge exclamation mark following it
is because of the believable special
effects and excellent cinematography.
Other than that, there is not
much else to praise. With poor
acting from all – even Damon
(who seems to doing little else but
stuffing himself with food throughout
the film)! – and a huge lack of
connecting story. Each character’s
story could have provided enough
material for an individual (and
rather interesting) film, but when
they are all crammed together into
one they became superficial and
insignificant. As a consequence,
I quite frankly struggled to give a
damn about any of them. If you’re
making a film about depressed
people, at least make sure they’re
interesting enough.
Hereafter is not only a waste of
time, it is a waste of time you will
regret. Eastwood’s work is possibly
one of the most pointless films I,
at least, have had the displeasure
to watch. With huge potential for
banging and heart-stirring plot, it
never fires off, or even moves in any
direction at all.
Big news! By the time you read this,
Radiohead will have bestowed their
eighth album, The King of Limbs
(which they have described as the
world’s first ever newspaper album)
upon the world. What that exactly
means will become clear to those
who shell out thirty pounds to get
the very collectible physical copy of
the album, which ships in May.
Following LCD Soundsystem’s
announcement that they will be
disbanding, the band confirmed
that they will be playing a farewell
concert at Madison Square Garden.
However, most of the tickets for
the event were acquired by scalpers,
prompting front man James
Murphy to post a very angry rant
on the band’s website that is well
worth a read, before scheduling a
further string of gigs at Manhattan’s
Terminal 5.
In other saddening news, The
White Stripes have announced that
they too will be breaking up following
this message on their website:
“The reason is not due to artistic
differences or lack of wanting to
continue, nor any health issues
as both Meg and Jack are feeling
fine and in good health. It is for
a myriad of reasons, but mostly
to preserve what is beautiful and
special about the band and have
it stay that way.” Jack White will,
however, be appearing on Gnarls
Barkley-producer Danger Mouse’s
upcoming spaghetti western concept
album Rome, which will also
feature contributions from Norah
Jones and some of the musicians
that appeared on the original
soundtracks to Once Upon a Time
in the West and The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly.
The Strokes have released the first
single from their upcoming album
Angles, entitled ‘Under Cover of
Darkness’ and have also unveiled
the album art for the record. I will
be taking bets as to whether the album
will turn out to be even worse
than the album art.
More information has emerged
about Spike Jonze’s film Scenes
from the Suburbs, which is a
companion piece to the Arcade Fire
album The Suburbs. It will reportedly
be a 30 minute film about a
group of suburban teenagers whose
town is controlled and torn apart
by the military. Artsy. The excellent
video for the album’s title track
was described as being effectively a
trailer for the film.
This year’s Grammys illustrated
how indie music is fast becoming
accepted by the mainstream, with
wins by The Black Keys, Danger
Mouse, The White Stripes, The
Roots and, most notably, Arcade
Fire, winning the award for best
album for The Suburbs, somehow
beating competition from popgiants
Eminem, Lady Gaga and
Katy Perry.
Immediately afterwards, Kanye
West tweeted what we were all
thinking: ‘#Arcade fire!!!!!!!!!! There
is hope!!! I feel like we all won
when something like this happens!
FUCKING AWESOME!’

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
21
Music
Review: James Blake, James Blake
David Bowman
I’ll confess that I was more than a
little surprised when I heard that
James Blake had placed second on
the BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll, although
based on his superb output
last year (releasing no fewer than
3 excellent EP’s of material) it was
in no way undeserved. The reason
for my surprise is that Blake’s music
only rarely flirts with accessibility,
creating sparse electronic landscapes
that are the logical progression
from the kind of things that
Burial was doing a few years ago
before Dubstep was anywhere
near to being a household name.
But then, can James Blake even be
considered Dubstep?
The first half of the record largely
consists of electronic tracks that
shudder and twitch through a series
of paranoid movements that create
a remarkable sense of claustrophobia
despite the amount of negative
space dictated by the record’s inherent
minimalism. The middle of the
record contains the superb ‘Lindesfarne
parts I&II’ which begins
solely with Blake’s voice through a
vocoder and is very reminiscent of
Bon Iver’s autotuned track ‘Woods’
(the same track that is sampled at
the conclusion of Kanye West’s latest
album) and then in the second
part adds an acoustic guitar and a
touch of drums, transitioning the
album into a much more relaxed
and open space. Immediately
following this comes the heavily
circulated Feist cover ‘Limit to Your
Love’, which starts as a standard
piano ballad but then adds a speaker-damaging
bass line which comes
off as abrasive following the mellow
track that precedes it. This is one
of many subtle moments where the
sequencing of the album is shown
to be of the utmost importance, as
Blake is able to maintain absolute
control over the listener through
his attention to dynamics.
The latter section of the album
is made up of piano ballads with
minimal vocal or instrumental
distortions that, although they
initially come off as unremarkable,
unveil themselves as deep and
complex entities that are, in a sense,
self-contained from the rest of the
record. On the occasions when the
vocals are manipulated, it is to raise
the pitch of Blake’s voice, giving
it an almost feminine quality and
creating the illusion that Blake is
singing call and response in a duet
with himself.
James Blake proves to be a truly
remarkable and unique record
that is the culmination of the work
begun by Thom Yorke and The xx
in the way it can make minimalism
sound vast, but it is utterly original
in the sense that the core of the album
seems not to be based around
electronica or Dubstep, rather
than jazz as (pardon the cliché) the
sounds that Blake doesn’t make are
often more important than the ones
he does.
Thanks to the BBC, it’s almost inevitable
that Blake will be critically
lauded throughout the year and it
would seem inconceivable that he
wouldn’t receive a Mercury nomination
at the very least.
Artists You May Not Know #1
James Chance & The Contortions
Sel Bulut
I’m not sure when the words ‘experimental’
and ‘difficult’ became synonymous,
but when James Chance
& The Contortions released their
debut LP Buy in 1979, ‘avant-garde’
was still a phrase with meaning.
Buy is the first album that comes on
after listening to the James Blake LP
on iTunes and within the first ten
seconds of its opening track ‘Design
To Kill’, I’ve already forgotten how
the previous forty minutes actually
sounded. This isn’t to say anything
particularly bad about Blake’s record,
but on a personal level, it does
none of the things that give me the
most enjoyment from music. These
things happen to be everything The
Contortions encapsulate – rhythm,
genuine experimentalism and most
importantly fun – and at no point
does it make for ‘difficult’ listening.
The Contortions were key players
in New York’s no wave movement, a
ridiculously fertile period of musical
history that spawned some of
the most influential sounds of the
modern age. Whereas punk was
based on the notion of a musician
knowing three chords, many no
wave artists knew nothing, people
that literally couldn’t play an instrument
making stripped down, atonal
jams driven by hypnotic repetition
and texture rather than melody. A
lot of no wave betrayed influence
– it owed itself to no music before
it and wouldn’t fit into any style or
genre.
Critics and musos will argue for
hours over who was no wave and
who wasn’t and it’s easier not to get
involved in defining it too rigidly.
