The News Roundup Week 5: Club Catastrophes, Cake Competitions and Cash Conflagration

As we enter into the worst time of the term, Cambridge students have shown they live in a fantasy world.

burning cash ceiling Clubbing column cuca Formal Harry Potter Homerton Life News Queens'

The week 5 blues will likely be felt acutely by an (ex) CUCA member, after The Tab exposed him as a Grade A idiot, as they found a video of him burning money in front of a homeless man in white tie.

Thanks for challenging the stereotype of Cambridge as an elitist and inaccessible place. The story blew up more than even we were expecting, being reported by journalistic titans like The Guardian, the Times, and of course The LAD Bible. Some have expressed shock at the extent of the vitriol that has been directed towards the student: hopefully we can move away from this worrying trend of students having to actually face the consequences of their actions. However, there is a silver lining: donations to Cambridge homeless Charity Jimmy’s have since tripled.

In other news, Cambridge beat Oxford in the yearly free speech rankings – which rate universities on their commitment to allowing the expression of opinions, even if dissident from the normal. The rankings (organised by Spiked) rate universities with a traffic light system: Cambridge scored an amber (meaning we ‘chill’ free speech), but The Other Place scored a red, meaning they really put the ‘freeze’ in #FreezePeach. We were joined by the likes of Glasgow, Imperial and St. Andrews in our medium-rare support of open discussion.

Yay freezepeach

We are also entering the beginning of the May Ball ticket season, with a slew of themes starting to be announced shortly. After the mass outrage at May Ball events last year being culturally appropriative, May Ball Committees seem to be taking much more abstract themes in order to protect the precious sensibilities of the student body. The most recent announcement has been Clare May Ball, whose theme is ‘How Old Are You Anyway?’ – which to us sounds more like a prospective Channel 4 gameshow. Keep your eye out for more bizarre ball themes in the coming weeks.

Bake Off star eats cake in Sidney Sussex

Andrew Smyth, finalist of last year’s Great British Bake Off, returned to his Alma Mater over the weekend to give a TED Talk. After some Instagram stalking, some fans of his slipped a note under his door inviting him to taste their own baking creations. Smyth apparently enjoyed the lemon drizzle that they made for him, although said that the drizzle could have been distributed more evenly.

No soggy bottoms here

Mysterious Messages left in Queens’

The other evening, a mysterious stranger went around the entirety of the DD Staircase fresher’s accommodation slapping rude post-it notes to fresher’s doors. The content of the messages ranged from good old fashioned ‘your mum’s so fat’ jokes, to strange diatribes about how “life is just like a penis: Simple,  relaxed, hanging freely.”

Whether the culprit is embittered or just a weirdo is yet to be discovered, but we suspect fresher’s in DD staircase might start locking their doors either way.

Saying someone belongs at Homerton is a just mean

Life collapsing around students

A metaphor for most of our existence, it seems that Life is literally falling apart in front students very eyes. Last Sunday a part of Life’s roof fell down with rainwater apparently coming in through the hole. This seems to be a running trend in student clubs across the country, as only the night before the roof of Manchester’s Factory fell down.

The collapse Kuda really hurt someone

Homerton Hungers for Harry Potter Formal

Tickets for Homerton’s Harry Potter formal went on sale yesterday, and sold out in a matter of minutes. The popularity of the event has been followed by what one student described as a ‘bloodbath’ on the JCR page, with students making offers ranging from paying a higher price to buying people pizza for life.

Despite there being 4 formals in the week themed around Harry Potter, the Homerton JCR sent around a warning email that all of the tickets are usually sold out within a minute of them being made available. It seems students will go to the ends of the earth so they can have the chance to pretend that Cambridge is actually Hogwarts (which it most definitely is not).

But Cambridge students already wear gowns and live in a fantasy world.

That’s all for this week – join us next week for more fatuous formals and baking bonanzas.