Major breakthrough for ‘Save Linguistics’

There has been a major advance in the intense ‘Save Linguistics’ Campaign, providing another flash of hope for those desperate to reverse the University’s decision to withdraw the prestigious degree programme. Read more

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.