news – Page 9 of 11 – The Orbital

Disruption caused by 4 month closure of Harvest Road

22Feb

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Disruption caused by 4 month closure of Harvest Road

It would be surprising if students, and Englefield Green residents, had not noticed the recent closure of Harvest Road. Work began on Monday 4 January and is in aid of creating a revised two way road which is presupposed to help with congestion on the A30 for those living in, and around, the area of Middle Hill. However this work has involved the closing of a major section at the end of Harvest Road to all cars and pedestrians until the middle of April. The university recognises that the work ‘will be disruptive for people living both in the immediate area of Harvest Road and the surrounding streets’, but they state this disruption is obviously unavoidable, ensuring they ‘will work hard to keep local residents updated on what to expect and when, with information through letterboxes and ...

Publishers ‘Penguin’ ditch degree requirement for employees

2Feb

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Publishers ‘Penguin’ ditch degree requirement for employees

Global publishing group Penguin Random House has announced it no longer requires job candidates to hold a university degree. The announcement comes as an attempt to attract a more diverse range of candidates into publishing, an industry that has been previously criticised for its lack of diversity. The move follows a similar announcement made by accountancy firm Ernst & Young, one of Britain’s biggest graduate recruiters, who announced last August that it would no longer be considering degree or A-level results when assessing potential employees. It follows concerns that basing the selection process on requiring a degree and recruiting from particular universities was producing too narrow a range of staff. PricewaterhouseCoopers also announced plans to ditch A-level results...

28Jan

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Number 1 Safest Place to be a Student?

Following the ‘Crime Rate Doubles in Englefield Green’ (written by Orbital Journalist Hannah Foord) article which gave us worrying statistics of increasing crime levels in the area, more incidents have occurred. There was a continual stream of criminal acts leading up to the Christmas months and end of term. Rather worryingly many of these incidents are of a violent nature. Some incidents since the ‘Crime Rate Doubles in Englefield Green’ article being published in October, are included below: Early on the twelfth of November there was the bag theft incident on campus, which led to two suspected assaults. The helicopters had to be brought in to successfully detain the man. On the twenty-sixth of October a man was mugged for his MP3 player in Egham, the three hooded suspects threa...

Attack on University Internet Server JANET

27Jan

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Attack on University Internet Server JANET

On Tuesday 8 December 2015 the student population of Royal Holloway were sent into panic after what can be regarded as a collapse in the internet access across campus. The failure was as a result of what IT Info described to be a ‘malicious network attack’ against the university Internet Service Provider, JANET. Network Janet covers the ‘.ac.uk’ and ‘.gov.uk’ email addresses as well as the Wi-Fi service ‘eduroam’ which is used by most colleges and universities in the country. Royal Holloway was one of many institutes to have been affected - Manchester, Edinburgh, Sussex and Glasgow were also known to have had their servers disabled by the malicious hack. Despite sites such as Outlook, Moodle and Campus Connect remaining unaffected, it was the externally hosted sites, such as Turnitin...

Re-opening of Prezzo following the November fire

27Jan

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Re-opening of Prezzo following the November fire

On the 13 November 2015 the Italian restaurant, Prezzo – located on Egham Hill roundabout - reportedly caught fire. The blaze proceeded to make its way to the lower level, where customers would typically dine. The fire which occurred at 5:45am, had five fire engines sent to deal with the blaze, although it was reportedly put out by around 7:30am. Not only had the fire not resulted in severe delays for at least half an hour for motorist on Egham Hill and along the A30, but also meant the restaurant had to be shut until further notice. Luckily, at the time, no one was in the building so there were no reported injuries but an inquest from Surrey Fire and Rescue Service to determine the cause of the blaze was opened – although the details have not yet been confirmed from the authoriti...

27Jan

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Building work continues at St John’s

The second phase of building work at Egham’s parish church has begun, after completion of the foundations of the new building in late 2015. The building work is part of the church’s Building for the Future project and since early 2015 builders have been working on site to demolish the old church centre, readying the site for the building of a new centre to meet the needs of the church and community. Work was also required on the original Georgian church building to create the foundations of the new link between this and the complementary modern extension. The second phase of work began on 4th January after members of the congregation gathered on the footprint of the building to share prayers and hopes for the new facility after the Sunday services the previous day. The project has...

26Jan

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Universities Face Cheating Scandal

Over 50,000 university students have been caught cheating at UK universities over the last three years, new figures suggest. Freedom of information data obtained by the Times found that international students were the highest proportion of so called ‘cheaters’, with Students from outside the EU four times more likely to cheat in exams and coursework essays. Of the 70 universities that provided data on the nationality of those students caught cheating, international students made up 35% of all cheating cases, despite making up only 12% of the student body. At Queen Mary, University of London, 75% of postgraduates found plagiarising were from abroad, a third of which were from China. However, the figures obtained from 129 UK universities revealed that only 362 students were dismissed due ...

25Jan

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Four storey flooding in The Pad

At midnight on the morning of 18th November 2015, a ruptured pipe on the third floor caused a four-storey flood to occur in block A of The Pad. (more…)

16Jan

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Collision on Egham Roundabout

A collision occurred yesterday, Friday the 15th of January, at around 3:15 PM on the Prezzo roundabout in Egham. Driving past the scene at 3:35 PM, three cars and one bicycle remained on the roundabout, indicating they were either involved in the collision, or at least, witnesses of the incident. Three police cars and one ambulance attended the scene. Paramedics appeared to be checking a female for injury at the back of the ambulance. Traffic continued to flow slowly under the manual control of a police officer. A school bus was forced to change route due to the scene still not being clear as it went to collect students, from school. However, the emergency services had the situation under control and cleared by the 5 PM rush hour traffic. Police report that 'no Royal Holloway stu...

Eyesore Building Developments Across Royal Holloway

23Nov

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Eyesore Building Developments Across Royal Holloway

Eyesore Building developments outside the Windsor Building and the famous Founder's Building are fully underway and taking away some of the beauty of the RHUL campus. The project, which has an expected completion date of September 2017, began this summer and now term has commenced, and students have assembled back to Egham, the changes across campus are not unnoticeable. One first year student, living on the East side of Founder’s building, comments that the close proximity of the site to student accommodation means there is less need for an alarm for those 9am lectures, stating “although the building grind is not unbearable, it can certainly act as an alternative wake-up call in the morning”. When Bedford Library opened in 1994, Royal Holloway’s student population was considerabl...