It is safe to say that it is with great pleasure as 2013/2014’s SCAN Editor to publish a headline that announces Lancaster as the winners of the 50th Roses tournament, in our 50th year of existence.
Though Roses weekend was now just over a week ago, myself and the SCAN team have kept the Roses spirit alive as we prepare this special Roses edition with our coverage of the weekend. It was a fantastic one for all involved; not only am I bursting with pride for my University and all the teams that trained so hard to give sterling performances and contribute at this year’s competition, I am also beyond proud of every single SCAN reporter and photographer that ran around like headless chickens covering as many matches as possible, taking beautiful high-quality photos and blogging for Roses Live – and yet didn’t utter a word of complaint because they were loving being a part of it.
Student media worked impossibly hard over Roses weekend to highlight the stunning success of every team and individual that took part in Roses and it gives me real joy to say that we – from the stewards and the LUSU staff that were on call over the weekend to the sport players – are Lancaster. To this end, I’m proud to be at the head of this issue of SCAN. I hope that you all cherish it as much as I will, and whilst we’ve poured our heart and souls into getting this issue of SCAN as perfect as possible (to the point where I’ve prioritised designing and editing this issue over an incredibly important course work deadline, shhh), we are only human.
We’ve endeavoured to include as many match reports and photographs as possible, dedicating a whopping 19 pages to Roses coverage, and have checked the accuracy of our reports so many times we’ve got red eyes from staring at the computer screen. If you spot any mistakes, or you can’t find the match report for your fixture, feel free to check online to see if it was published there or contact us so that we can publish a clarification. Let’s keep our sense of community and Roses spirit alive by avoiding a free-for-all on Overheard at Lancaster.
We’ve not just got the Red Rose on the brain this issue, we’ve also included an – albeit bite size – Carolynne section and our usual Comment articles, which can be found towards the back end of the paper.
I’m sure you’re all as pleased as I am to hear that UCU voted to accept the two percent pay rise and cancel the marking boycott – it’s good to see that a compromise was reached without unduly affecting students. I also have a lot of respect for the people that voted to take the pay rise and avoid the boycott, as although a pay rise is fantastic news and goes some way to easing the cost of living for lecturers, it’s undoubtable that in a few years we’ll be in this position again.
In SCAN-related news, we’ll be holding our Annual General Meeting this Wednesday at 6pm, and I’m very excited to see who will be running to take over my job for next year (2014/2015). The SCAN Editor elections will be taking place and I have to say, I’m mildly surprised and really pleased that there are other students out there willing to do this job – it may well be fantastic experience but it’s also something that will demand a lot of your time. Good luck to everybody running, I look forward to announcing my successor in the Week 6 issue as we start to handover. I’ll also save my sappy overview of the year for the Week 8 issue.
Finally, on my list of happy bits of news that I’ve been scrap-booking since my last Editorial, I’ve very excited about SCAN collaborating with the University on our upcoming 50th anniversary special edition. It’s something that we’ve been talking about in SCAN HQ since the middle of last term, after seeing a wonderful issue put together in 2004. It’s also a great time to get involved and immortalise yourselves in celebration of the University.
My cute animal of the week this time is inspired by a video I saw recently which featured a big ginger hamster being fed tiny burritos. I tried really hard to find out if there was a particular animal associated with Lancaster, to no avail. Enjoy!