What might be easier is to consider
no wave as a movement that was
part of a larger upsurge in experimental
music in New York during
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Whilst on paper this sounds like a
bunch of pretentious kids making
noisy, experimental drones (and,
admittedly, some of it was) plenty
of stuff from this period was as fun
as it gets.
The Contortions were amongst
these. First formed in 1977, the
group differed from many no wave
acts insofar as that James Chance
demanded some level of skill from
its members. Originally known for
their aggressive and confrontational
live performances, it was after appearing
on Brian Eno’s seminal No
New York compilation in 1978 that
they gained the most recognition.
No New York was a compilation
of four no wave artists operating
in New York in the late 70s that,
whilst a decent document in itself,
has sadly meant that many other
no wave artists have been forgotten
about. Whilst this newfound
recognition could have been the
beginning of something excellent, it
was sadly not to be, with The Contortions’
original lineup splitting
by 1980. James Chance continued
with his own funk project, James
White & The Blacks, whilst founding
member Pat Place formed the
excellently groovy post-punk act
Bush Tetras and the rest of the band
became the now-forgotten Raybeats.
What The Contortions left behind
is unlike anything before or
since. This is best summarised by
their ‘hit’, the underground classic
‘Contort Yourself ’, a four-minute
stomper based on a simple repetitious
funk groove, discordant guitar
work and free-jazz saxophones
riding over the top whilst James
Chance’s nutso James Brown impersonation
commands us to ‘contort
yourself one time! Contort yourself
two times! Contort yourself three
times!’ before descending into
wolf-like howls. The song hangs
together on a thread, powered by
raw energetic rhythm.
Whilst Buy was a discordant jazz
trip, James Chance’s second album
was a bizarre disco-funk odyssey.
The album, called Off White and
released under the James White
& The Blacks moniker, actually
came out on the same day as Buy
and contained a disco reworking
of ‘Contort Yourself ’ by pioneering
pop producer August Darnell of
Kid Creole & The Coconuts fame,
a re-version complete with female
backing vocals and a defined fourto-the-floor
kickdrum beat.
James Chance still releases music
to this day, with his most recent
release, ‘Incorrigible’, coming out as
recently as last May on NY-based
label Rong Music (as an aside, Liv
Spencer and DJ Spun provided
an acid-tinged remix of the song
which, for what it’s worth, was
probably the most fantastic piece of
club music to have been released in
2010). He also performs live, sometimes
in a jazz trio, sometimes with
the reformed Contortions and, if it’s
in Europe, with his backing band
‘Les Contortions’. And despite the
fact that he must be about two hundred
years old by now, he’s still got
it – in an interview with Resident
Advisor, tastemaking selector JG
Wilkes described his performance
at Glasgow’s legendary Optimoclubnight:
“James Chance was searching
around for his reed and his false
teeth fell down his saxophone”.

22 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
E X T R A
Film
thefounder
needs you!
Various editorial roles available
News
Interested?
Books
email editor@thefounder.co.uk
No experience necessary!
Love
struck...
Studying for that exam in Bedford library, running for a lecture in
the Windsor building, grabbing a coffee in Café Jules or sipping
a cocktail in Medicine...love can strike at anytime at Royal
Holloway. Email lovestruck@thefounder.co.uk and tell me a little
bit about the gorgeous girl or super-hot guy who you just can’t
stop thinking about since your chance encounter about campus.
Let me play cupid and help you find your true love...or crush!
To the sexy Indian guy who
sits in Crosslands most days
with the Russian girl. I was
wondering if you’re still
single? I love your caring
eyes and the hair that protrudes
from the top of your
low cut shirt. Wanna go for
a drink sometime?
SEXY SECRET ADMIRER
To the guy I always see
wandering around the South
Quad at odd hours dressed
up like Bertie Wooster.
Either you’re a freak, a time
traveller or just incredibly
pretentious but whatever
the case, I like it.
Cocktails and a night on the
town?
FLAPPER GIRL AT HEART
You were the girl who fell
down the Union stairs last
Friday.
I was the guy laughing and
pointing.
I feel no remorse.
GUY WITHOUT ENOUGH
TO DO
To the girl on my corridor
who’s spent the last week
wailing to her friends about
being dumped so early in the
year.
Frankly, you seem a bit
clingy for my taste, but Valentine’s
Day’s been and gone
and I’m desperate.
GUY IN REID B – COME
ROUND ANY TIME
I’m the girl with the long red
hair, you’re the freckly guy
with glasses. We’ve been
exchanging looks in Bedford
library all year – last week
you even lent me a pen.
Are you ever going to ask
me out, or do I have to do
all the work myself?
GIRL WHO HONESTLY
DOESN’T BITE
Girl with the stunning green
eyes who gave me directions
to the Queen’s Annexe
the other day. I sort
of knew where the Queen’s
Annexe was – I just wanted
an excuse to talk to you.
Want to give me directions
to Medicine one night?
TALL ASIAN GUY IN THE
BLACK JUMPER
To the dark-haired guy who I
think tried to contact me in
the last edition.
Yes, I so bat for your team.
I’m just not entirely sure
how to find you.
BLONDE GUY WEARING
THE LIGHT BLUE HOODIE
(STILL)
lovestruck@thefounder.co.uk

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
College offers £2 million in scholarships
Royal Holloway has made a commitment
to offer more than 120 scholarships
and awards, worth a total of
£2million, to support postgraduate
students over the next three years. The
scholarships are being offered to outstanding
students for PhD and Masters
degrees as part of the College’s continuing
investment in postgraduate
research.
The Principal, Professor Paul Layzell,
said: “In the six months since I joined
Royal Holloway I have been extremely
impressed by the range and depth of
research taking place across all three
faculties. The Times Higher Education
World Rankings has placed Royal Holloway
88th in the world for the quality
of our research and I believe it is vital
that we continue to invest in our exceptional
young scholars who will be
the future leaders of their field.”
He added: “Despite the news of
cuts in higher education, we have
continuing support from the Research
Councils, along with funding from our
partnerships with industry, business
and charities and government organisations.
We are able to offer a vibrant
and supportive research environment
and would welcome applications from
students who believe they can help
flickr/ ~FreeBirD®~
keep Royal Holloway at the leading
edge of research.”
The College awards will support
research taking place in centres of
established research excellence across
the faculties of Arts, Science and History
and Social Sciences.
For more information visit: http://
www.rhul.ac.uk/studyhere/fundingforstudents.asp
23
Safety comes first
As you may have seen from the
recent crime mapping statistics that
were published Egham and Englefield
Green remain extremely safe areas in
comparison to the rest of the UK and
Surrey as a whole one of the safest
counties. Nonetheless the College
and Students’ Union continue to view
student safety and security as a high
priority subject and are keen to regularly
emphasise advice on keeping as
safe as you can at all times.
Modern humans left Africa much earlier
than thought, new artefacts reveal
A team of scientists, including Dr
Simon Armitage from the Department
of Geography at Royal Holloway, have
rejected the existing view that modern
humans left Africa around 70,000
years ago. Their discovery of ancient
artefacts reveal that humans left
Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than
previously suggested and were, in fact,
present in eastern Arabia as early as
125,000 years ago.
