Hello readers, I hope this Week 4 edition of SCAN finds you well. We’re now seven issues into my editorship of SCAN and I still don’t know how to begin an Editorial, so let’s skip past this awkwardness and get right into it.
Although we’ve not printed any articles about it this issue, the most recent buzz around campus has been about the Lonsdale ‘drunkenness crackdown’, where the higher-ups in the college threatened to start fining students essentially for being drunk. Unfortunately, Lancaster is getting a pretty bad reputation in the national press this academic year, as the likes of The Independent and the Metro flocked to write about it. We’ve also published an analysis, written by Ronnie Rowlands, that can be found on our website. In the Letters section this week, we’ve had a Lancaster alumnus write an open letter to the University, which you can read on page 55.
It’s a common misconception that SCAN is run and controlled by LUSU, one which is understandable given that this year is the first time a student has been the Editor of SCAN in a very long while. Whilst most of the time, it’s nice to be positive about our Union and about our University – nobody wants to think they’re paying large sums of money to go to an institution that wants to do nothing but make their lives a misery – I’d like to remind you all that SCAN (Student Comment And News) really is open to anyone.
If you read an article in the paper and you have a different opinion, or you’d like to weigh in on a topic you’ve seen in the news recently; I strongly encourage you to contact one of our section editors, let us know what you’d like to talk about and get started on seeing your name in print. Speaking of which, our new Comment feature ‘Answers from Alex Square’ is back this week, so if you were interviewed by a tall blonde with a microphone, flick to the Comment section to see if your picture was included.
Finally, in my list of announcements and general things you should know about, we here at the SCAN hub – and by SCAN hub I mean myself and many teddy bears that I am too old for in a bedroom somewhere in Lancaster, we’re still working on our batcave – have already been thinking ahead to the Full Time Officer (FTO) elections. For those of you who are in your first year here at Lancaster, you may not know what I’m talking about when I say FTOs. In my first year, the elections period passed by in an unacknowledged haze of cow posters all down the Spine and a really funny VP Activities campaign slogan that still makes me crack up: ‘Got beef? Haslam’.
Anyway, terribly hilarious puns aside, the FTO elections are open to any student, and during them we will elect next year’s FTO team. The positions are paid, full-time jobs and are a pretty big deal. As a result, our Week 8 edition will be jam-packed with candidate interviews, photos and coverage of the elections – as well as our live blogs on the website during hustings and results night. If you’d like to have a chance to grill the candidates, or generally be involved, we’ll be holding an interest meeting on Wednesday, Week 5 at 2pm, for which there is a Facebook group floating around. Following that, we’ll be holding a workshop in Week 6. So drop by, find out more and be a journalist.
That’s all. Cute animal of the week is a tribute to brilliant puns, with a fluffy little lamb.
