The Badger – Year in review 2008/2009

Tradition dictates that the outgoing communications office and editor-in-chief(s)  write a small summary of the past academic year. These summaries have gained a repuation for distilling the mood of a whole cohort of graduands, whilst simultaneously providing a soapbox for the people who spend a year being neutral.

This year however, has seen the blossoming of a wonderful experiment: The Badger Online. (Thanks for reading by the way!) Accordingly, the tradition is in need of a bit of an update. Superficially, this is the first time that the end-of-year summaries have been made available online (scroll down). Perhaps more importantly though, you now have the ability to see all the articles they’re talking about, because they’re all stored here, on this site, preserved forever and ever.

For my part, I’d like to join the others in thanking all the contributors for allowing us to publish their work, the editorial team for curating this wealth of talent, Dan Higgins for imagining the site, Andy Spratley for constructing it and Lisa Murray for spending her Friday evenings helping me run it. You guys are all amazing.

Anyway, without any further ado, here are the real summaries:

Suki Ferguson

Suki Ferguson – Editor-in-Chief

This year, numerous events occurring on our humble campus have played out on a surprisingly national stage.

The students spurred into action by the conflict in Gaza proved that a good oldfashioned Sussex sit-in can simultaneously bring about significant policy changes and provide inspiration for fellow protesters across the UK. The recent campaign to protest against the management’s dodgy Linguistics-cutting tactics has garnered its own publicity, attracting the support of internationally respected academics. And our news agenda has proved inspiring for the broadsheets, who came to The Badger for leads on stories about the use of pep pills in universities. Clearly, The Badger plays an important role in the gradual evolution of how the world sees Sussex, and how we see ourselves as a student body.

Being involved with producing The Badger for the last two years has taught me several important lessons: how to write articles that provoke surprisingly rude and incoherent responses from the occasional loon; how to negotiate editing software that possesses only intermittent spellchecking abilities (sorry about all the typos guys); and that editing the student newspaper is almost always way more fun than working on my degree. In fact, loons and typos aside, writing and editing The Badger is an experience I can wholeheartedly recommend to any student with a few hours to fill and something to say.

One thing is certain: being involved in this newspaper guarantees that you will always have the scoop on the dramas and disasters that make university life so engaging. The Badger gives you access: access to student politics, access to free films, gigs and plays, and even access to the journalism industry (if you’re lucky!).

The joy of it is that if you want to write for The Badger, you can – all you need to do is show up at a writer’s meeting to pick up a story, or hand in your application for next year’s editing positions.

So, to sum up: I hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage of university life in 2008/9 as much as I’ve enjoyed working with the editorial team that produced it. And it’s good to know that even if us almostgrads soon won’t be able to read the paper version, at least we now have thebadgeronline.co.uk to console us should we ever need the occasional Sussex update.

Here’s to next year’s Badger!

Michael Holder

Michael Holder – Editor-in-Chief

First and last of all, a few regrets. There’s a slight chance that you’ve opened The Badger on a Monday (because you definitely always do that) and spotted another minor grammatical error, or the text doesn’t quite line up, or finally realised that you are an annoying pedant. We’re sorry, but beauty and perfection do not come often together. No one can have both. But I always notice these things and I regret that this year has turned me into such into an annoying pedant.

On a personal and far more important level, I regret that our interview with Scott from 5ive was never published. Now the full extent of the bitterness he feels towards his former bandmates because “they don’t want a reunion” may never be known. Can’t you see they’re busy right now, Scott? And anyway, Blue have reformed. We got his photo as well and he’s not all that, in case you were wondering. After the photo, he mumbled something about beauty and perfection not going together and then went off to sing ‘Keep on Moving’ to thousands of adoring Freshers.

This has been an excellent year, though, and massive thanks have to go out to everyone who has helped out: web editors Tom Wright & Lisa Murray; Andy Spratley; Suki & Dan; Nick Blumsom the photographer; all the proofreaders who come in every week to read our mess; the brilliant editorial team we’ve had this year; and of course everybody who has written and contributed to The Badger this year - without you, everything is irrelevant.

Dan Higgins

Dan Higgins – USSU Communications Officer

In a year which has seen linguistics courses cut, an occupation on campus, countless referenda, record-breaking election turnouts and the notion of “studentification”, The Badger has perhaps never been so important to campus life.