These ‘anatomically modern’ humans
– you and me – had evolved in
Africa about 200,000 years ago and
It is important for no one to become
complacent about crime and to ensure
that students keep both themselves
and their possessions safe and secure.
Everyone needs to make an effort to
diminish any risk to themselves and
by following these simple suggestions
you can avoid becoming a victim of
crime: Try to avoid walking home
alone during the hours of darkness
and make use of the College bus
service, the SU non-res bus or a local
subsequently populated the rest of the
world. “These findings will stimulate a
re-evaluation of the means by which
modern humans became a global species,”
says Dr Armitage.
The new study, published in the
journal Science, reports findings from
an eight year archaeological excavation
at Jebel Faya in the United Arab
Emirates.
The researchers analysed the Palaeolithic
stone tools found at the site
and discovered that they were technologically
similar to tools produced by
reputable taxi firm. If you do have to
walk home at night, try walking with
a small group, keeping to the main
well lit roads where possible and don’t
be tempted into taking short cuts
through dark alleyways or the cemetery.
Always remain vigilant and don’t
be caught out by listening to your iPod
– headphones can make you vulnerable
and miss behaviour which may be
untoward or suspicious.
We suggest all students carry a
personal safety alarm with them, as
an added safety measure, to use in an
emergency situation. These can be
collected from the Support & Advisory
Services Helpdesk in Founder’s West
early modern humans in east Africa,
but very different from those produced
to the north, in the Levant and
the mountains of Iran. This suggested
that early modern humans migrated
into Arabia directly from Africa and not
via the Nile Valley and the Near East as
is usually suggested.
Dr Armitage calculated the age
of the stone tools using a technique
called luminescence dating. His ages
revealed that modern humans were
at Jebel Faya by around 125,000 years
ago, immediately after the period in
or from FW 170. Store telephone
numbers of College Security (01784
443063) and Surrey Police (0845 125
2222) into your phone in case you
need them or pick up an emergency
numbers wallet card from Support &
Advisory Services or College Security.
If you would like to discuss personal
safety issues please email Support-
AndAdvisory@rhul.ac.uk or SecurityRHUL@rhul.ac.uk
or speak to the
Police Safer Neighbourhood team at
one of their campus surgeries in the
SU.
More advice on personal safety can
be found online at www.rhul.ac.uk/forstudents/support/personalsafety.aspx
which the Bab al-Mandab seaway and
Nejd Plateau were passable. He said:
“Archaeology without ages is like a
jigsaw with the interlocking edges
removed – you have lots of individual
pieces of information but you can’t
fit them together to produce the big
picture,” he says. “At Jebel Faya, the
ages reveal a fascinating picture in
which modern humans migrated out
of Africa much earlier than previously
thought, helped by global fluctuations
in sea-level and climate change in the
Arabian peninsula.”

24 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Hypochondria:
a health condition
in its own right.
Kate Brook
Features Editor
No one gets through life without
a health scare. Everyone knows
what it is to rush to the doctor in
a panic, or to scour self-diagnosis
websites with bated breath and
sweaty palms. After a trip to the
doctor, however, and perhaps a test
or two, the majority of us go back
to everyday life and forget all about
it. But some do not. Some cannot.
Some remain so convinced that
their symptoms are the sign of a
terminal disease that no amount of
reassurance can convince them otherwise;
others are so scared of what
their doctor might say that they are
unable to make an appointment in
the first place. Hypochondria, now
known as health anxiety or illness
phobia, is frequently dismissed as
needless fretting, a trivial concern
of the neurotic and the self-absorbed.
But in reality it is a genuine,
disabling psychological condition,
and it can have a devastating effect
on a sufferer’s ability to lead a
happy and fulfilling life.
When I was sixteen, I spent the
best part of a year convinced I was
dying of multiple sclerosis. It began
when I watched ‘Hilary and Jackie’,
the biopic of the legendary cellist
Jacqueline du Pré, whose career was
cut short by MS when she was in
her twenties and who died of the
disease at the age of 42, fourteen
years after it was diagnosed. By the
end of the film, du Pré, played by
Emily Watson, is confined to her
bed, unable to control a single muscle
in her body and dependent on
carers to feed, wash and dress her.
It was perhaps not a wise film
choice for someone with a chronic
fear of disease. But I didn’t think
of that. I just thought it was a good
film, so I watched it again, and
again, and as I watched it, something
happened in my brain. In
the weeks that followed, I began to
wonder if I wasn’t exhibiting some
of the same symptoms du Pré had
experienced in the early stages
of her illness. The tired feeling I
sometimes had in my legs, especially
when I climbed stairs – did it
mean something was wrong with
me? My hands trembled sometimes
too – should I be worried? The
tingling sensation I occasionally felt
in my back made me uneasy, as did
the muscle palpitations that seemed
to be occurring with increasing
frequency. My concern rapidly
turned into fear. Before long I was
convinced that something terrible
was happening to my body.
Panicking, I googled ‘multiple
sclerosis’. Reading the lists of
symptoms brought me out in a
cold sweat; those I had not already
noticed I began looking for obsessively.
After reading that uncontrollable
head or tongue movements
were always cause for serious
concern, I found myself in front of
the mirror, examining my tongue
for signs of abnormal movement. I
scrutinised my hands and panicked
over the slightest tremor. I held
my arms and legs in strenuous,
unnatural positions and told myself
that any resulting pain or muscle
fatigue was evidence of something
sinister. I even watched my shadow
for twitches and shakes. It comes as
no surprise to me now to learn that
health anxiety is often classified
within the Obsessive Compulsive
spectrum of anxiety disorders.
According to Terri Torevell of the
charity Anxiety UK, some sufferers
of health anxiety will go to their
doctor ‘countless times’. Negative
test results and verbal reassurance
from medical professionals do
nothing to quell their fears. Others,
like me, are the opposite – they
avoid doctors because they are too
afraid to face up to the diagnosis
they believe to be inevitable.
I didn’t just avoid telling my
doctor – I avoided telling anyone
at all. For months, I kept my fears
to myself. I longed for the reassurance
doctors had offered me in
the past, but I didn’t for a moment
believe I would get it. There was so
obviously something wrong with
me, I thought, that anyone I told
would have no option but share
my concern. Whenever I considered
going to my GP I imagined
her recommending, with a grim
expression, that I go to hospital for
further tests, and I simply couldn’t
bring myself to make the appointment.
However miserable they were
making me, I preferred to live with
my fears than risk having them
validated.
Had it occurred to me at any
point that I might be suffering from
an anxiety disorder rather than an
actual physical condition, I would
undoubtedly have been able to
move on much quicker than I did.
Seeking help might have opened
my eyes to the fact that being
‘healthy’ doesn’t necessarily mean
being entirely pain or sensationfree,
and crucially, to the possibility
that my constant state of fear might
not just have been the result, but
the cause of the symptoms I was
experiencing.
‘Anxiety produces very real physical
symptoms,’ says Torevell. ‘With
people suffering from health anxiety,
they misinterpret these normal
physical reactions to anxiety, and
believe them to be signs of their
feared illness.
