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 referendum to remain affiliated with the NUS passed with 751 votes for to 263 against, with 65 abstentions.
Peter Spence, creator of the ‘Vote No to YUSU's continued affiliation with the NUS’ Facebook group, admitted to The Yorker that “the result wasn't entirely unexpected.”
“I feel that given the short time frame we had to put a campaign together (I knew the referendum date four days before voting opened) it was very difficult to get the message out to students.”
Spence added, “an alarming majority of students we spoke to had no idea that a referendum was even occurring or had any idea what the NUS was.”
Another referendum can not be called for three years but in the meantime, Spence plans to run for an NUS delegate position and “if possible to try and achieve some change from within the organisation and correct some of its many failings.”
Alternative Freshers’ Week, which also caused much debate over the last week, failed to pass as the against votes outnumbered the for votes by 583 to 475, with 70 abstentions.
Joel Hellewell, creator of the ‘Vote YES to Alternative Freshers' week!’ Facebook group, said after the defeat that “losing the motion is not especially unfortunate as our aims still remain the same and we will endeavour to work with JCRCS to provide the best freshers’ week experience within the framework that currently exists.”
After riling college chairs last week with this motion, the 'Vote YES to Alternative Freshers' week' team released a public apology:
“We from the Alternative Fresher's week campaign would like to apologise for any perceived or actual suggestion within the wording of the Alternative Freshers’ week motion that JCRC members are not adequately providing non-alcoholic events for students. We would like to take this opportunity to recognise the hard work of college JCRCs, who have a clear commitment to the welfare of all students, and we hope that we can work with college event organisers in the future to further improve the Freshers’ week experience.”
Their plan now after meeting some of the college chairs is “to try and connect college chairs to society chairs so that the appropriate connections can be made and plans drawn up that will see society-led events suitable for everyone added directly into the college freshers’ week line-up.”
“This works well for both parties as it does not require a separate schedule to be set up and we achieve our aims of trying to include society-led and non-drinking events into freshers’ week.”
As for other motions, ‘a clear stance on invited speakers’, proposed by Emma Brownbill, was defeated by just one vote. The motion called for speakers at the university whom YUSU considers to threaten or oppose the freedoms of the student body not to be allowed to speak unopposed but will now not be put into place.
Miles Layram’s motion to commemorate the Hendrix gig of 1967 at York, as well as remembering the portering protest of 2002, passed by 470 to 290 votes and as a result lecture hall L/N/028 will be renamed Hendrix Hall and copies of Vision’s special edition from 2002 about the portering protests will be put up on the Union’s notice boards in Vanbrugh.
All the results from the referendum and seven motions can be found on the YUSU website.
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