A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
Listen to Josh Chambers' interview with Societies and Communications Officer Rory Shanks as first aired on URY:
Two articles were removed from the last edition of Vision: a comment on the front page story and a feature ranking outgoing JCRC chairs.
The comment, entitled 'A Stark Warning', touched on issues of human rights and discrimination. It has been suggested that the removal of this article was due to its reference to the "less civilised world".
YUSU Societies and Communications Officer Rory Shanks explained that YUSU and Vision had "agreed mutually to it being edited prior to the edition coming out". However, Vision failed to edit the article in time and the decision was taken to remove it entirely.
YUSU's main concern was the feature article on last year's JCRC Chairs and their performances. Some of the comments made in this feature are believed to be potentially libelous.
Vision referred to one College Chair as being “proficient in underhand scheming” and suggested that “a looming vote of no confidence is regretfully inevitable”.
A student from the college in question told The Yorker: “From everything I’ve heard, [the Chair] has worked really hard for the college. [The Chair] was uncompromising, but always really active, definitely dedicated and by no means absent.”
The initial decision to stop the circulation of Vision was taken by YUSU officers shortly after the initial distribution of the newspaper on Tuesday. However, the final decision to edit and redistribute Vision was made by the Trustee Board on Wednesday.
After the distribution of Vision, YUSU officers were seen around campus attempting to collect all copies. Some students have said they were asked to hand over copies they were currently reading to the officers.
In the edited version, the comment article was literally cut out of the section. The pages containing the JCRC Chairs feature were removed.
However, some of the redistributed copies still had the offending article in them. Shanks said: “I’ll be investigating that separately, but what I can say is that Vision were asked to remove it from all the copies.”
Regarding the use of the Media Charter and the current relationship between YUSU and the York University Media, Shanks said: “I think the current policy does work.” However, he added that he feels there is a need to re-examine its implementation.
For legal reasons, any comments mentioning the subject (name or college) or author of the contentious article will be removed.
Did you hear that interview on URY today?
What was on the back of the removed pages?
I heard the interview on URY was really good - I wish I could hear it again on The Yorker.
It's in the article and it's an absolute cracker. Rory wasn't convincing in the slightest. Go free speech!
He didn't enjoy that one bit. No statement on this is ridiculous.
comment deleted by a moderator closed meetings? what is this? the return of the politburo?
this is brilliant, nice one.
YUSU is meant to work for students - this interview clearly shows it seems to be against us.
Well done Josh.
A fantastic interview, great work from Josh. Rory is certainly not comfortable; I think he comes across well, as a responsible Socs & Comms officer in a difficult position, for the first 12 minutes or so, before maybe letting himself down slightly at the end. This is a great example of the accountability and degree of transparency promised everytime YUSU elections come around, but hardly ever followed through upon. I hope YUSU, and indeed university powers (it'd be nice to hear from Phil Kember!), continue to agree to similar interviews in the future - they'll do them more benefit than harm.
Tom S
who is Josh? how is this well done? and how in gods name is this cleary showing that YUSU is against "us"?
i think the interview is not aimed to get truth or clarify what happend, it just wants to have some fun/score some listeners and have a go at YUSU.
I dont think YUSU should fund even slightly racist commentary and what happend was completely fair.
"The less civilised world" is in no way "slightly racist" whatsoever. Once again, the reaction from the politically-correct brigade to something they don't happen to agree with is to 'censor' or support censorship of what is meant to be a 'free-press'.
Aside from what was in the paper, there is increasingly becoming a culture that YUSU has some sort of 'right' to censor papers outside what can be classified as welfare issues. This is a slippery-slope to ever increased press-censorship and an extremely worrying trend.
Josh's interview did what very few people do: Hold YUSU officials to account in uncomfortable circumstances. The lack of any official statement from YUSU suggests an attempt to cover-up the entire issue. Josh's interview has brought it into the open and I think that is a good thing.
comment deleted by a moderator This is shocking.
1) If Rory judges this interview to be unfair I do not trust his opinion on what should or should not be in a newspaper.
2) As Dan says, the term "less civilised world" is not at all racist, as it was in reference to intollerant and homophobic laws and governments, not a race of people. What's more, it was an opinion.
3) I have also heard elsewhere that the trustee meeting and other consultation was very unfair and one-sided.
This is a great interview and I think it's time Rory and YUSU as a whole made some very big apologies.
Hehe, oh the irony! It does seem a bit intolerent and uncivil to refer to such intolerent laws/governments as less civilised!
A truly tolerant society is lawless: what some might call uncivilised.
Yep, YUSU should definitely apologise for preventing borderline libellous statements from being made public.
Edited for clarity: referring to the main item.
#16: There's nothing libelous about "less civilized". Poor choice of words, yes, but not illegal and no threat to anyone's welfare. I understand he'd recommend to the Vision editors that it should be changed, but to cut it out after they mistakenly left it in is ridiculous, no matter what was agreed beforehand.
Isn't anybody else worried about the fact that Rory says he "allows" contentious stories about YUSU to be published? Surely he should only have the power to remove stories if they break the law or are a serious welfare issue, not just because they go against YUSU. Credit to him to "allow" it, but why has he got the power to do otherwise in the first place?
I'm not sure of whether the power exists (I think it's down to how hard a line the socs & comms officer wants to take), but I know YUSU officers have definitely stopped contentious stuff about themselves going into Vision in the past.
After all, wasn't that why the Yorker was set up?
Also, in regards to the words "less civilised", yes they're not racist, but they're pretty offensive, and I would say unacceptable in a multi-cultural environment like this university. Surely a students union which looks after the interests of all students (whether they're in 'civilised' countries or not) can't endorse such careless words.
Speaking as someone from a third world, less economically developed, 'insert PC word here' country, what is the problem with the term 'less civilised'?
Yes it is ignorant, yes it is offensive, but come on! Had it been in an article, stated as fact, the yes, change it, but in an opinion piece?
People are allowed to have and express their own opinions, no matter how ignorant they are. Unless of course they pose a direct threat to a student's welfare, which the term 'less civilised' does not. It might make some people angry, and might inspire some people to argue the term, but I doubt any international students were emotionally scarred because of it.
Also, they were two little words, in a tiny little comment piece. Why is it YUSU feel they have a right to edit and censor student's opinions??
Have a fair few of you (such as Anon No. 11) not missed the point? Maybe it is insensitive that the phrase 'uncivilised' (whether it was 'slightly racist commentary' or not) was published, this isn't the main article in question - the main issue was something published which, apparently, was involved with 'a legal issue'. Ooooo!
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