‘One of the things we often say
to people on the helpline, when
they’re calling in the throes of a
panic attack, is that nobody has
ever died from a panic attack,’ she
continues. ‘The worst thing that
can happen to them is already
happening. And panic attacks and
prolonged anxiety cannot go on
forever. It has its ebbs and flows, it
has peaks and troughs and it will
ease eventually.’
Calling a helpline such as this
might have saved me months of
misery. Instead, I let my fear take
over my life. It cast a shadow over
everything I did. I couldn’t bear
to think about the future – about
going to university, or starting a
career, or travelling the world –
because I didn’t believe I would
live that long. I was plagued by a
constant, nagging worry, which regularly
escalated into panic. Sometimes
I was so scared I couldn’t
think straight. There was no respite,
no situation in which I could feel at
ease. I simply could not escape it.
Eventually, when I could stand
it no longer, I told my mother
everything. Just talking to someone
made me felt better, although it by
no means solved everything. But as
the days and weeks went by, I found
myself feeling more relaxed. I began
considering the possibility that my
symptoms were nothing more than
my body telling me to do some
exercise. The less I worried, the less
I noticed them. Gradually, they
disappeared altogether, taking my
anxiety with them.
But my experience with health
anxiety has left its mark. Even now,
five years later, I avoid reading,
watching or listening to anything
that so much as mentions multiple
sclerosis, and while I don’t fear it
like I did, I do fear the appearance
of some new and unmistakable
symptom. I fear the blind panic
that will inevitably ensue. I fear the
sinking feeling, the cold sweat, the
rising heart rate. Most of all, I fear
the possibility that next time, my
worries will be justified.
Health anxiety is not trivial, and
nor is it comic. It can ruin people’s
lives. It ruined a good few months
of mine, and I am fully aware that
it might do so again. But next time,
at least, I will know that I am not
alone, and that help is out there,
and that I do not have to suffer in
silence.
Anxiety UK is the nation’s
leading anxiety disorders charity.
Advice and support for sufferers of
conditions including agoraphobia,
post traumatic stress disorder and
social phobia can be found at www.
anxietyuk.org.uk, or by calling the
helpline on 08444 775 774. Lines
are open Monday to Friday between
9.30 and 5.30. All members
of staff have personal experience
with anxiety.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Features
25
Menswear:
coming out of the
shadows
When there is so
much to shout and
be excited about in
men’s fashion, I often
wonder why there
are not more people
shouting and getting
excited. To an extent,
I am probably pandering
to my deepest
insecurity that menswear
is not as valued
as it should be. However,
the simple fact
is that menswear is
constantly overshadowed
by its opposite
– womenswear.
Yes, it’s true, the
so-called more
artistically beautiful
womenswear far
outshines menswear,
which is viewed as
a more boring and
subdued spectacle.
The simplest way to
analyse the difference
between the two
is to glance at the
press coverage and
celebrity turnouts
during their fashion
weeks; menswear
will have very little of both, while
womenswear will have an abundance
of both. The feeling I get is
that generally, Menswear Fashion
Week is perceived to be too dull
overall to spark any real interest,
whereas the endless glamour and
decadence of Womenswear Fashion
Week is deemed a nutritious feeding
ground of superior quality for
fashion-hungry predators. I, of
course, disagree with this notion.
Womenswear, without question, is
exuberant, exhilarating and charismatic,
but menswear has a sharper
aesthetic and exudes raw power.
The finer details, such as the cut of
a suit, are everything. Menswear
does not need to perform – it just
needs to be.
Josh Minopoli
Milan’s annual Autumn/Winter
2011-12 Menswear Fashion Week
has just concluded, and if ever
proof was needed that menswear
can be as intriguing and compelling
as womenswear, then it can
be found here. Versace put on a
jaw-dropping feast for the eyes
that had me on the edge of my seat
when I looked through the photos.
The clothes emitted smart, Italian
prowess with quilted leather jackets
and trousers, embellished sweaters
and slicked hair. Shots of electric
blue were also fired through the
black of the collection in the form
of gloves and coats. Indeed, if you
ever thought menswear was scared
to add colour to its winter collections,
then take a look at this year’s
Milan shows. Dolce & Gabbana,
Sarah Burton for
Alexander Mc-
Queen, Moschino
and Bottega Veneta
all had blasts of
bold red in their
collections – a
definite must-have
colour for Autumn
2011-12. Burberry
Porsum enjoyed
showing off peacoats
in an array
of colours which
included yellow,
red, blue and tangerine
orange. In a
sophisticated collection
enthused by
the vanity of man,
Frida Giannini for
Gucci described
the average male
Gucci-wearer as
‘elegant, sophisticated
– and proud.’
For me, these three
words also sum up
men’s fashion more
generally.
I can only hope
that menswear
continues to make
a larger splash in
the fashion world. There is hope,
even if us male fashionistas aren’t
as well provided for as women,
with their monthly publications
of Vogue. It has recently been
announced that Jimmy Choo is
launching its first collection of
men’s shoes. Music to my ears.
Even more encouragingly, Net-a-
Porter are soon to be launching
a male version of their fashion
retail website, candidly entitled
Mr Porter. Subtle advances like
this in the world of men’s fashion
demonstrate the growing market
for menswear and its more serious
presence in the industry. One
small step for man, one giant leap
for menswear.
Is life without
Is life really possible without Facebook?
A recent survey of London
students found that nearly 40%
were being distracted by Facebook
to the point where their studies
were affected. Apparently, we’re
not the only ones.
A couple of universities in the
US have experimented with social
media bans, with some alarming
results. In a post-Facebook
world, it seems we would suddenly
set about swapping photos with
nearby strangers. At Harrisburg
University, within 24 hours of a
Facebook ban, a photo-swapping
society had been set up, where
random students could hand over
their photos to relative strangers,
stare, comment, and then hand
them back. They also set up a diversity
society, suggesting that life
without Facebook meant having to
make do with boring neighbours.
But Harrisburg University’s
students also found themselves
less stressed. They started reading
more and spent more time
together. Without Facebook, we’d
get more work done. A quarter
of Harrisburg students found it
easier to concentrate after the ban,
and a fifth claimed to do more
homework, according to Christian
Science Monitor.
?
Facebook really
possible?
Nyasha Madavo
Another university that experimented
with a Facebook ban was
the University of Maryland in the
US. Students were banned from using
social media, phones and iPods,
with devastating consequences.
Some students reported withdrawal
symptoms similar to those of drug
addicts. “I noticed physically, that
I began to fidget”, said one student.
Another stated “When sitting in
the library reading my textbook, I
actually did hear some vibrations in
my head”.
But there were some upsides.
Apparently, not having Facebook
or iPods forces us to engage with
others. A student reported: “It was
actually somewhat peaceful. Walking
to class all day was different....
[I looked] around more at other
people and actually [paid] attention
to what was going on around me.”
So if you want to avoid Facebook,
how can it be done?
A Kent-based company has created
an application for students to
limit time spent on Facebook, aptly
called iFreeFace. You can set your
own time limits or block Facebook
to study. Alternatively, you could go
completely cold turkey and delete
your Facebook account. But as Harrisburg’s
experiment proves, things
can get a little crazy.
