Features Podcast

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Topics this week include: Selly Oak safety; sleep for teenagers; and Guild elections.

Did you hear that?

Guild election candidates answer questions.

At 1pm today there was another candidate hustings. This was a chance for students to hear candidate’s policies and to ask them any questions. The Sports candidates were asked about initiations, Welfare candidates asked about safety provisions for students such as the nightbus and the Community candidate was asked about student profiles within selly oak and the local community and what could be done to improve the student image.

It must be a nerve racking experience for the candidates with plenty of people looking to get their questions answered before they decide which candidates to vote for. For those of you that have not voted yet the hustings would have been a good opportunity to sound out the candidates on their polices. However their manifestos are available to view here.

Any candidates that you may have questions to would love to have them submitted via their websites, facebook or in person if you catch them on campus – it is important to find out what their plans are for the Guild so that you can make an informed choice.

The hustings have been being filmed by GTV so im sure a copy will be made available soon for people to watch, that way you can check on all the questions asked and the answers given – also all candidate interviews are here.

 

As ever drop us any questions you might have – redfeatures(at)gmail.com or a comment and feel free to use the links on the right to subscribe.

Have you cast yours?

Have you voted?

So being the ‘keeno’ i am, i voted this morning, voting has now been open approaching 12 hours and the candidates are out in full force – i was accosted several times on campus today. You must be lucky if you have been on campus and been able to avoid noticing anything about the elections.

But what is it all about, – well we are voting to elect the team of students who will run our Guild for the next year, this includes sabbatical and non-sabbatical officers. The seven sabbatical positions are President, VP Democracy and Resources, VP Education and Access,  VP Housing and Community, VP Welfare VP Student activities and development and VP Sport.

The people in these positions are responsible for helping to fulfill and implement policy decided on at Guild council, represent students to the University, fight and lobby on our behalf and make sure that the Guild is supporting all students. So it is imperative that all students take this opportunity to express their opinion about how we are run and how will be represented for the coming year.

The electronic voting system also includes an option to ‘spoil’ the ballot meaning that you can express your dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates and their policies if you feel that the candidates are not suitable. – This is a means to stay engaged with the system without feeling like you have to make a choice that you don’t believe in.

Drop any questions you might have into the comments and remember to use the links on the left to subscribe to the blog so you can stay up to date.

In the line of fire

Jude Hill gets in line to discuss the entry policies of clubs around Birmingham

I FOR one have never had a problem getting into clubs in Birmingham. I have never been turned away and been told that I was not wearing the right clothes. This may be because I have a good dress sense or that the majority of places that I go to are full of people who dress as badly as me. Who knows. Most clubs in Birmingham have to have a certain degree of leniency towards students as we, as a group, could arrive at a club in anything from shirts and chinos to a Mr. Motivator costume. 

Deciding on 'cool' since 2008

This is not the case when we turn up to regular nights at many of the clubs on Friday or Saturday nights. My friend experienced the difficulty in getting into a club last Saturday in Gatecrasher when he attempted to go and see Hed Kandi. Despite having a ticket, he and many of his friends were denied entry. When he asked the manager why he was not allowed to enter the club he was told that they didn’t need to give him a reason. 

When I began investigating the issue I looked at it from several different angles. I knew that my friend was sober and smartly dressed, and so I could not think of the reason that he was refused entry. The reason became clear when I spoke to the head of the clubs public relations. She told me that the reason that my friend wasn’t let in was probably because one or more of his party, despite being smartly dressed, probably didn’t look ‘cool’ enough.

The official dress code for the night on the Gatecrasher website reads ‘It’s not what you wear but how you wear it.’ (http://www.gatecrasher.com/birmingham/dresscode) This is a very ambiguous statement, and the way that I had it explained to me was that gatecrasher needed to convey a certain image and so they reserved the right to not allow entrance if somebody did not conform to the look that they wanted in their club. Although I can understand this, it was worrying for a few reasons.

Firstly it leaves the decision of admittance down to one person. If somebody on the door considers one look to be ‘cool’ it doesn’t mean that everybody else does. For instance I don’t like wearing shirts to a club, some people do, so who would be classed as cool in that situation: me with a good t-shirt or somebody else with a dodgy shirt?

Also, is it cruel to be kind? Although I understand that the bouncers could not spend the time giving a breakdown of why what somebody is wearing isn’t cool, this causes people to get angry because they aren’t given an explanation. For instance, I have found testimonials on blogs saying that Gatecrasher is racist, when in reality it is your dress sense, not the colour of your skin. In what ways can this be dealt with where people aren’t going to go home disappointed and angry to put 2 and 2 together to make 5?