This year we have developed The Badger Online to allow readers to comment instantly on whichever article they choose. We have also branched out into social media with a facebook application and twitter feed. None of this development would have been possible without the assistance and technical expertise of Andy Spratley, the USSU IT and Web Manager, and I am very lucky we had someone ‘in the know’ who shared the same vision and had the ability to make it a reality. Through all this development, articles in The Badger are now being read on a regional, local and national level.

With a strong team next year and Michael Holder at the helm, The Badger will continue to grow and become a guiding force in student news. Over and out.

A‘pork’alypse Now

It is a “threat to the whole of humanity” exclaimed the front page of The Sun last week. I’d always envisioned something much more cataclysmic. In Independence Day it was aliens that threatened existence, in Deep Impact it was a massive asteroid…in reality, according to The Sun at least, it is flu contracted from a pig farm in Mexico. It certainly could’ve brought an interesting twist to the plot of Babe 2: Pig in the city. In 2006, there were fifteen predictions that the world was going to end, most of which were prophesized centuries ago. These included catastrophic climate change occurrences like a super-volcano or the destruction of the Ozone layer, an all-out nuclear war and even a robot takeover but not one of them foresaw a swine flu pandemic. Even the black hole experiment was more exciting than this. Read more

Three cheers for Sussex students

The winners of the annual USSU Cheers Awards, dedicated to rewarding the good work done in societies and student media at Sussex, were announced last week. The awards, hosted by Activities Officer Dave Owen, were held at Lansdowne Place Hotel in Hove last week. The event was a swanky occasion, with attendees decked out in their finest suits and dresses, prompting USSU Education Officer Adam Farrell to say that the event was “Sussex Union with a touch of class.” Read more

Uproar as linguistics axed

One of the highest-ranking degree programmes at Sussex will close to new applicants at the end of the current academic year.The University announced last term, without any prior consultation with staff or students, that there will be no new students accepted on to Linguistics courses from October 2009. Read more

In the thick of it

Peter Capaldi has probably found the role of his life as ‘Malcolm Tucker’, the acid-tongued Downing Street spin-doctor, last seen in the award-winning “The Thick Of It” which is, of course, the brainchild of Armando Iannucci. Iannucci, who also created I’m Alan Partridge and The Day Today, sat down with Capaldi to talk about his first foray to the big screen, In the Loop. Read more

Pinker to VC: “I hope you will reconsider this decision”

Steven Pinker, the prominent experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist and best-selling author, yesterday wrote to Michael Farthing, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex, urging him to revisit and reconsider the controversial decision to cut linguistics courses. Read more

Linguistics axed

One of the highest-ranking degree programmes at Sussex will close to new applicants at the end of the current academic year.

The University announced last week, without any prior consultation with staff or students, that there will be no new students accepted onto Linguistics courses from October 2009. Students currently enrolled on Linguistics degree programmes will be able to finish their degrees and teaching will continue for two years. As of the 2011-2012 academic year, English Language, MA courses in English Language and Applied Linguistics and research programmes will continue to operate but from within the English department. Staff were informed of the decision at a meeting with the Dean of Humanities on Wednesday 18 March; however no member of senior management was present at the meeting to discuss the decision. The word spread to the USSU sabbatical officers and students the following day. Read more

A day in the life… of a Sabb

Just over a week ago, the USSU Sabbatical elections witnessed the largest turnout of voters on record. The next six Sabbatical officers were chosen and in just over four month’s time, they will assume their positions at the forefront of the Students’ Union. Read more

The election in pictures…

It’s all over now, but for a short while the elections burned bright and colourful. In the following pages we humbly submit, for your perusal and reflection, a small collection of photographic tokens of the iconic moments of the sabbatical elections 2009. Read more

The Wrestler

I was always more of a wrestling fan than a boxing fan. I knew it was choreographed but that didn’t deter me, in fact, it was one of the main reasons I liked it; it was like a soap opera but where every storyline ended with a fight. Whereas boxing fans had Raging Bull, Cinderella Man, Ali, Million Dollar Baby and countless others to fawn upon, wrestling fans, like me, had been limited to the dreadful David Arquette film Ready to Rumble and Jack Black’s Nacho Libre – both using the wrestling industry as comedy fodder, leaving disappointed and unfulfilled grappling fans to explore gritty real-life documentaries. When Aronofsky announced The Wrestler, I was understandably dubious, but as Mickey Rourke replaced Nicolas Cage, I started to believe…could this be it? Is this my Rocky?
Read more

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