The Founder is looking for new
writers
Simply write an article of no more than 700
words
and send it to features@thefounder.co.uk
before Monday 28th February

26 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Features
Handling
Homesickness
Felicty King
When I was growing up, the idea of
going to university always seemed
so far away. It was this huge grown
up thing that tall clever people did,
and it was nothing with which to
concern my naïve, Disneyed little
mind. It came as quite a shock to
me, therefore, when all of a sudden
I found myself here at Royal
Holloway. All of a sudden, I found
myself saying, when people asked
what I was doing with my life, that I
was at university, and that’s when it
really hit me. I’m at university. I am
officially THAT old.
Now, I always assumed that by
the time I got to university, I would
have grown out of my weird fears
and habits. I would have become a
sophisticated and civilised woman
who would handle university easily,
and who would not lock herself
out six times in two weeks, forget
to return library books, or miss
home. The problem is, I am not this
sophisticated and civilised woman.
I’m the same person I’ve always
been – we all are. We all are the
same nervous six-year olds who
don’t like getting on the see-saw
with our elder brothers because
they always bounce us off. We’re
all still scared. It’s just that we’re
getting to the tragic stage where it
becomes unacceptable to admit it.
Well, I don’t care, I’ll admit it. I’m
terrified, and I have no idea what
I’m doing with my life, and I miss
home.
The bane and the beauty of life
is that it doesn’t bother waiting
for you. You can have a bad day,
or a sleepy day, or a sick day, but
you can’t ring up a helpline and
claim the next 24 hours back again
to enjoy properly. They’re gone.
It’s over. It’s like going for a really
satisfying walk – you’re daydreaming
away in the sunshine when
suddenly you check your watch and
realise it’s half four in the afternoon
and the whole day’s gone. Life’s
mean like that – there I was playing
with dolls and watching The Wild
Thornberrys when all of a sudden
I found myself buying tea towels
and unique-looking mugs so ‘the
other people in my flat at university
wouldn’t mistake them for their
own mugs’. Excellent advice, there,
Mum, but when the hell did I start
going to university? I swear I’m still
13 at heart.
Like any 13-year old, I still miss
home. A lot of us do, and even
more of us do but just don’t admit
it. It is perfectly natural to miss
home, however, and nothing to be
ashamed of. On the contrary, it’s
a good sign – it means you have
a home that is lovely and happy
enough for you to miss, and like
everything, homesickness will pass.
We are incredibly lucky – we have
phones, Skype, email, Facebook and
a billion and one other ways to keep
in contact with the people we love.
If you think you’ve got it bad, take
a trip back to medieval times when
the only forms of communication
were carrier pigeons and grunting.
‘
The problem is, I am
not this sophisticated
and civilised woman.
I’m the same person
I’ve always been ’–
we all are.
Even in the last hundred years,
letters were the only way of keeping
in touch, and yet people survived.
Take every opportunity you can
to talk to the people you love, but
don’t worry if you haven’t got time
to do it as much as you feel you
should. The amount you do it is not
a reflection on how much you love
the people you’ve left behind, only
on how well you are able to cope
on your own. Don’t feel bad if you
can only call your parents once a
week, but similarly don’t feel bad
if you call them every day. They’re
your parents – if you can’t obsessively
harass them without getting
arrested, then who can you?
Being at university is brilliant,
but I think a lot of us can feel like
it’s crept up on us unseen, and that
we’ve found ourselves here without
any previous experience of living on
our own. Keeping in touch with the
people at home is an important part
of learning to grow up. We all have
those nights when we want nothing
more than to be in our own beds,
or the days when we just want to sit
around in our living room and piss
off everybody else in the family by
watching ‘Friends’ episodes backto-back
(because nobody else in my
family likes ‘Friends’ – a random
but truly shocking bit of domestic
information about my famille for
you there). The important thing to
remember is that although we have
found ourselves alone at university
for the first time, we are all
alone, so if we’re all alone together,
we’re not really alone at all. And
by now, if you’re all as lucky as
me, you’ll have found some truly
wonderful and crazy individuals
who become another kind of family
for you – and this one, I am pleased
to say, appreciates ‘Friends’ as much
as I do.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Features
27
In defence of Tony Hayward
Ashley Coates
Under my parents’ front garden in
Bristol there is a lead pipe that once
provided the main water supply to
the house. In 2003, the pipe was
capped off and a new water supply
via a plastic pipe was installed in
its place. The lead pipe lay a foot
underground and was entirely
forgotten about until June last year,
when I went through it with a rotary
hammer. Mains pressure water
began to flow into the front garden.
I decided to use a procedure known
as Top Kill, where the lead pipe
is repeatedly struck with a mallet
until it closes off the leak. With this
having failed and more and more
water pouring out of the ground,
my family began to ask serious
questions about my handling of
the spill that was endangering their
precious front garden.
Day 2 and the leak continues.
With Top-Kill having failed, I initiate
Tap-Kill. Somewhere underground
in a 40 by 40 foot area is a
tap, or a number of taps, that can
be turned off and end the leak. It
takes hours of digging to follow the
pipe until finally I find a tap. There
is great optimism in the household,
but it turns out to be a subsidiary
tap that cannot turn off the main
leak. Things are getting ugly for me,
politically. Day 3. My parents call in
their own experts to assess the situation.
The plumber questions my
original estimates for the amount
of water being leaked into the
front garden, suggesting the spill
was much worse than had been
originally assumed. He goes on to
question the whole way in which
I had gone about dealing with the
spill, starting with Top Kill: ‘You
were doing what with a mallet?’
By Day 4 of the spill my mother
was under intense pressure to be
seen as being in control of the situation.
In a live address to the rest of
the family she said: ‘we will make
Ashley pay for the damage he has
caused to our front garden.’ Earlier
that day I had been overheard
telling a friend that ‘I want my
life back’ and that I ‘would like to
spend some time doing something
other than digging up the front garden
trying to find taps’. This went
down very badly in Bristol. Day 7.
A week since the rotary hammer
had struck the old mains pipe. I
had dug a trench, one foot deep and
over 20 feet long before I found the
stop-cock for the pipe and the leak
finally came to an end.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
1) I’ve lost it, or 2) I am, like so
many other upstart young journalists,
trying to be clever by talking
about politics with reference to
my own life. In fact, both of these
things are true but my experience
over the summer genuinely gave me
some sympathy for former BP CEO,
Tony Hayward.
Like me, Tony Hayward was the
public face of an environmental
disaster, albeit a far larger one
than the one in my front garden.
In May 2010, a few weeks into the
spill, he told a US reporter ‘I want
my life back’ – one of the biggest
PR mistakes of modern times. The
press leapt on it as an insensitive
remark coming from the CEO of
the company that was officially
responsible for the disaster. Two
months later, Tony Hayward was
photographed on a yacht on the Isle
of Wight, prompting anger from
those that felt he should be ‘sorting
out this mess’. The truth was that
Hayward was on the Isle of Wight
supporting his son in a boat race.
It was the first time he had seen his
son in three months. As he said to
BBC’s Money Programme recently:
‘If I had a degree in public relations,
rather than geology, things might
have gone differently for me.’