The problem is also that you can buy tickets in advance. This is what happened to my friend, and is one of his main points of contention. Despite Gatecrasher being fair in offering a refund for the ticket, they do not offer a refund for the time you spend standing in the queue, getting ready and paying taxis to get there. One of his group had actually come down from Warwick in order to be at his friend’s birthday, when he didn’t get in Gatecrasher can refund the £5 for his ticket, but not the £40 for his train ticket? 

Should tickets be sold in advance if the ultimate decision on who is going to get in is down to the preference of one person’s views of ‘what is cool’? After all, as Eddie Izzard mentions, the difference between being cool and looking like a dick-head  is often very small.

Arabic aerosol

Rebecca Harvey reveals Birmingham’s urban Islamic calligraphist

TO many people the word ‘graffiti’ conjures up images of urban decay and crime. It is viewed by some as a selfish, antisocial form of expression that just simply serves to further inflate the ego of the artist. As I like to think that I’m of a more open-minded disposition, I’m glad to say this kind of superficial viewpoint has been challenged by the inspirational work of local graffiti artist, Mohammed Ali, both inside and out of the studio. 

The 28-year-old Brummie is well renowned for his unique fusion of Islamic calligraphy with urban art and has recently been the proud recipient of a prestigious ITV South Bank award that celebrates outstanding achievement in promoting diverse groups and cultures. Far from vandalizing public property, Mohammed uses aerosols to infuse the ‘divine script of God’ into his graffiti style artwork. 

Ali (left) is a local graffiti artist

Merging religion with such a controversial art form might seem like an intentionally provocative decision and one that was strategically designed to grab attention that would otherwise have been directed to better quality art. But trust me, this is quality art and the combination is very successful at communicating powerful messages about current issues to a young audience. 

 

Mohammed is known for painting murals that highlight the plight of Palestinian people and so it is not surprising that he has recently painted murals in Small Heath addressing the recent Gaza crisis. Mohammed is a pioneer of socially conscious art and the murals that he has painted around the world have been described as building bridges between communities in difficult areas where faith and race are burning issues. 

As if that wasn’t enough, he also runs workshops for children up and down the country, working with them to produce their own pieces of art. I find it fascinating how art created from an antisocial symbol like the spray can, can have such a positive reception from the general public. 

It makes me wonder whether the whole of society is changing its views about a previously condemned form of expression.  For example in the Cotswold town of Cirencester the council have given permission for graffiti artists to paint a previously vandalized underpass that links a local school and college. Mohammed Ali’s work provides a brilliant example of how modern art can spark discussion of relevant political issues in a young audience that many other mediums find so hard to successfully engage.

Male suicide on the rise

Alex Bailey reviews the rising trend of young male suicide

Sid Vicious was 21 when he committed suicide by heroin overdose.

A BIRMINGHAM University student was discovered dead in a lecture hall in the second week of this term, after being found to have hanged himself. The body of Mohammed Abdelmohsin Omer, aged 29 was encountered in the Gisbert Kapp building on campus by fellow students arriving for an early lecture on Monday 19th of January. A student at the scene horrified by such ‘waste of a life’ believes that ‘he did it in the lecture room so that he could be found by those he was studying with’; a cry for help realised too late. Such chilling news has undoubtedly appalled the student population nationwide, yet the unnerving proximity is a shock that hits home particularly to us here at Birmingham.

However, the prevalence of suicide in young males under the age of 35 is astonishingly out of control. According to recent research, steadily rising statistics over the last 30 years reveal that suicide is now the second most common way to die for a man between 15 and 34, beaten only slightly by road deaths. Accounting for the deaths of over 900 young men each year in the UK alone, if suicide is the second most serious public health issue for young men – exactly why don’t we know about it? Considering the constant wave of media attention that continually places young men at the cause of society’s problems, perhaps those comprising the same category most likely to commit knife and gun crime are simply just not recognised as needing help. Society’s easy stereotype simply does not want to know. 

Labeled the ‘silent epidemic’ by the BBC, other reasons thought to account for the surging numbers of suicidal death in young men include the fact that ‘they don’t seek help when they have problems’. Professor Appleby, part of the team that launched the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in 2002, goes on to say that despite plans to make mental health services more readily available, young men ‘often don’t conceptualise their problems as problems of a medical kind’. Therefore, the only obvious solution which is to dramatically improve mental health services is unlikely to make an impact.  Instead, the NSPS’ only suggestion is to remove items such as shower cubicles and curtain tracks that provide a ‘ligature point’ from which institutional inmates can strangle themselves.  The introduction of ‘anti-ligature’ furniture in institutions such as prisons and hospitals has shown to have reduced levels of young men’s suicide in previous years. However, such basic and minimal methodology totally fails to tackle suicidal intentions at their roots.

