Saturday, June 13Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

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Royal Holloway Alumna Makes The Apprentice final
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Royal Holloway Alumna Makes The Apprentice final

Lord Alan Sugar is searching for his next business partner in the BBC’s popular reality game show, The Apprentice. The series, which spans 14 weeks, puts businesspeople through tough trials of elimination to find the candidate with the best skills and business model. The winner will secure a £250,000 investment into their business, shared with Lord Sugar as a 50% stake holder. Former Royal Holloway student, Sarah Lynn, has made it to the final round against competitor James White. Sarah Lynn studied at Royal Holloway from 1999, graduating with a degree in History and Politics in 2002. In June 2010 Lynn set up her business, Sweets in the City, which she has been working to improve over the past 7 years. The company produces “hand-picked and hand-packed” sweet b...
Residents Dissatisfied over Ashdene House
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Residents Dissatisfied over Ashdene House

Ashdene House on St Jude’s Road, Englefield Green is being considered as new student accommodation flats. Planning application for the building to be demolished and then rebuilt as 29 student flats was registered a few weeks ago. Many residents in Englefield Green were not pleased with these proposals. In fact, at a public consultation on Oct 4 of this year, 89 people were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding the issue. 83% of the respondents did not want Ashdene House to be turned into student flats and would prefer it to be given over to social housing schemes. People in the popular Facebook group ‘Englefield Greenies’ have commented their stark objections to this student accommodation. One person said that “the green is fast becoming a campus”. Others spoke up about the noi...
Sign Here
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Sign Here

Royal Holloway has recently been subject to several petitions, created by students attempting to instil the change they’d like to see at the university. In early September, student Phoebe Dormand created a petition that asked for the Health Centre on campus to be improved. She cited 8 issues that she felt warranted the petition, including but not limited to response time, lack of sympathy, being refused appointments and having only 5 doctors and 1 nurse covering over 9000 students. Comments on the petition found that there were many other issues with the Health Centre that Phoebe had not touched on as well as increasing solidarity between the students. Phoebe’s petition gained over 1500 signatures and led to the SU releasing a survey asking students to review the Health Centre in an ...
Referendum on NSS Boycott Announced
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Referendum on NSS Boycott Announced

Royal Holloway’s Student’s Union has called for a referendum to vote on whether or not the RHSU should continue to boycott the National Student Survey (NSS). The boycott was passed in a referendum in March of this year, with 282 votes. The original boycott was called for, in conjunction with the National Union of Students (NUS), in response to the NSS being used with the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to possibly allow universities to charge higher tuition fees. The NSS measures student satisfaction while the TEF measures quality of teaching and results of study. Universities can score Gold or Silver and be placed on the higher end of the spectrum or they could be scored with a Bronze, which is a lower rating. Thus, those that achieved Gold or Silver, under the Government’s initiat...
Big Giving for RHUL’s Future Students
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Big Giving for RHUL’s Future Students

On Tuesday 28 November, Royal Holloway launched the Big Give Christmas Challenge here. It is an annual event in the UK that was founded by RHUL Honorary Fellow Sir Alec Reed in 2007. The premise of the Big Give Challenge is simple: any online donations made within the allotted time will be matched in funding, essentially doubling the donation at no extra cost to the donator. It is the UK’s biggest online match funding campaign. The campaign opened nationally on Tuesday at 12pm and will go on until 12pm on Tuesday 5 December. RHUL is attempting to raise funds for scholarships and work placements to be given to students that require financial support to attend university or undergo important work experience. The official statement on RHUL’s website regarding scholarships tells us th...
Offenders Sentenced in Sexual Exploitation Ring
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Offenders Sentenced in Sexual Exploitation Ring

A sexual exploitation ring has been discovered in North Surrey and West London. Two people were convicted by a jury in Guildford Crown Court in April, finding them to be guilty of the exploitation of teenage girls in the surrounding areas. Between January and February of 2016, 21 year-old Daniel Pusey and 40 year-old Diane Chilcott would attempt to lure young girls to hotels in Staines, Twickenham, Tolworth and Heathrow. The victims were aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the incidents. They would first consume large amounts of alcohol and smoke cigarettes at Chilcotts House in Chertsey before being driven by the two perpetrators to various hotels. Upon arriving at these hotels, Pusey would subject them to sexual abuse. During the trial, Pusey was found guilty of seven counts o...
Model Defers Royal Holloway Due to Debilitating Illness
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Model Defers Royal Holloway Due to Debilitating Illness

Destiny Sedlacek, a 19-year old girl from Weybridge, Surrey was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome in 2016. Ehlers Danlos syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects a person’s connective tissue. It would lead to symptoms such as skin being stretched out, loose joints and abnormal-looking scars. Prior to her diagnosis, Destiny was previously a model featured in Vogue Magazine. She was the official model for films like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Fury. She has also modelled for popular make-up brand Rimmel London UK. She studied Forensic Science at college but her diagnosis meant she was unable to attend her classes. She “had to finish [her] college work in hospitals”. This has impacted her future ambitions, which includes to go on to Royal Holloway, University of London, to ...
Royal Holloway students win technology competition
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Royal Holloway students win technology competition

A team of five Royal Holloway students have won the Cisco University Challenge. At the annual event, over 70 students from the UK’s top universities compete against each other in a two-day hackathon: a competition in which teams of developers build products to address a set of challenges. This year, Royal Holloway sent two teams of students to Feltham to compete in the challenge that took place on the 26th – 27th October.  The winning team, referred to as Team Shark, comprised of Megan Goh, Hugh Wells, Dulcie Jackson, Awen Saunders and Shaurya Puri. The winning team’s entry to the competition was a programme called TrainShark, aimed at improving IT throughout the rail network in the UK. Their programme would allow train passengers to determine which carriage is least crowded befor...
“It’s Okay To Be White” posters appear across Egham
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“It’s Okay To Be White” posters appear across Egham

A number of posters have been spotted around the Englefield Green area stating "it's okay to be white". These posters began to appear around the 1st and 2nd of November near St Jude's School and Victoria Street. They are supposedly the product of an anti-left wing campaign launched by the web forum 4chan, on which an anonymous user posted the 'game plan' which stated the posters were to be put up on campuses worldwide around Halloween, as costumes provided anonymity, and the reactions of left-wing individuals would inform white people that they are 'hated' by the left wing, and thus they would sway towards far right views. The posters have been seen on multiple US campuses such as Tulane, Princeton and Rocky River, Ohio. US citizens have taken to twitter to call the posters "a distur...
Royal Holloway declared ‘Most Beautiful Campus’
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Royal Holloway declared ‘Most Beautiful Campus’

Royal Holloway has recently picked up the prize for the ‘UK’s Most Beautiful University’. It beat off competition from 14 other universities to claim the coveted prize, and attracted over 21,000 votes through the Holiday Lettings website. The university won with 31% of the votes. What with the new flagship Emily Wilding Davidson Library, and the historically renowned grade 1 listed Founders building, it should come as no surprise that Royal Holloway was a shoe in for this award. The state-of-the-art Emily Wilding Davison Building, which was officially opened last month by Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, continues to impress visitors and students alike, and needless to say Founders still stands as impressive and eye catching as always. According to Royal Holloway’s website, www.r...