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.
The Campaign to Stop University Investment in the Arms Trade group is behind the demonstration, which will take place on Friday 27th February.
The group will meet by Central Hall at midday, then march towards Heslington Hall where they will hand their petition to the university finance office. The petition already has over 1,000 signatures.
The demonstration is part of a series of protests planned by the group. It will be followed by an eclectic music event at Ziggy’s on Saturday 28th February, where all profits will go to Kings World Trust for Children and RAG.
Then on Sunday 1st March, there will be another music event at St. Lawrence WMC, where musicians of all forms are invited to perform in a freestyle musical session.
A spokesman for the group assured The Yorker that protests would be continuing until the university adopts an ethical investment policy.
He added: "We don’t want the university to remove £700,000 of shares if they’re going to put them into another arms company, we want this done properly."
Another spokesman said: "We of course realise that disinvestment will not put an end to wars and atrocities; however, that is hardly an argument why we should continue to support and finance what can only be described as a major cause of suffering."
The demonstration has been timed a week before the University Council is due to meet to formally approve the proposed ethical investment policy, on 6th March. The campaigners aim to show "that students are still acutely aware of this issue and wish to see the university follow through on their words".
The group have also drafted an open letter to be sent to the university, criticising its investment in the arms trade. The letter highlights over three years of protests by students, and a promise by the university to draft an ethical investment policy that has yet to be fulfilled.
It also argues that the university’s "pursuit of academic excellence need not and must not rely on the profits obtained through the endangerment of other members of our global community".
The group will be sending the letter to student societies and academic departments before sending it to the university, in the hope of getting the support of as many students and members of staff as possible.
The campaign has the support of YUSU, as mandated by students. At a UGM last term, the motion "For A University Ethical Investment Policy" was passed with results of 304 for, 86 against, and 10 abstentions.
Anyone wishing to get involved in the campaign should join the Facebook group that has been set up by campaigners.
Good article 
How do I sign the petition?
As soon as I saw the long haired guy with the petition in his hand make a beeline for me, I said to him, 'I don't know what the next stage in our relationship is going to be, but I won't like it.' And did I? No. The petition is a waste of time and at a time of such financial chaos, it is wholly untimely. What business can York re-invest £700,000 and expect anything like the return they are recieving at the moment? I will not sign a form that seeks to undermine the monies available for my degree and my future student successors. Equivalent so called 'green' projects have been sidelined while the country attempts to extricate itself from one of the worst messes we have ever experienced. Students can lodge admirable grass roots campaigns e.g. local conservation projects as I do but we can't affect the sale of arms nor attempt to tackle the great issues of the world. This whole campaign is merely therefore, an attempt to make a political point. But what exactly is the point? I'm more interested in how much my degree is going to be worth - and isn't THAT the point of our being here?
Do keep in mind that the vast majority of the university's investments are NOT in the arms trade. Less than a million is invested in companies such as BAE, which in relative financial terms is a very small sum. Compared to the universities total investments (which include pension funds, endowments, profits etc.) the 1m figure almost pales into insignificance.
In itself, this proves that ethical investments are more than viable; the university could just spread out this sum to its current portfolio without having an impact.
Your 'degree and its worth' are by no means jeopardised, if that's all that matters to you.
You of course have every right to your own opinions, but do make sure you are familiar with the details before you express such strong views.
Also, "we of course realise that disinvestment will not put an end to wars and atrocities; however, that is hardly an argument why we should continue to support and finance what can only be described as a major cause of suffering."
I fail to understand the weight these campaigns are putting on the divestment emphasis. Surely the fact the Uni does research with and is funded by companies such as BAE, Airbus, QinetiQ, etc is a bit more pressing than which shares the Uni owns.
You raise a good point Chris, however we do have to be realistic about the things we can do and we do have to understand what we are trying to achieve here.
I believe we can convince the university to stop investing money from its pension fund in these companies and implement an ethical investment policy. However, there is simply no way that we can convince e.g. the Computer Science department to stop ACCEPTING money from BAE.
Financing BAE is quite a different thing than performing research. It is so because the kind of research that we do for these companies has, thankfully, nothing to do with the arms trade. Also, the people that we send on placements in BAE work on areas completely unrelated with weapons and defense systems.
For these reasons, I believe that the emphasis is justified. We are not simple minded enough to think of BAE as the incarnation of pure evil. We are not saying that everything that it does is wrong by default. We do not want to finance it simply because we have serious ethical objections to some of its practices.
Ideally, it would be wonderful if BAE would just stop selling weapons to nations with abysmal human rights records. We realise we can't stop that from happening and so we are just saying that we do not want to support this by financing it.
However, developing a program for commercial airlines (which is a project that a friend of mine is working on, for BAE) is not doing that; it is not in way supporting the arms trade.
So, we have to be pragmatic and realistic. I wouldn't want to stop the American army, for example, from funding cancer research just because I disagree with the war in Iraq. However, that doesn't mean that I should be FINANCING the american army..
"I will not sign a form that seeks to undermine the monies available for my degree and my future student successors."
You do realise that hardly any money, percentage-wise, is invested in BAE, that it returns a very similar amount to ethical companies, that the university already has most of its money in other companies and that BAE is responsible for providing weaponry in some of the most violent and dangerous regimes in the world, right?
1) There is no logical reason why money is in BAE since it isn't the highest returning investment that the university has had.
2) They are deliberately going against their previous pledge by doing it.
3) We're paying £3,000+ per year so we should get a say as to where our money ends up.
Good luck everybody on this issue!
..and in any case, after the last UGM lobbying for ethical investment is Union policy.
The money invested is PENSION FUND money.
NOT our money. Not a penny of our tuition fees. But staff pension.
Please understand this is a matter for the pensioned staff. If you want to organise a staff protest, fine. But to claim it is 'Our Money' is just a damned lie.
Jason, your point #3 is false. I'd urge everyone not to get carried away on this bandwagon that has nothing to do with students' money.
I think the staff have a right to invest their pension fund in whichever companies will give them a good return. In this climate we should be glad a decent pension scheme even exists.
BAE are a stable company, the politics are for politicians. Most of our defense infrastructure is owed to BAE and Qinetiq etc...
They do not make nuclear weapons, these were bought from the states. Cluster bombs were originally sold for destroying runways and are still marketed as a weapon for destruction of infrastructure, not civilian life, and the companies which are part of BAE such as supermarine and De Havilland are some of the great innovative companies which a) helped us fight off nazism and b) offer graduate opportunities not only in defense but in aerospace engineering, physics, aviation management, human resources management.
The argument here is based upon a false statement (that our money is being invested) and hyperbole about BAE being warmongering merchants of civilian death.
Defense and offense are different things.
WHether or not you believe in pacifism or just wars, please don't believe this is our money. It's not. Unless you're a pensioned member of staff.
None of our business,
Let the pensioned staff decide.
If the investments in BAE were so more stable and profitable, then surely the university would have invested more.. This is simply a false argument and I am sure you understand that; there are other investment opportunities that are just as profitable. As I've said, the vast majority of the university's investments are not in the arms trade.
"This is a hyperbole about BAE being warmongering merchants of civilian death"
And this is not an argument but an assertion. Is there any actual evidence suggesting that BAE has NOT been supporting brutal regimes? Is there any coherent argument why we should be supporting and arming gross offenders of human rights across the world? If not, why do you even raise this point?
Also, the student union is mandated to lobby for ethical investment. It has been decided by student vote and it's now union policy.
Let me also add that I abhor the view that "politics is for the politicians". It is so fundamentally undemocratic that I am not even going to get into..
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