Additionally, it is obvious that recognition of suicide in ordinary members of society has been severely neglected. The NSPS’ focus on the suicides of criminals and psychiatric patients does nothing to remove the stigma attached to mental health, and appallingly fails to acknowledge the increasing quantity of those suicides that are unpredictably committed in silent despair. According to Professor Appleby, the two main groups of young men driven to suicide are those with mental illness and those who ‘have lost their ties to society, work, family and friends’. It is astonishing that in this second category, the student community is nowhere identified as the sector perhaps most susceptible to ‘losing ties’. Not only does the high proportion of young men comprising University population indicate a large risk owing to probability alone, but as a new and potentially intimidating occupation may unwittingly alienate the individual. The desperate need to increase awareness of this widespread danger specifically in the student body is an issue crucially emphasised by our own establishment’s latest victim.

Apostropheasible?

Leyla Williams gets possessive on apostrophes

GREENGROCERS’ apostrophes are apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals. Or is that greengrocers apostrophe’s? For that matter, why not greengrocer’s apostrophes’

I got it right the first time. But given Birmingham City Council’s decree that possessive apostrophes no longer need appear on street signs, who really cares? Not Martin Mullaney, chairman of the transportation scrutiny committee, that’s for sure. The man behind the imminent death of Birmingham’s apostrophes puts forth his case in writing with linguistic perfection. Mullaney asked residents on his blog on January 2nd for their views on whether or not Kings Heath should have an apostrophe, since he needed to let the Transportation Department know if it should be included or not by January 7th.  

The process that followed was, thankfully, highly democratic. Not only did Mullaney make it clear that he only wanted the views of residents who had a ‘far greater understanding of apostrophes’ than him (because apparently the average Joe must not only be able to use apostrophes correctly, but have a deeper knowledge of them in order to have an input). It also followed that it didn’t really matter what the Eating and Shooting residents of Birmingham thought anyway. Despite constant demand from neighbourhoods across the city to give them back their punctuation, on January 28th Mullaney dropped the bomb that future use of possessive apostrophes in place names simply ‘would not be re-introduced’. 

His case?  Chiefly, we contemporary beings are just plain ‘confused’ by the apostrophe, especially in the West Midlands. So much so, that even when we do a little grammatical research and ask for our punctuation back, we’re probably more baffled than ever. Better to deal with ever-irrational residents by ignoring them and appealing to their hearts instead by arguing that it would be ‘tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street, if you forgot to include the possessive apostrophe when calling 999.’ 

Good point, Martin – because in this day and age, the emergency services are incapable of getting around such problems. The main mapping agency providing data for emergency services, Ordnance Survey, told the Associated Press that they’d ‘never heard of any confusion arising from their (apostrophes’) existence’, and that their data is simply updated if a change to a place name is made. 

So much for a bamboozled Birmingham. The only thing more nonsensical than stripping Birmingham of correct punctuation is turning a deaf ear to the voices of its residents.

In a NUS shell

Ruth Prior asks what students really know about the NUS, the role it should play and the role that it does.

IN recent weeks there have been sweeping reforms made in the National Union of Students (NUS). The union, which is the largest representative student body in the UK, voted through what the current NUS President called ‘the biggest shake up of NUS’s democracy and status in its history.’  Sounds momentous and it probably is, but there’s only one snag: do we know enough about what NUS is and does for us to know whether the reforms will be truly beneficial? Arguably not. Considering NUS is run by students for students and considering its campaigning potential, it should mean more than just a discount card.  There is more to NUS than you could fit in your wallet but this message doesn’t appear to be reaching students at a grass roots level.

NUS is a voluntary membership organisation which claims to make a real difference to the lives of students in the UK. You don’t have to read far into NUS literature to uncover their three cores values as an organisation: equality, democracy and collectivism. At first glance this rhetoric seems overtly political, and it is. Equal opportunities, diversity, democracy, unity etc. are buzzwords that would seem at home in a party political speech. NUS may not be in government but as the largest representative student body we have it follows that their values have a distinctly political edge.

