Thursday, March 28Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Tag: Egham

The Nightmare Before Christmas – The Return of Thomas Cramer
News

The Nightmare Before Christmas – The Return of Thomas Cramer

Cramer's criminal behaviour report - via Surrey Police With the nights getting darker as winter approaches and headlines in the media warning of increased injection spiking, worry and insecurity is considered at an all-time high for university students looking to celebrate the first winter in two years without a lockdown.  Unfortunately, there’s a pressing, returning worry for the student body of Royal Holloway. It takes the form of Thomas Cramer.  The 29-year-old was discovered in the third term of last year taking unsolicited pictures primarily of the female populace on campus. He subsequently posted these images to social media. In response to those taking a punch at him in the comments for his perverted actions, he used derogatory comments, which included racial pre...
Orbital’s Madelaine Gray Covers Royal Holloway’s XR Protest: How It Happened & What Next?
Features, News

Orbital’s Madelaine Gray Covers Royal Holloway’s XR Protest: How It Happened & What Next?

“Climate change isn’t stopping,” says one of today’s protesters on location at Royal Holloway. “It isn’t slowing down for anyone. There’s no time to delay.” And so it would seem. It’s a chilly day on campus, one of the first on which you’d be hard pressed to find a student without a coat or scarf. There’s been the threat of rain all morning, from both the forecast and the ominous-looking clouds. But the protesters are undeterred. After all, with climate change comes the promise of more rainy days, even in perpetually sodden Britain. Since launching three years ago, Extinction Rebellion has been catapulted to the forefront of British media coverage of climate change. Their bold statements and radical approach, based on the historic practice of civil disobedience, has caused both a hu...
KLKutz: In Review
Features

KLKutz: In Review

KLKutz is one of Royal Holloway’s underappreciated gems; too many students either go back home to their local barbershop or pay up to £40 for a sub-par cut on Egham high street. Well, they’re missing out and wasting money. Anthony Gidis started studying computer science at Royal Holloway in 2018. In the summer leading up to Freshers, he had a dilemma: Anthony wanted the university experience, he just didn’t want the university budget. It was either live in frugality or find a way to earn an income outside of maintenance payments. Frugality was the bleaker option.  Anthony had been getting weekly haircuts since his early teens; something he realised he’d have to forfeit on his university budget. Rather than mourning his haircuts, that summer he learnt how to barber for himself. ...
Which Undergraduate are you: Miracle Child or Hustler?
Features, Opinion

Which Undergraduate are you: Miracle Child or Hustler?

The ‘Are They Still Alive?’ One Whether you’re a halls resident plagued nightly by the 2am orchestral onslaught of returning Medicine and SU drunkards or living in a private house on the Shott where the thump of electro-beats is never far off, there’s no way you’re letting anyone interrupt your slumber. Throughout sixth form you were consistently deprived of sleep; you look back on those days and shudder. You’ll never take the bliss of an alarm-less morning for granted again. You’ll never feel anything but earnest gratitude on those cold, January mornings when you have the privilege of attending your lecture from bed (thanks to Royal Holloway’s adoption of the Open University model). You exploit the minimal university schedule for all it’s worth - midday begins to feel like 7am. When y...
Extinction Rebellion and the Future of Climate Change: how helpful is the movement at creating long-lasting preventative change?
Opinion

Extinction Rebellion and the Future of Climate Change: how helpful is the movement at creating long-lasting preventative change?

