Archive for the ‘Front Page’ Category

A Kings College graduate will be cycling 480km across the North Indian state of Rajasthan this November to raise more than £2,500 for The Institute of Cancer Research.

Rosanna Moseley, 23, who witnessed both her grandmothers die from breast cancer at a young age, joined the Charity Challenge team to help other cancer patients.

Moseley said: “According to the Office of National Statistics and Cancer Research UK, more than one in three people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime.

“This being so, I’m prepared to cycle any distance, endure hellish amounts of pain and jeopardise my ability to walk normally again for the slight chance that the money I raise will help advance research in the prevention and treatment of cancer.”

Charities like the ICR have a particular significance for Rosanna and her family. Her mother survived breast cancer ten years ago thanks to medical advances facilitated their research.

So far Rosanna has raised around 30% of her target sponsorship. She needs an additional £1500 by mid-September to qualify her for this impressive challenge. To sponsor, please visit www.justgiving.com/Rosanna-moseley.

Rosanna graduated from King’s this summer with a Human and Political Geography degree and will be starting her new job at Steelhenge Consulting in September.

It is often difficult to convince people to attend amateur dramatics. The prospect of stumbled lines and monosyllabic delivery is not a big draw. However, every now and again there is an anomaly that becomes a reminder for why one does attend. Waiting For Lefty is this anomaly, and despite being performed entirely by students, is a truly captivating and enthralling production.

The play follows the social dynamics of a workers association in the face of low wages and potential job cuts, attempting to analyse the circumstances and emotions that lead workers to strike. While the play is too short to fully achieve this, the audience are presented with some beautifully acted scenes that continue to resonate after the final curtain has been drawn.

Sid’s (Folarin Akinmade) relationship with Florrie (Lucie Walker-Davies) is on the edge, as is Joe’s (Martin Leonard) marriage to Edna (Faye Merralls). The interactions within each of these relationships are impressive in their ability to draw in the audience.

While the cast is without a weak link, the performance of Akinmade stands out as exemplary. His portrayal of Sid is dynamic in its ability to capture both the light-hearted front of his character and the painful, angry emotion that lies beneath.

Such strong performances from the whole cast serve to overpower the more dubious aspects of the production. An originally American play, the students from Kings College London have made a slightly muddled attempt to fit the script into a British setting. Set in the 1930’s it is difficult to accurately ally the script to history and much of what is presented is more reminiscent of Britain in the 1980’s. Well, it would be if it wasn’t for the emphasis being on taxi drivers threatening to strike.

However, as previously mentioned, these details are subsidiary to the quality of the performance and do not stop Waiting For Lefty from being well worth seeing, even when lined up against professional competition.

Waiting For Lefty is produced and performed by The King’s Players, a Drama Society at Kings College London.

A student from King’s College London (KCL) has sparked off a sexism row after claims he verbally abused a female member of Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA).

Vitus van Rij, 18, allegedly told Isabella Burton, a second year Oxford theology student who was giving a speech during an OUCA education debate, to “shush”, adding “you’re a woman”.

Van Rij, a member of KCL Conservative Society, seems to have arrived in Oxford from London with a delegation from UCL Conservative Society, invited guests of OUCA. He is said to have then started chanting “kitchen, kitchen, kitchen, get back to the kitchen”.

The Daily Telegraph reported that he went on to tell her to “go back to washing the dishes” instead of debating political topics.

Many students reportedly felt that the event organisers were slow to react to the sexist comments, but he was eventually ejected by Oxford Union president Laura Winwood who also publicly condemned the incident on stage. She and OUCA President Natalie Shina said that “misogyny is not tolerated” on Union premises.

Mr van Rij, understood to be from Belgium and studying in the War Studies department at King’s, is now banned from UCL Conservative events and OUCA events.

According to the Daily Telepgraph, Kieran Weisberg, the president of UCL Conservatives, said he was not sure how van Rij came to be at the event, but may have heard of it through Facebook.

OUCA founded in 1924, is one of the oldest student political organisations in the country. It has only recently been re-affiliated as a society – and is once again able to use the university’s name – after a racist joke was told at a hustings event last year.

Past presidents of the association include former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath, as well as current Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Van Rij is said to have refused to apologise for his comments.

The President of KCL Conservative Society, Simon Moorcroft, told London Student: “Obviously I want to stress that he was attending as an individual and not representing our society. Clearly the comments are unacceptable and certainly we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour. He has caused distress to the individual who these comments were directed at, and again, it’s not acceptable, it goes against everything that the Conservative Party and King’s College Conservatives stand for.”

He said that van Rij would be banned from attending future events and that the society’s committee “intend to terminate his membership as soon as we can”, following the Students Union’s procedures.

“We don’t want him as a member”, he said.