That given, NUS wield enormous potential power to, as they say, make a difference to students lives through unity. A mantra that can be found on the NUS website says ‘unity is our strength’. By joining forces locally, nationally and internationally issues affecting students should be given a voice with enormous weight behind it.  

Enough should haves and could haves. For an organisation that stresses unity and democracy above all, a large part of what NUS does seems to have bypassed the attention of your average student. If they are campaigning on our behalf, about issues that directly affect us we certainly don’t know about it. When asked what NUS meant to them, the stock answer from the majority of students was ‘a discount card’. Whilst offering hugely beneficial discounts on everything from coffee to theatre tickets is an important part of what NUS does, the negotiation of discount is just one of many things that NUS strives to do on behalf of students.  

To have condensed the role of NUS down to a piece of plastic seems a waste of an important resource. Even more of a waste is the fact that an NUS extra card is to a large extent superfluous. One student rightly pointed out to me that a normal uni card is accepted almost everywhere (I myself successfully flashed a University of Birmingham card at a receptionist in Prague over Christmas). Even if a company will only accept NUS extra no one tends to look hard enough at the date to warrant buying a new one every year. Student apathy is often blamed for NUS being seen in such blinkered terms. Student apathy is an issue but not the key one here.

One student told me that to her NUS was just another organisation, amongst all the other societies at the Fresher’s Fair asking to her to part with money in her first week at university. For this student at least, the significance of NUS relative to the raft of purely commercial offers promoted during fresher’s week didn’t register. Offering something tangible (i.e. student discount) is a tried and tested way of getting students to sign-up to things. Think about the success the ‘be sure, be tested’ campaign has had since they started offering anything from a free t-shirt to the chance to win a holiday in return for getting tested for Chlamydia. The problem with using a similar tactic to encourage freshers to join NUS is that from the off students aren’t told about the more important, more influential elements of the union.

Current NUS delegate James Williams told me that whilst NUS is a potentially fantastic organisation he believes it is a long way off doing what it needs to in terms of campaigning for student rights. When asked about the recent reforms, he said that whilst the changes to NUS’s constitution should affect normal students he ‘doesn’t hold the highest hopes’. Surely there is a contradiction here. How can an organisation claim to be truly democratic when so many students have little idea what they are doing on their behalf?

Another of this year’s NUS delegates, Sam Harrow, told me that NUS is currently fighting to keep the cap on tuition fees as low as possible ahead of an official review this year. This is an issue of huge concern to the whole student population as the review could see changes to student funding and associated issues. An easy consensus was reached amongst the students I asked that this was a good thing. You would, after all, be hard pushed to find a student that wants tuition fees to go up. In this case NUS are campaigning on our behalf. The bizarre thing is that we don’t know about it.

It seems that NUS have missed a trick here. The lack of communication between the union and students at a grass-roots level means that some of their best work goes largely unnoticed. NUS has been accused of being run by a ‘clique of politicos’. Whether this is true or not it can’t be denied that their net of involvement doesn’t extend far. It sounds simple, but if your average student knew more about NUS there would be much to be gained on both sides. Students are never going to actively participate in something they know nothing about. The more they know the more they will care and the NUS could benefit immeasurably from the increased input and support.

Censorship: The ins and outs

Nick Petrie wonders where discretion stops and censorship starts

All views welcome?

WE are in trouble. If a newspaper cannot print the stories it deems relevant and the opinions it considers insightful then the truth is being withheld. The importance of free speech cannot be underestimated. The Government cannot stop a newspaper from printing a story; its only recourse is that of a DA notice (Defence Advisory) when it feels that withholding information will be beneficial for security operations. However, these advisory notices are just that: advice.

Editors must use their own judgement to decide whether to cover a story or not. All media suffers some form of censorship, even the decisions on what to cover mean that some stories receive less or no attention; this is censorship of one form or another. In the issue of Redbrick that came out on 23rd January we were asked to alter an article by the Guild. Redbrick was made to tone down the sentiment exressed in a contraversial piece and required to place a disclaimer regarding the opinion expressed within the article.

 I don’t believe that anyone is under the impression that Redbrick is a paper that spouts Guild rhetoric upon the student masses. Yet I am well aware that some people feel that in recent times Redbrick has lacked the grit and failed to challenge the Guild and the University as perhaps a student paper should. However, until this issue, this was not because the Guild was interfering with stories. I am very angry with ths, because the Guild is supposed to facilitate and protect students and our rights, including our right to free speech. By dictating what can or cannot be covered by the newspaper they impinge on our right to free speech and underminine the integrity of the paper as well as our ability to hold the University to account.

