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 University's STYC system has come in for criticism after First Year students ended up in hospital during Freshers' week.
Up to a dozen students needed hospital treatment during Freshers' week after a string of “very serious” alcohol-related incidents, The Yorker can reveal.
Almost every college had students taken to hospital during and immediately after Freshers’ Week—including some cases on the first weekend of term, as new students arrived at York for the first time.
One student was reportedly hospitalised after choking on a coin that was dropped in his drink.
YUSU Welfare Officer Bob Hughes said that some of the incidents were “very serious”, and blamed peer pressure on individuals “to drink as much, as quickly, as some of the students around them”.
Many of the problems were related to drinking games such as Ring of Fire, as well as students drinking on an empty stomach to maximise the alcohol’s effects, and ‘pre-drinking’ before Freshers’ events began.
In some cases, problems were caused by older students—second and third year contacts, or STYCs—who were assigned to help new students settle in.
Hughes said that there had been “a few incidents of STYCs encouraging heavy drinking.”
“The STYC thing is something we need to look at next year…we need to be a lot firmer with STYCS”, he said, adding that the incidents were “a shame”.
A University spokesman said that "less than a dozen" students had been hospitalised, and current welfare system for Freshers "works well". But he admitted that college provosts were investigating a number of allegations of inappropriate conduct by STYCs.
One welfare programme co-ordinator—known as a ‘big STYC’—agreed that some events had got out of hand.
“Especially on the first night, people just got a bit too excited and drank a little bit too much and some people did some stupid things…it ended up a bit messy,” she told The Yorker.
Both colleges and YUSU run alcohol-orientated events during Freshers’ week, with low drinks prices including ‘double up for £1’ offers.
Official events include a “slag ‘n’ drag” fancy dress night for new students. The University does insist that non-drinking events are run alongside drinking ones, their spokesman said
A proposal tabled to YUSU last term for an ‘alternative’ Freshers’ week, which would have run alongside the current programme and offered non-drinking events, was defeated in a student vote.
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