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Fire Broke Out During Student’s Union Club Night

27Sep

By Michele TheilNo Comments

News

Fire Broke Out During Student’s Union Club Night

A fire broke out in the Student’s Union (SU) on Wednesday 26 September during the popular club night, Flawless. The fire started in Tommy’s Kitchen, where a speaker caught fire. There is not yet a known cause to the fire but an anonymous source within the SU staff speculated that it was from spilled drinks. Reports suggest that the fire started just before midnight, with staff responding quickly to the incident and evacuating the students. When a fire alarm goes off in the SU, students are to be taken outside and gather in the courtyard until they can safely leave. The fire brigade was called and arrived in order to help union staff contain the fire and manage the students. At 1AM, the fire brigade gave the SU permission to allow people back into the venue as the fire had been dealt wi...

20Sep

By Natasha LamNo Comments

Opinion

Journalism: Maybe, Maybe Not.

Journalism is an amazing industry. Difficult, sure, but absolutely amazing. Of course, I’m biased in that view considering I am looking to go into this industry and, on good days, may even refer to myself as an actual journalist rather than a journalist-to-be. My life is filled with FOI requests, countless emails to interview subjects and half-finished articles in various Word Documents and I love it. I am always trying to get my friends interested in journalism and if you’ve spoken to me for longer than five minutes, it’s likely I’ll have tried to recruit you for this very magazine. People getting involved in journalism, and especially student journalism, is extremely important as we are facing accusations of ‘Fake News’, budget cuts and, more often than not, a stressful environment to wo...

Continued Suspension of Royal Holloway UCU Equality Officer, Jeff Franks

18Sep

By Natasha LamNo Comments

News

Continued Suspension of Royal Holloway UCU Equality Officer, Jeff Franks

Jeff Franks, a Professor in the Economics Department here at RHUL, has been suspended since April 11 2018 and continues to be restricted from contacting students or coming onto campus. He has been suspended on the grounds of leaking confidential and sensitive information, violating the recently implemented GDPR and privacy practices, as well as violating the College Grievance Policy. According to a document Orbital Magazine has access to, the college’s suspension of Franks “is deemed appropriate because… continued presence at work may inhibit the investigation in connection with the allegations” against him. Franks is the Equality Officer for the Royal Holloway branch of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) and was supportive of the pensions strikes that occurred earlier this year....

10Aug

By Samantha DavisNo Comments

Opinion

Artificial Rights

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that can cause excitement in some, and strike fear into the hearts of others. However, with the current developments in the technology industry, and the future we’re clearly heading towards, we cannot deny that AI is a rapidly growing phenomenon. This has been made especially clear after the emergence and popularity of Sophia. Described as a ‘social humanoid robot’, Sophia was developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics and was activated on April 19 2015. Able to display 62 facial expressions, convey human feelings, and have a sense of humour, Sophia’s design is also said to have been modelled after Audrey Hepburn. Sophia quickly became mainstream news when in October 2017 she was granted official Saudi Arabian citizenship, making her the first eve...

9Aug

By Lydia PaynterNo Comments

Lifestyle

‘Nice Guys Finish Last’

Nice guys finish last’ has to be one of my least favourite phrases in the English language, pipped to the post perhaps only by ‘the friend zone’. Yet time and time again, in conversations, online and in films and TV, the idea that women ignore the ‘nice guys’ in favour of a bad boy is pervasive in our culture. To the guys who are respectful and kind to women, the ones who will go to Women’s Marches, lift up their female colleagues at work, and call themselves feminists I will say this: it’s great that you’re a feminist, it’s great that you respect women, but that still doesn’t mean that woman you catch eyes with over the morning papers on the underground simply must date you. Being a ‘nice guy’ is a reward in itself, it makes you a better person, and society better as a whole. But th...

7Aug

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

Learning to See in the Dark

Dark matter makes up 26.8% of our Universe’s energy and mass, yet we know practically nothing about it. In fact we only really know about luminous matter, such as that we are made from or see in our every day life and this only amounts to about 4% of the Universe’s energy and mass. So called, dark matter remains to this day an extremely illusive entity, only ever evidenced by cosmologists when looking at the discrepancy between the gravitational pull of a galaxy, and the mass within the galaxy. It seems that the galaxies must have much more matter within them than is visible. So what is this invisible, dark matter? Perhaps we’re about to find out. New results of the temperature of the early universe from the EDGES all-sky radio antenna experiment could change our view on dark matter enti...

7Aug

By Victoria ChapmanNo Comments

Lifestyle

The Gender Pay Gap: What Can You Do?

You’ve probably heard or read about Orbital’s breaking story on the comments made by Principal Paul Layzell about the gender pay gap recently. But, the question is what can you do as a fellow student to combat this problem as you move ever closer to a career yourself? In late March, a group called RHOccupy camped outside the Principal’s office, campaigning against the lack of support for Royal Holloway’s lecturing staff during the UCU strikes. The outcome was incredible - not only did the Principal agree to sign their list of demands and meet with them to discuss their concerns, but this reflected a wider idea of how a demonstration of students can affect university politics. This does not just apply to the strikes. This is our university which means we have the power to instil as much ...

4Aug

By Natasha LamNo Comments

Science & Technology

Spare Parts?

Lab-grown body parts aren’t just science fiction. Scientists all over the world are attempting to use stem cells to grow ears, livers, hearts, kidneys, blood vessels, skin and bladders in labs that are transplantable into real people. Though rare, some people are walking around with lab-grown bladders. Around 80% of the world’s transplants come from the deceased while the other 20% is mainly made up of living donors and a small percentage attributed to a lab. Many people question whether the future could see people receiving transplants from a lab, or even a ‘farm’ of lab-grown human body parts, mass produced for transplants all over the world. These organs are greatly needed. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), there are over 100,000 people waiting for a lifesaving...

2Aug

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Visual Arts

Hope to Nope?

The Design Museum is situated on Kensington High Street, a beautiful building with fascinating exhibits inside. One recent exhibit looked at the graphic design aspects of political activism. Entitled ‘Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008 - 2018’, it sought to explore the evolving nature of design, particularly within the changing landscape of politics in the last decade. The exhibit showcased many beautiful designs, all likely familiar to those who have not only engaged in politics but simply logged onto Facebook in recent years. As soon as you walk in to the ‘Hope to Nope’ exhibit, after an odd descent down a steep staircase, you are greeted by a bright yellow wall, with an explanation for the exhibits existence. The explanation describes the “turbulent decade” we have experienced and...

31Jul

By Louisa WicksNo Comments

Sports & Socs

A Spotlight on Eton Fives

Eton Fives only officially became a club this year, and has since been gaining more and more success. I met with the club’s president, Ollie Avery, to find out more about what they do and what they’ve achieved so far. Ollie described the sport as a variation of handball, or like “squash with hands”. Essentially the aim of the game is to hit the small cork ball above a ledge on the wall and to “play a shot that the other team cannot continue”. There are usually two people on each team, but there is no referee. As it is a rather informal sport, you must discuss with the other team whether a shot was legal or not. Ollie says that this “teaches you to play the game like a human”. The informality of the club was something that Ollie emphasised; he said that you can “play at your own leisure”...