Friday, April 19Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Tag: SU

An evening with the King himself
Culture & Literature, Theatre & Performance

An evening with the King himself

Having never seen a Shakespeare Society production before, I was unsure of what to expect of Director Bethany Wilkinson’s adaptation of the infamous tragedy, King Lear. King Lear is one of my favourite plays in the world and, being quite a traditionalist with regards to Shakespeare plays, I hoped that the play would do it justice. In some ways, it definitely did. In others, it did not. Before the play officially starts, as audience members file in, the play has clearly already started, introducing us to Lear from the beginning. Jack Davies as King Lear, epitomises the idea of a ‘mad King’ by trailing around the hall, mumbling nonsense and cackling maniacally. He moves into audience members’ personal space, balling up paper and throwing it at key targets - me included. He is mad, obvious...
Final year facts on council tax
News

Final year facts on council tax

  Beth Carr explores the practicalities for those who have to pay council tax and what the SU are doing about it. Term is drawing to a close and amongst the pizza menus and estate agent brochures, final year students are receiving another form of unwanted mail: council tax bills. However, unlike your usual junk mail, these bills are serious and they must be paid. What is Council Tax and who has to pay? Council Tax pays for services provided by the council, such as libraries, schools and the emergency services. Every householder has to pay this, and with multiple occupants each person is liable, jointly and severally - this means that they all are responsible for the bill together but are also individually responsible for paying. Full-time students are exempt from payi...
Exclusive: The all-access guide to RHUL’s new library
Features

Exclusive: The all-access guide to RHUL’s new library

The Orbital’s Joanne Archer gives you the low down on the new Library and Student Services Centre. We promise you it’s cooler than it sounds. The latest addition to campus, the Emily Wilding Davison Building, has certainly caused quite the storm. The chaos of an ever-expanding building site has made walking anywhere in a 2-minute radius feel like a pilgrimage. It’s certainly not been a silent development. The Orbital magazine was lucky enough to be given an exclusive tour of the site in its early stages. At first I was reluctant, the building looked like a mismatch of cardboard and glass, not exactly the stuff that fuels Hogwarts-esque dreams. Stepping inside, however, I realised the full potential of the building. It towered in its skeletal form, lacking any protection from the weat...
New Information released about RHUL libraries: the future of Founder’s and Bedford is undecided
News

New Information released about RHUL libraries: the future of Founder’s and Bedford is undecided

Joanne Archer reports on the latest rumours surrounding Founder's and Bedford. "Use of the East Reading Room hasn’t been decided yet so we wouldn’t be able to say whether it will be study space or not at this time," says Amy Sutton, Head of PR. Amy Sutton states that “While the community is excited about the opening of this fantastic addition to campus, we know how important the library in Founder’s is to the College community. We can assure current, past and future students and staff that, once the Emily Wilding Davison Building opens, the Founder’s West Reading Room will remain a Library Reading Room, with study spaces, connectivity and books on shelves and will continue to provide students with space to study and reflect in historic surroundings.” The Emily Wilding Davison buil...
The Carnabys
Culture & Literature, Music

The Carnabys

Ruby Rogers chatted to indie rock band The Carnabys after their gig at the Students' Union. “Do we think that Jack could fit into your skinny tights?” asks Ben Gittins, guitar player of up and coming indie rock band The Carnabys. We never did find out the answer (maybe next time?) but I quickly realised that my pre-interview nerves were almost totally unwarranted. Chatting to Ben and lead singer Jack Mercer after the gig felt more like chatting to your significantly cooler mates at the pub, mates who’ve toured with Blondie (“Yeah, you’d just sit down and have a bit of soup with Debbie [Harry]”) and played gigs at the Roundhouse. Playing at the Students’ Union as part of the tour for their debut album ‘Too Much Never Enough’ on Saturday 5th November was the third time I had seen T...
Coffee House Sessions brings free live music to Tommy’s Kitchen
Culture & Literature, Music

Coffee House Sessions brings free live music to Tommy’s Kitchen

A revived, rebranded SU seems like the perfect place to kick off the brand new season of Coffee House Sessions, and, ignoring the lack of coffee house status, Tommy’s Kitchen provided a near perfect setting for the first of these. Sharing a name with our founder (and therefore the venue), Tom Walker stepped naturally into his second show of the day and performed a stunning original set - the audience may have arrived hungry for a Colossus burger but I certainly left with a hunger for more of Walker’s original songs. The set was fresh but full of cultural references, including Katy Perry, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Spotify: it provided something to relate to even though you were hearing completely new content. We sat down with Tom Walker before the set to discover more about his ba...
Man Restrained by Police outside SU
News

Man Restrained by Police outside SU

A man has allegedly been restrained by police and forced into a van after becoming aggressive towards SU staff at Tommy’s. The incident occurred at the burger bar at lunchtime. Details are unclear at the moment, but eyewitnesses suggest he was drunk and may have acted inappropriately towards female students and staff; prompting a complaint from one student. It was as the SU staff became involved that the man became aggressive. Grace Bilney complained to the SU after the man “made uncomfortable comments about girls on campus”, and claims she overhead him saying he worked at one of the construction sites on campus. “He said he was too drunk to work and so was ‘kicked off site’, so I assume he was working on one of the building sites at the uni.” Eyewitnesses say he then had tw...
Securing An Internship
Features

Securing An Internship

The end of term two is fast approaching, and many of us will be searching for those summer internships. Here are a few top tips to help you along the way: • Check you are well-suited for the internships you apply for and carefully consider whether you meet their requirements. • Use LinkedIn the professional social media network to build your résumé; it is much more professional than Facebook. On the Facebook note, ensure all of your social media accounts represent you in a positive way, maybe don’t post pictures of any bad nights out at the SU! • Customize your résumé for each internship you apply for, ensuring you create a new cover letter for each application. • Honesty is definitely the best policy. Don’t hyperbolise information, be accurate, it could come back to bite you in the … ...
Over 300 students queue for half price Summer Ball tickets
News

Over 300 students queue for half price Summer Ball tickets

Beth Carr reports on the Summer Ball launch. 6am on campus is often a quiet place with few people, if any, having the unfortunate opportunity to experience the sunrise. However the morning of 24th March saw a very different story, with hundreds of students seeing in the day outside the Students' Union in the hope of getting hold of one of the 300 £35 tickets for this year's Summer Ball. While those at the front of the queue had reportedly been there since 10pm on Wednesday night, the queue only started getting busy by around 3am, with some students joining straight from the paint party and others rocking up at close with blankets, coats, and electronic devices. With essay deadlines in sight, it is not surprising that many people brought their laptops and finished work sat outside the...
“Grab a coat”… you’re hitting the SU!
Lifestyle

“Grab a coat”… you’re hitting the SU!

So will you be at the SU on Wednesday night? After all, where else will you find sticky floors and artificially blue VK’s? It is likely our Thursday lectures would thank us for a night in, yet for a single guy what better opportunity is it to flex the muscle memory of high school flirting techniques... So, what I ask is, how are the guys here at Royal Holloway pulling girls at the SU? With a higher percentage of girls to guys, it is easy to presume that the task will be an easy one and guys at the SU are definitely not lacking in confidence. Through witnessing the awkwardness of them attempting to make their move, their tactics are interesting, to say the least... Many get drunk and grope and grind on the dance floor, whilst others attempt to make ‘bedroom eyes’ across the bar. A fai...