Money vs. art building- London Metropolitan
Student protesters are occupying an art block in protest at plans to sell off the design school building for £50m. The sale comes after a period of financial difficulty for London Metropolitan University. The institution is still dealing with more than £30m worth of debt from 2009. A spokesperson for ‘Occupy the Cass’ told HuffPost UK: “They’re putting money over student welfare. They have so much debt and we’re paying for their mistake.” The occupation of Bank Gallery, which began on Wednesday, is just the latest in a long line of protests after London Metropolitan University announced it was moving all faculties to the Holloway Road campus. Central House, which currently houses the Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design on Commercial Road, is to be sold to pay for the relocation.The group said: “We’re all paying for these facilities and they’ve just changed the terms.”
Uni websites go down- Nationwide
Universities across the UK have lost their internet connections following a cyber attack, meaning many of their sites are down. Institutions connected to Janet, a publicly-funded academic computer network, have come under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Many campuses across the country are affected as Janet is responsible for the WiFi network used at the majority of universities. This also affects .ac.uk and .gov.uk domains. Its engineers identified the cause as a DDoS attack and are working to identify the source of the assault and fix the issues.DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to knock out an internet service. This is usually done by flooding the target with great amounts of traffic. This causes the system to exceed its capacity and slow down or become unavailable to users. The attack resulted in high traffic coming to the web services and their subsequent crashing for a few hours straight.
Gem-funded studies- Exeter
A Fabergé ring has been raffled at a London conference to raise money for a female student to study at Cambourne School of Mines (CSM), based at Exeter’s Penryn Campus. Organised by Women in Mining (UK), an organisation that aims to increase the number of women in mining and minerals careers, the raffle aimed to raise £5,000 to fund a scholarship for a female student to take the MSc Mining Engineering course, which commences in September 2016. The rocco-style ring was donated by the owners of Fabergé and is set with an ameythst. The raffle commenced at the Mines and Money conference in Islington, the largest mining investment conference in Europe, during a reception celebrating the launch of the 2015 ‘100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining.’ Raffle tickets were priced at £10 each.
Trump loses degree- Aberdeen
Donald Trump has been stripped from his honorary degree from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Trump was presented with the award of Doctor of Business Administration (Hon DBA) at the university in October 2010. At the time, Professor John Harper - RGU’s acting principal and vice-chancellor - said: “Given that business and entrepreneurship lie at the heart of much of the university’s academic offering, it is only fitting to award Mr Trump with an honorary degree.” Just last week, though, an RGU spokesman said: “In 2010, Robert Gordon University awarded an honorary DBA to Mr Donald Trump in recognition of his achievements as an entrepreneur and businessman. In the course of the current US election campaign, Mr Trump has made a number of statements that are wholly incompatible with the ethos and values of the university. The university has therefore decided to revoke its award of the honorary degree.”