Another parallel with my summer
and Tony Hayward’s summer
was that every time I did something
that I thought would stop the spill,
it failed. When things break, hitting
the offending object is just one of
those things you do, so bashing
the pipe with a mallet was entirely
sensible given the circumstances.
After this failed, I took the next
logical step and tried to push stuff
into the pipe that would block it
up, stuff like gravel and mud. This
was directly inspired by BP. Top
Kill, where BP pumped mud and
golf balls into the blowout preventer,
seemed silly but it might have
worked were it not for the force of
the oil acting against it. Top Hat,
another scheme I imitated on a
micro-scale, involved placing a
huge ‘hat’ on top of the leaking well
and funnelling the oil up onto a
barge on the surface. For my Top
Hat I used a hose forced onto the
hole in the pipe, but alas, nothing
could be found that would hold it
in place. BP’s ‘hat’ became blocked
by oil deposits before it could be
placed above the leaking blowout
preventer.
The devastation that occurred
in the Gulf Coast last year affected
both marine life and the lives of
communities that depend on the
region for fishing and tourism. It is
right that those responsible are held
to account and that procedures are
changed, but the media storm that
encircled Tony Hayward meant that
all the anger that should have been
directed at a dangerous industry
was in fact directed at someone
who was entirely unequipped to
deal with what was happening
around him. I find it extremely
reassuring that BP’s former CEO is
a geology graduate with poor PR
skills – that is exactly the kind of
person I want to be in charge of a
major oil and gas firm. The worst
thing that could become of the
Deepwater Horizon disaster is if the
people at the top of these companies
are expected to be brilliant
communicators as well as, or at the
expense of, being professionals in a
relevant field.

28 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sport . . . .
Svensson Says:
Johanna Svensson
Sports Editor
…injuries suck! Not a very daring
statement in all honesty, I’ll admit to
that. But the weight of truth remains
as heavy just the same.
Michael Jordan once said: ‘My
body could stand the crutches but
my mind couldn’t stand the sideline’.
The trouble with injuries is, there’s
not much of a choice! You can’t
choose not to squeeze the sideline
and in all honesty, if you plan on
clasping on to any level of sanity
throughout, you better hug it like
it was your best friend. In fact it
NEEDS to be your best friend! After
all it is the place where you will
spend most of your time (save for
the gym perhaps) and it is also the
closest you will get to your sport, as
much as you hate to acknowledge it.
In other words, it is your link; a sort
of bridge between where you are
and where you want to be.
I and the sidelines go way back.
It probably knows me better than
anyone else, and that’s saying something.
We first hooked up years ago
and our history has since then been
characterised by agonising twists
and turns and frequent disappointment.
As in all relationships there
have been hard times and challenges
along the way. But I oughtn’t
to be unfair; we have had our moments.
Once or twice you may even
find yourself savouring the thrill of
progress!
But then you reach that point
in your journey: the point we all
tf
face sooner or later (and almost
certainly both). The question ‘is it
all worth the struggle?’ presents
itself in blinking red neon lights and
slaps you across the face. Perhaps
the red should be taken as a sign of
warning, but the mind seldom goes
there. Along with this question tags
a slippery slope. - Get too close to
the edge and you risk a hasty voyage
downhill.
I want to break up with my sideline.
We all do. But the little ****er
lingers around, leaving the chains
on. And so we reconcile with the
fact: we sit down next to our friend
and gaze dreamily across the bridge
to the other side where, obviously,
the grass looks – and is – much
greener.
Royal Holloway’s
Emily Moss runs
for England
Royal Holloway’s runner and STARS student Emily Moss was selected
to compete for England in Bratislava after excellent results
this season. We asked her to give us an account on her experience.
Emily Moss
“The excitement was building in the
lead up to the day, especially when
all of my England kit arrived by
courier to my house. I spent much
of the afternoon trying on all the
various arrangements and having
a mini photo shoot in the garden,
trying to decide what combination
I looked best in. Seeing ‘England
Athletics Team’ on the various
garments made me feel especially
proud and I knew I would feel very
honoured to pull on my England kit
when it was time to race.
After winning the Northern
Championships in an indoor
personal best time of 2:10.22 for
800 metres, which at the time
ranked me 2nd in the UK, I was
thrilled to be selected to race for
England in an International Meeting
in Bratislava on January 30th.
“We met at the airport the day
before the meeting and I was
introduced to the team managers
and the other athletes on the
team; of whom several others were
debutants. However, there were also
several “legends”, as I call them,
on the team, in the sense that they
have competed for Great Britain
at major Championships, so I was
keen to speak to them and embark
on their wealth of experience from
such events.
“The hotel in Bratislava
was better than I had been led to
believe, but still resembled something
from the former Communist
Eastern Bloc Countries in the
1980s. It was literally like being in a
time warp!! However, as an aspiring
top-level athlete, I have to get used
to this and be able to cope with
anything that is thrown at me, so it
was all good experience.
“I did not feel I ran that
well in my race, recording 2:11.44
for 6th place. The leaders took
the race out at a ridiculously fast
pace – passing through 400 metres
within world indoor record pace
– and therefore it became a case
of trying to hold on for as long as
possible. I hung off the pace, but
still found myself getting dragged
into going far too fast in the initial
stages and I consequently struggled.
However, determined to do my
best for my country, I didn’t give up
and worked as hard as I could all
the way to the end, and ended up
overtaking two athletes with faster
pre-race times in the final 50m. Although
I felt I had struggled and I
was disappointed with my time, the
team managers were pleased with
me as I finished two places higher
than my pre-race ranking. Everyone
had misjudged the pace, so
no athlete was particularly pleased
with their time. Why everyone
went so fast I will never know. I had
learned two things from the race.
Firstly, that I need to work on my
pacing and secondly that I am not
yet in world record shape!
“It was a great experience
to be in such a fast race and I hope
that it will stand me in good stead
for my domestic races later this
summer. It was a big step up in my
first winter focusing on 800 metres
and I certainly did not feel overwhelmed
by the occasion, although
I had hoped to do better.
“I have a few more races
planned this indoor season, where
I really want to keep improving my
time and win a medal in the BUCS
Indoor Championships. It is going
to be hard, but that is what I am
concentrating on if I am feeling
good on the day. Further ahead, I
plan to take a short rest after my
final indoor race to try and refresh
myself and get myself back feeling
good ready to hit the training
hard in the lead up to the outdoor
season.
“Racing for my country has been a
target of mine since I first started
the sport as a 13-year-old, so it really
was something very special to
me. I really want to use this experience
to make me a better athlete
and I hope that I can stay healthy,
keep improving and go on to bigger
and better things over the coming
years.”

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
29
The Founder Sport
sports@thefounder.co.uk
thefounder.co.uk/sports
Editor: Johanna Svensson
MACS
at
LUBE
L.U.B.E - i.e. the London Universities Bouldering Event – is a new
student-led climbing event for universities from all over the country
and our very own Royal Holloway Mountaineering and Climbing Society
is currently competing in it.
Alice Norman
With over a hundred and fifty
climbers and experienced teams
from many different universities,
this event is highly competitive and
provides an excellent opportunity
for us to show everybody what a
great team of climbers we have here
at Royal Holloway.