 I want to be clear; they have to have a legal overview of the paper to ensure that we are not in danger of defamation, slander or libel, in which case they would be responsible for the legal representation of Redbrick in such a situation. If content does not fall within this remit then it is the editorial team’s discretion as to what is published. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are considered a central part of our democracy; it is how we hold the government to account. We only have to look to the recent Times investigation into Lords taking cash for legislation to have this highlighted.

I ask myself this question: how far does our student union fail to protect us? Although I was not involved in the recent student protest over Israel’s occupation of Gaza, where a group of students occupied a lecture room in the Arts building, I understand that the University’s response to this peaceful protest was overblown and heavy-handed with a number of police being called in to marshal the situation. One student pointed out that situations like this are what University security is for, not the police.

While the Guild has pointed out that it did ensure punishment of those involved was not overly harsh, this was simply not communicated to the student population. It must also be noted that at unversities such as LSE and Warwick occupations lasted around a week, not just an afternoon. So was the University of Birmingham too heavy handed or did the Guild just not argue enough for our rights? It disturbs me to think that in the future not only might the Guild fail to protect its students, but that perhaps it might attempt to stop Redbrick from reporting on this.

I am well aware that many newspapers and news outlets omit information or play down reports due to pressure from their holding companies, and this is no different than the Guild stepping in to interfere. Sky, for instance, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the News of the World, The Sun and The Times, so all the publications suffer editorial decisions imposed on them by Murdoch. Newspapers are bound by advertisers’ demands about the content and comments that their articles cover. Yet these instances should be separated, with full editorial control held by the editors, and owners left to run the business side of things. However, I feel compelled to ask: if the Guild feels it can dictate to us on this occasion, then what is to stop it from happening again?

Mock the weak

Jimmy Campbell-Smith

I READ one of those glossy magazines the other day, the sort that Talulah-misha from the hairdressers is always gossiping about. In order to simplify their production process, they may as well photo-shop a picture of a burly thug called Barry from Skidrow-on-Sea with a needle in his arm choking Prince Harry whilst zooming in on his sweat patches (either him or the thug) and Harry calling him some pejorative term, whilst Tom Kidman and Bruce Craig look on, seemingly interested. 

They truly are the single most execrable thing published since, oh something in the region of The Official Biography of Bruce Forsyth. The most insulting thing is to the reader, who is seemingly guided by little hints of gossip gold through little ‘hints’ about what is on the next page: ‘WHO’s got a sweat patch?? Look on the next page to find out!’ Does this instantly make you turn the page, drooling with eager anticipation to find out? Or is it simply the fact that the people reading them are so stupid, like, frontal lobotomy stupid, that they forget to turn the page? 

I assume that worryingly, they are somewhere between the two. Or maybe I am being too much of an exegete about this. Maybe it is just to make the whole process of reading more ‘exciting’. Either way it baffles me and I shall never read one again unless god forbid, I am the subject of it. 

Talking of subjects, I was thoroughly amused to sit in the middle of the two demonstrating packs the other day, and instantly one thing sprang into my head – why on earth the bloody Socialists had to get involved with it. Why? The closest thing Israel or Palestine has to socialism is Mossad. Who were ruthless bastards, just like the KGB. Otherwise this has nothing to do with them. Nothing. I think those totalitarian tools just like a good ‘anti-establishment’ gig to show each other their crappy conceptual art and chant with each other. 

I mean, really, the bugger screaming down the microphone last week was chanting the same thing for about three hours. You would have thought that they would be able to think up some fresh lyrics! Personally, something along the lines of ‘Feel da riddym, feel da rhyme, step on up, it’s socialism time!’ would have been not only more enjoyable but one damn site better than the tripe they were spilling out. Next time I see the Socialists I shall mention to them the (I am sure annoying) truth that they just jump on the backs of any old protest for the fun of it. 

Maybe they just want more friends. I mean they are not stupid, just very ignorant and annoyingly opinionated people. I know it’s cynical but I really do hate the delusion of socialism. I’m not a Nazi but anyone who has for ten minutes looked at socialism or communism will realize it just cannot work. And as I do a history degree, I have spent significantly more than ten minutes on it. 

To put it this way, they gave me a flyer with Lenin on it the other day. Lenin. He was responsible for the brutal murder of hundreds of thousands of people, simply for being non-Communists. Or Trotsky. He introduced ‘decimation’ – the random killing of one man in every ten if orders failed.

Just give it up before you actually get a realistic view of this silly idea and get very embarrassed.