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.
People posting here seem to have missed the point entirely. This is probably because they are all either serial commenters with axes to grind, or involved in Vision.
I think referring to less-civilised countries is insensetive, stupid and borderline racist. Whether you agree with me on that or not, newspapers shouldn't have such an arrogant attitude when it comes to the media charter.
And there can be no justification for even writing the libellous material about a fellow student that YUSU ordered removed, let alone allowing it to go to print.
LOL! Just listening to the "you seem practiced in removing papers from circulation" bit. OTC anyone?
~21: The point that you are missing is that the comment piece was NOT about a race/ a people/ a religion/ a country - it was about homophobic laws and the governments which allow them. I don't see how anyone can argue that homophobic laws are civilised!!
Let's be clear, by "the union could be harmed" Shanks means "YUSU could be sued" because of the story going out. That's because it was libellous. He can't say it was libellous though, (a) because it might hint at what it was (which isn't what you're going for when you recall a newspaper) and (b) because it could prejudice YUSU should a court case actually occur. I suspect that the victim of the libel would be in a position to sue now, even though the newspaper was recalled after being issued.
#22 As a lesbian, I fully agree with you that homophobic laws are uncivilized.
But it is not right to talk about somewhere being a "less civilised part of the world". They may be more civilised than us in some respects, and less in others. Using that kind of language conjurs images of "deepest darkest Africa" populated by "savage uncivilized natives". That image is clearly a racist one. The fact that you could interpret the usage of that sentence differently makes it go from clearly racist to borderline racist.
Also, Shanks is quite clear in the interview that Vision agreed to change that bit of wording in the article. They then didn't. Even then I suspect they wouldn't have agreed to withdrawing it were it not for the more serious problem with the other article.
One more thing #23. You say:
"the comment piece was NOT about a race/ a people/ a religion/ a country"
But it is pretty clear that it was about the country that the gay student in the main article is from. Vision knew what country that was, but did not mention it in order to protect his identity.
The whole interview is based on point scoring and not considering the wider implications of the removed content. Sounded like amaturish sensationalist journalism to be honest
I still can't see why anyone thinks this paper shouldn't have been recalled.
It contained a personal attack on a student, and is entirely unneccessary. Whoever wrote it is well placed for a career in the gutter rags, News of the World Calling methinks...
#28
I completely agree that the article in Vision was something that ever should have gone to print. It was libellous, offensive and just plain mean. However, the paper DID go to print, it WAS distributed and people SAW it. You can't simply run around gathering all the copies you can find and pretend it was never out there to begin with.
To top it off, some of the copies redistributed (I personaly know of 3) still had the article in them!!! Come on, it's Vision, they print crapy, immature, borderline racist and offensive articles all the time. While I don't think they should be allowed to, at least not with the money of the union, they do it. Truth be told, if they hadn't gone around collecting all the copies they could find, this would have blown over by now. Also, the correct thing to do, would have been to just leave the papers out there, and issue an apology.
I think what happened was, the decision to recall the newspaper was made rashly, by whoever happened to be in the YUSU office at the time someone ran in saying "crap did you see this?!" Not a lot of thought went into it at the time, and then, once they did recall it, they had little choice but to censor it, because if they'd simply redistributed it as was, they would have been 'condoning' it's contents.
The opinion piece was just that AN OPINION. It wasn't a news article, he wasn't saying 'countries that do this are, by definition, less civilised'. He was saying 'in my opinion, given my personal definition of civilised, countries that do this are less civilised'. Which I think he has every right to do, no matter how ignorant or 'borderline racist' people may think his opinion is.
#25
Really, Vision agreed? Is that why they didn't removed it before the paper went to print? Because they agreed with it's removal. Also I have a feeling these 'chats' Rory keeps saying he has with the editors, are quite one-sided shows. In the end, Rory has all the power and everyone knows it. He said it himself in the interview 'I emailed them and told them to take it out and call me if there were any problems'
These people referring to the 'uncvilised' comment, I ask, did you read the article? The people whom the comment are referring to are frankly, "uncivilised" and I don't care whether you think this is racist or not.
I also don't think its Rory Shank's role to take this out of the paper. This is part of a FREE-PRESS. If you don't like it and it doesn't impinge on someone's welfare/libel (the "civilised" comment was nether) then tough luck, frankly. Argue against in a manner as we are now. Don't stop it being said, and thankfully, a majority of posts are saying the same thing on this wall.
Dan,
I have not read the article, what people was the 'uncivilised' people referring to?
It was a comment piece to the front-page article that was on a gay student and the persecution and even jail him/her may face if they were to return home.
The comment piece said such clear intolerance was uncivlised and I happen to agree with it. Call it racist, orientalist; call it what you will. I happen to think such laws and people who implement these laws are "less civilised", but this is a by-the-by. The issue is whether you think a free-press should be allowed to print things, as long as it does not impinge welfare/libel, however distasteful you may find it.
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comment deleted by a moderator Everyone who is crying 'racist' doesn't really have a point.
The contentious word 'uncivilised'. This has many meanings. I'd say Brits getting boozed up abroad and fighting and throwing up on the streets is 'uncivilised' behaviour. Racist?
Unprovoked violent attacks aren't exactly 'civilised'. Racist?
It's a strong word, but doesn't imply anything about a race of people. If anything it implies that it is the government of a nation that is to blame.
No Libel = Non-issue.
The interview is a very good piece of journalism. Very interesting to listen to and i think I understand the issue a lot more after hearing it.
To defend Mr Shanks I doubt many of us would be able to handle an interview without losing track of the question, or saying something we didn't mean to say. So in that respect i think he was very measured and conducted himself well.
What it does expose though is the lack of transparency. This trustee board sounds awfully suspicious to me. They were the same people who said we couldn't have NUS democracy cards back without any decent explanation.
Vision is an opinionated paper, and is all the better for it. Otherwise it'd just be an unnecessary nouse clone.
Opinion pieces in any paper are not written for everyone to agree with. I read an opinion piece in a national paper the other day and thought to myself 'what a load of rubbish', not 'oh dear. someone's forgotten to censor this'.
YUSU are NOT supreme custodians of moral goodness, as much as they try and act like it. The ghost of years gone by, where crossing roads, drinking at Club D, having male JCR chairs and cellulite cream were seen as 'welfare issues' has clearly not left the YUSU offices.
Universities are full of (seemingly) intelligent people who can make up their own minds as to whether a word is offensive or true or false or contentious etc...
We don't need the nannies to do it for us.
Vision agreed that the changes needed to be made with hindsight. They hadn't seen the comments as problematic before.
Also they HAD agreed to remove the whole 'uncivilised' part before going to print and it was an error on their part to remove it.
I LOVE YOU RORY
Vision "agreed" to the changes. With how much YUSU coercion? A free-press should not be subject to scrutiny that prevents articles that dont infringe welfare, or are libel, from being printed.
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