The competition as a whole consists
of 4 rounds, held at different
locations across London: from the
Craggy centre in Sutton to the Arch
Climbing Centre in central London.
Each university enters two teams
of three climbers for each round
as well as individual climbers who
want to enter into the solo competition.
You gain points for the
number of successful climbs you
complete but the points decrease
depending on the number of times
you try to complete a route so it is
just as much about the tactics as the
stamina.
So far three rounds have been
completed and we are pleased to
say that our teams are doing really
well. Our A-team currently holds
the highly respectable grand total
of 1,293 points and our B-team,
another tremendous total of 1,184.
This puts us in the top 15 universities
in the whole competition.
Special congratulations should be
awarded to Jack Appleby and Chris
Stroud who, competing individually,
have achieved outstanding scores
of 506 and 478 across the first three
rounds and are, quite deservedly,
currently ranked 18th and 23rd in
the whole competition – and that is
out of over 100 climbers! Congratulations
should also go to Heather
Rumble who is leading our female
climbers with the number 22 spot.
We would really like to thank
everyone for getting involved and
competing, as it is the first time that
our university has been involved in
such an exciting climbing and bouldering
event and we want to wish
our team members ‘good luck’ for
the final round, which will be held
at the Arch on Saturday 5th March.
Sport
. . . .
A cracking Wednesday
for RHUL Squash
Ben Hine
RHUL Squash marched onwards
in all of their campaigns
this Wednesday with key wins
putting the club in continued
high spirits. At home, the Men’s
1st team were looking to continue
their unbeaten run of five games.
They hosted Brunel, a team with
which they have a stormy past.
Brunel inflicted the team’s only
loss of this season so far in the
first game of the year, where they
surprised the boys with a strong
4-1 win. The firsts were therefore
out for blood and looking to take
advantage of being on home soil.
Simon Green (5) put in a good
effort but lost 3-1 against a tough
opponent, whilst Tim Scarfe
(4) used all his experience from
playing in leagues in Egham and
Windsor to secure a 3-1 victory,
placing the teams at 1-1. Arran
Waterman (3) and Jamie Pearce
(2) “a.k.a Mr Reliable” put in solid
and consistent performances to
push the overall score to 3-1 with
3-0 wins each. This made Adam
Robin’s (1) game a formality on
paper, but in order for RHUL to
jump to top of the league, a 4-1
win was needed. Unfortunately,
Adam could not capitalise on
the no-pressure situation and
lost 3-0, but a 3-2 win against
Brunel 1st team is still a major
Sports . . . .
achievement and the lads should be
commended. Jamie Pearce had this
to say: ‘a hard fought win with signs
that this team can push on for a cup
win, even if the top of the table is
out of reach.’
The ULU 2nd team travelled
into London to face LSE 3rd team
to defend their current 100% win
rate and their position at top of the
league. After facing the 4th team
and coming out with a 5-0 victory,
the players felt confident that the
momentum was with them for this
particular match up. Elliot Rawstron
(5), Callum Chaplin (4), and
Johnny Chapman (3) all cleaned up
with superb 5-0 victories, showing
that they are really paying attention
in training and converting that to
some really slick moves on court.
Jason Dunn (2) struggled in the
3rd game, whilst 2-0 up, due to a
dodgy call by the referee, but came
back strong in the 4th to provide a
3-1 win and a 4-0 lead. Ben Hine
(1) put in the only disappointing
performance, allowing a different
technique to upset his game, and
not being able to capitalise on a key
opportunity in the 3rd game, leading
to a quick 3-0 loss.
The Women’s 1st team travelled
away to SOAS for their last league
game of the season, aiming, more
than anything, to ‘suss out’ their
opponents ahead of an almost
certain cup match up. Rachel Smith
(4), Sofiya Sosyedka (3) and Laura
Goswell (2) all lost, 3-0, 3-2 and 3-1
respectively, whilst Julie Peachey
(1) maintained her three and a half
year unbeaten record with a 3-0
win, putting the match score at 3-1
in favour of SOAS. Despite the loss,
the team are only looking ahead,
and are looking to use what they
have learned about their rivals to
hopefully overcome them in the
cup and reach a third final in 3
years.
As well as great competition
results, RHUL Squash is also still
recovering from the shock of their
huge RAG success in RAG week
last week. On Friday 29th January,
several members of the squash
club undertook ‘The RHUL Bears
Squash Ninja challenge” and spent
the day on campus collecting
money in buckets in aid of Street-
Invest, the designated RAG charity
this year, all whilst dressed in full
ninja costumes. In total, the club
raised £490.66 on the day, and, in
addition to RAG auctioning off Michael
Krayenhoff, Hagen Brümmer
and Mauricio Izquierdo for £45,
the grand total raised was £535.66;
making RHUL Squash the number
one RAG contributor this year! A
big thank you to everyone who contributed
and huge congratulations
to Rory Voake and Rachel Smith
who individually raised £96.86 and
£101.55 respectively. RHUL Squash
is on a roll with no signs of stopping
any time soon!
The Next Deadline for the sports section is:
Monday 28th February
Correction: The photos from alumni sports and day should have been attributed
to Tony Hart and RHUL Sports Office. More photos are availabile at
www.tony-hart.com

30 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sport . . . .
RHUL Polo
Club Report
tf
More S.T.A.R.S
ast summer our top polo team
competed in the first ever International
University Polo tournament
in Thailand, along with only one
other UK University. This was such
a huge event we were very proud
to have taken part in, and hope to
again this year.
We are planning an exhibition
match in the Summer Term at Holloway.
This will be a great day
for Royal Holloway students and
help us raise money for the club.
We also run great social events
for our club taking them to see
polo matches such as the huge
arena event at the o2 this month
– the first ever International
Arena Championship – the
Cartier and Gold Cup. We also
hope to take our teams out to
Argentina next season for its
renowned polo scene
Helene Raynsford
Rowing
-Gold Medalist at Beijing 2008.
First British Woman to win a Gold
Medal for rowing at Olympic Level
-2006 World Champion
-Sports Women of the year 2006 &
BBC South 2008
-GB Wheelchair Basketball Team
04-06
Christopher Hall
Athletics
-U20 Welsh Athletics Squad
member
-Competed in the BUCS Indoor
and Outdoor Athletics Championships
-Division 2 British Athletic League
Team Member
Sebastian Schyberg
Golf
-Danish National Junior Squad
Member
-Twice winner of Junior Club
Championship in Denmark
-Wentworth Golf Bursary
Helen West
Korfball
-Bronze Medalist at the U16 Youth
Talent World Cup 2006
-U16 National Team Champions
-Invited to join England Senior
Korfball Squad.