Success is subjective and often put numerically, but with a movement and protest group like XR how can their success be measured? Since launching in the UK at the end of October in 2018 they have had an aim to make ‘decision makers take notice’ and ‘increase the conversation about the depth of Climate change’. Extinction Rebellion’s main tool is protest. As of Thursday 2nd September, 483 people were arrested over the protests, according to The Guardian. During that week Police officers battled with protestors for control of an open top bus blocking London Bridge. Police are reported to have wrestled with protestors in a new desperate attempt to reduce the disruption. In the same week, there were also numerous protests from those against vaccination. A growing number of people disagree wit...
The Future of Afghanistan and its Women under Taliban Rule
Features, News

The Future of Afghanistan and its Women under Taliban Rule

‘The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighbourhoods’, Khalid Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khalid Hosseini an Afghan-born American novelist, outlines a mother-daughter story within the context of a contemporary Afghan society when published in 2007. As the above quote demonstrates, Hosseini tries to reflect what he recognised as a 'thriving city' that ‘by the standards of a conservative religious country… was quite liberal’ in his memory of living in Afghanistan in his early years.  Like the rest of the world, Hosseini saw the gradual reclaiming of Afghanistan; as ‘Kabul had fallen’, he watched woefully. Hosseini now comments that he has ‘no idea what the future holds’.  That he is 'deeply sc...
The Emphasis On Drinking During Freshers’ Week
News, Opinion

The Emphasis On Drinking During Freshers’ Week

With COVID-19 restrictions lifted and a gradual return to normality, Freshers’ Week will be going ahead as planned. While some will be enjoying the social opportunities that the legendary week has to offer, others might have a less than satisfactory experience; especially when we consider the pressure being placed upon students to consume excessive amounts of alcohol during the week. Either way, there will be a mixture of responses, but nevertheless it is integral that we normalise the inability to make friends in the first couple of weeks, and the stress that resonates with joining a new community. It’s easy to forget as a second or third year how isolating the first term of first year can be.  All too often, university life has been circumscribed to the pervasive stereotype that...
Only Murders In The Building: the secrets in the walls
Features, Film & TV

Only Murders In The Building: the secrets in the walls

When true crime podcasts become the comforting friend of loneliness… Only Murders In The Building, one of the newest editions to hit Disney Plus, follows the story of three lonely, eccentric misfits, Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) in New York City, brought together by their mutual love of their favourite true crime podcast ‘All Is Not Ok in Oklahoma’. Living their seemingly mundane lives within the same apartment building known as the Arconia, the three find themselves wrapped up in a crime case of their own after the shocking death of fellow resident Tim Kono (Julian Cihi), and team-up in an attempt to solve the mystery. True Crime podcasts are at an all-time high, and Only Murders In The Building takes the concept of a True Crime Podcast as ...
Are cinemas going extinct?  A Post-Covid Review
Film & TV, Theatre & Performance

Are cinemas going extinct? A Post-Covid Review

Stale popcorn and half-working escalators, overpriced, too-watery coke and the blue raspberry (what even is that?) slushy that comes with a funny shaped, reusable plastic cup that will sit on your windowsill for months, never to be used again -- there’s nothing quite like the cinema. The first public performance of a film was in 1896, but with the pandemic forcing us to stay at home and the growing popularity of binge-watching culture, the cinema don’t have the same grasp on society as it once did. Growing up, I just about lived in the theatre, taking every chance I could to watch the latest movies; it was my safe space and I enjoyed the shared experience of watching with other people. The final battle scene, where every person in the theatre gasped in shock during Twilight Breaking Da...
Jennifer’s Body: the Final Girl Dismantled
Film & TV

Jennifer’s Body: the Final Girl Dismantled

Warning - this article contains spoilers.  With it being Halloween, a lot of us will be spending the season in various ways. Whether it is going out to the SU dressed up in costume, or snuggling up under a blanket and watching a scary movie. Nowadays, we are spoiled for choice with what films we can watch, because horror films have many sub-genres. For example, a  sub-genre in horror which always fascinated me was the ‘slasher film’. This was primarily because all the slasher films of the 70s, 80s, and 90s ended in the same manner. There was always a ‘Final Girl’ who overcame the killer and survived. Admittedly there were different variations of the Final Girl trope. One could easily point out a contrast between Jamie Lee Curtis’ virginal Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978), to...