The First Week Back

So, who knew that preparing for the Freshers’ Fair would only leave two days to produce and send off a newspaper? Certainly not me, despite my Imperial education, sometimes it makes you wonder what I actually did. There’s an interesting paper for you to read this week with an update about the Translation Studies Unit’s move to UCL despite student campaigning and the Unit’s profitable performance. Additionally on the opposite page there’s an interesting article about the shocking conditions at Fisher House. You would think that students at such a highly regarded university would be treated a bit better and at the very least not be left to walk along a corridor with exposed wiring, surrounded by electrical equipment that hasn’t passed safety tests in several years and heaters that have the curious power of bring able to set off fire alarms. There are some serious concerns about student welfare that need to be addressed by Campus Services, regardless of whether these problems have been fixed since the pictures were taken in June. However, this issue also contains more pleasant content, live pictures from the Mingle and the new Alternative Mingle. The Alternative Mingle was a new concept developed by the Union this year as a free alternative for people who didn’t want (or were too young) to drink during their first event out for the year. The event was quite successful (with music organised by IC Radio), with over 500 attendees and live performances from Jazz ‘n Rock, Crystal X and a band composed of wardens from Beit hall. However Felix believes this has accompanied a noticeable increase in vigilance by the Union at events that contain alcohol, especially in regards to events where minors might show up. As it stands the Union has released a new Alcohol Code of Conduct for Clubs, Societies & Projects this week that explicitly states that a number of new undergraduates are underage and warns Club, Society and Project chairs that they have a responsibility to ensure that U18’s do not break the law during CSP events. We’ve also launched the new Careers section in this edition, go and have a look, go on! We’ve managed to get a guest column about effective networking from the helpful staff at the Careers Service, an alumnus profile (thanks Androula Alekou) and an article by a former Imperial student about the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE), an exchange scheme celebrating it’s 65th anniversary since it was founded by Imperial in 1948. Since its start after World War II as a way to encourage academic exchange between universities IAESTE has gone on to host over 300,000 students in over 80 countries. For those of you considering applying for a Paid Summer internship you should consider going to IAESTE’s London welcome event this Sunday. You also have until December 10th to register for the scheme, so if you’re keen I’d stop reading and do it now! While you’re reading this issue, you might see things that you think could have been done better or viewpoints we’ve completely missed out. That’s great, we’re still looking for more people to join the Felix team and if you email in I won’t mind adding your name to our mailing lists, it will seem simple after I’ve upload the names from the Freshers’ Fair this weekend. Looking forward we hope to get some more features in the paper, including a look at College’s exciting Horizons program for first and second year undergraduates and some interviews of unsuspecting individuals I’ve been planning for some time Finally, as this is my second issue, I should really thanks the people who made it all possible, including Tim Arbabzadah (who helped immensely with Issue 1) and Rory Fenton the man in the cat suit.

Erratum

Felix would like to apologise for an error in last week’s print edition. Due to a mistake in the editing phase we accidentally printed a truncated title. Instead of “As Hitler once said: Execute” we meant to print “As Hitler once said: Execute Plan Z!” Felix would like to apologise for the mistake both to the author and our readers.