Simon Clement
Golf
-Winner of ISGA Shire Trophy
-Surrey County Golf Player
-Wentworth Golf Bursary
Jennifer McGeever
Fencing
-Ranked 1st in GB for her category
-Ranked 23rd in the World
-U20 National Champion 2009
- 34th Individually at U20 World
championships 2010
-13th at U23 European Individual
Championships 2010
Mayowa Olonilua
James Thomas Newman
Paul Webster
Rugby
Rugby
Rugby
-Plays for Blackheath Rugby Club
-National Plate winner
-Kent County Player
-Plays for Richmond Rugby Club
-East Sussex County Player
-Selected to train with the Bay of
Plenty in New Zealand before the
2005Lions Tour
-Plays for London Scottish Rugby
Club
-Attended the Vikings Rugby
Academy, Durban, South Africa
-Played for Southern Natal 1st XV
whilst in South Africa
-Selected for Scottish Exiles U20
Royal Holloway
Lacrosse’s
defence defeats
Kings
Charlie Allen
After having a number of
matches postponed due to adverse
weather conditions Holloway Men’s
lacrosse team were looking forward
to finally playing a match. So far
in the league they had had it fairly
easy but knew that this would be
their first real test. After playing a
very close alumni match (5-4 to the
current team) the day before the
boys knew we would have to step
up their game for Kings.
After winning the first draw a
first goal for Holloway followed
just minutes into the first quarter.
This gave them the confidence
boost they needed and soon goals
came flooding in. Defence was so
strong that the Kings players had
difficulty even getting close to goal
and when they did the pressure was
so great that few of their shots were
on target. Kings however, being the
team that they are, weren’t going to
give up without a fight. A score of
7-0 to Holloway wasn’t enough to
guarantee a win.
The first draw of the second half
was won by Kings and a goal was
almost immediately won against
us. After that however, Holloway’s
defence regrouped and Kings
weren’t able to score again, despite a
considerable step up in attack
A special mention should go to
Matt Eccles, man of the match.
Although always a useful player,
Matt transformed his game and
scored a hat trick before getting a
rather nasty head injury during the
3rd quarter. It is clear from the final
score (14-1) however that every
member of the team deserves to be
congratulated.

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011
31
Undergraduated
Nicholas Blazenby
I am here to tell you all that every
once in a while a man shoots way
above his weight and scores. Now
I’m an average looking guy with
good taste in clothes, music and
newspapers and I usually get fairly
average looking women with bee
sting breasts and an irritating sense
of humour. My motto has always
been if they talk to me then they’re
fair game. This, however, somewhat
changed last week.
The Rower had invited me to a
joint birthday/Valentine’s party he
was having with some bloke from
his course. It was at a proper party
house in The Green and by the time
I arrived with my bottle of Jacques
and a belly full of Crosslands’ J.D.
and coke the party had definitely
started. Nobody answered the
door so I went round the back. As
I skulked round the corner I was
spotted by The Rower.
“Nic! Mate!” He yelled. “Let’s get
you DRINKING!”
I waved my fruity cider in front
of him and he grinned then swayed
a bit. He was only wearing his
boxers and a tiny, pink girl’s vest
top that barely covered his chest.
I think he might be a bit…you
know… suppressed, because he
dresses up in girls clothes at every
opportunity and makes out with
guys then blames it on the alcohol.
He’s a very macho guy and does
loads of sports and manly things,
but he does have the legs for Drag.
The Rower wandered back
indoors and I spotted a space on
the wall between the patio and the
“lawn” (i.e. dried out mud with
various bits of barbequed debris
from last summer and a bizarre collection
of traffic signs (some from
overseas it seemed) in amongst
copulating couples). I opened my
drink and downed half in an effort
to avoid talking to the strangers all
around me.
I took a deep breath then turned
to strike up a conversation with the
person next to me. Unfortunately I
got the shock of my life when I was
faced with a girl mid-breakdown.
She had vomit on her chin and was
crying so much her make up looked
like a Scream mask. This party was
starting to seem like a really bad
idea.
As she was convulsing out the
words “My boyfriend dumped me
for…” and putting her arms around
my shoulders someone came up to
us.
9. Erection
Special
“Greg! It’s so good to see you!
Coming in for a drink?”
I looked up in surprise and was
presented with a rather mature,
sober looking girl with blonde hair
and wearing a polo shirt and jeans.
I then noticed she was holding a
near empty bottle of wine so maybe
she wasn’t that sober.
“Hi, er yeah…” I said rather unconvincingly.
“Why don’t you come inside,
mate?” she replied and motioned
her head towards the Bunny Boiler
looking at me with glazed eyes.
I finally got the message and
gently placed the drunk girl on the
floor. I followed my mystery rescuer
into the house, thanked her for
helping me and told her my actual
name. I think she may have said I
looked like a distraught little lamb
and she’d felt sorry for me. A real
manly start, then.
We found a spare seat and half
on a sofa and squeezed into it. I
looked down at her chest (force
of habit) and two things struck
me. Firstly she had “New Lyell”
stitched on her shirt and secondly
she had THE biggest bosom I have
ever witnessed that close up in my
life. Now the New Lyell thing has
puzzled me for a while. I’ve seen
people on campus with those shirts
on and always wondered what the
fucking hell they were up to. Were
they interested in building because
of the little hammer thing? Or was
it Holloway’s not-so-secret society?
She explained what it actually
meant, but to be honest the size of
her knockers distracted me for the
rest of the evening and I’ve forgotten
what she told me.
Now, these boobs weren’t just
large, they were excessive. And they
looked so inviting, like an actual
pillow from that Brim Full of Asher
song. Turns out she was on her
third bottle of wine so didn’t really
notice me staring at her chest (I
literally could not avoid it) and was
a postgrad student. Older women
for the win.
This Postgrad with Giant
Pendulums of Bliss chatted to me
quite a lot, in fact for the rest of the
night and we got on like Founders
toasters on fire. There was a slight
awkward incident when Usher’s
classic anthem ‘U Remind Me’
came on and she went all nostalgic
and emotional and suddenly kissed
me. Obviously I was over the moon
that she made the first move but I
Photo: Flickr/seier+seier
had just taken a gulp from a vodka
and coke I’d found abandoned on
my way back from the toilet, so
during the kiss the beverage somehow
transferred from my mouth to
hers. As we parted lips she stared at
me and slowly swallowed the drink
that had spontaneously arrived in
her mouth. I looked on wide eyed
and braced for a good slap. But she
just burst out laughing and went
outside.
I followed and got her number.
I also got a sneaky fumble on the
‘lawn’ and let’s just say I might be
getting more intimately acquainted
with those delicious orbs of boob
jelly in the not too distant future.
Who needs friends when you’ve got
gigantic lady floatation aids at your
disposal.
God, I love boobs.

For
and my
career
Your future in business
Wednesday 9 March 2011 | 6.30pm – 9.30pm
CIMA has teamed up with Royal Holloway, University of
London to offer you a great opportunity to hear directly
from leading employers about careers in business, finance
and accountancy. Network with Royal Holloway alumni and
explore the range of opportunities available to you.
A reception with complimentary food and drinks will follow
the presentations.
Companies attending include:
• Deutsche Bank
• NHS
• JP Morgan
• Thetrainline.com
• CIMA
Venue:
Booking:
Transport:
CIMA Head Office, Chapter Street
London, SW1P 4NP
www.rhul.ac.uk/for-alumni/eventreg
coaches depart Royal Holloway at 4.15pm
and return at 9.30pm
in association with:
www.cimaglobal.com