The News From The Dark Blues

Just when Oxford’s humanities students were starting to think it was all over, Led Zeppelin leapt in to save the day.

Band member John Paul Jones, among other beneficiaries, rescued the ailing departments of the University with one of the most generous donations of its 900-year history.

More than £26 million will be pumped into the humanities departments, in the hope of revival after it was crippled by funding cuts last year.

“Thank God for Lord Patten and his big dog chums,” one student was overhead saying when the news broke, “it’s nice to know we’re funding our studies through mediums other than dodgy arms deals and donations from Iranian torturers.”

Elsewhere Oxford has sunk into a stagnant phase of sleep deprivation and lethargy, with its thousands of minions dashing to the finish line of the final essay before the standard end of term mental breakdown kicks in.

There was however an interesting development in the ongoing Exeter hoo-ha, as former student, returned his degree to the college, horrified by the scandal surrounding the Christian Concern conference

The move, unsurprisingly, provoked little more than bemused silence from Exeter’s spokespersons, who are strongly reliant upon the ostrich-head-in-the-ground model of PR, though the story was eventually picked up on by LGBT newspaper The Pink Paper.

More excitingly, the student union passed a motion this week allowing Trans and gender queer students to wear male or female versions of the Exams uniform, a move which has universally been praised as a step forward in awareness of LBTQ issues (If you hadn’t gathered already, students actually do such things, in spite of the University’s rapacious commercialism when it comes to renting out its facilities.)

Finally an exceedingly avuncular man of the cloth, the Bishop of Oxford, walked across 1200degree hot coals this week to raise money for two local charities. Inevitable comparisons to fire and brimstone were made though I shall not patronize the discerning readership of The Tab by repeating such crass and facile analogies in this column.

And that would appear to be that. I could go on, but I’ve got The Fear, with a double essay crisis looming, and a drunken, misguided decision from The Oxford Student’s big wigs has left me in charge of the newspaper for next term.

So this will be my last column. It’s been a blast, chaps. Indeed, I think I rather like Cambridge. Maybe one day I’ll nip over and join you all in the fun of lobbing tomatoes at Dominic Strauss-Kahn, Mr ASBO and Sophie Thorpe.

And on that note – Rothwell out.