Freshers’ Week has finished, and a whole new cohort of undergraduates has been washed up on Oxford’s sandstone shores, carried by a foaming wave of vomit, reproductive fluids, and Everyday Value Vodka: our cousins at Brookes are certainly having a good time. But Oxford students can throw a party too, as illustrated by last weeks’ revelations of a defenestrated portrait at Jesus and an impromptu party across the roofs of Ship Street.

Meanwhile, George Galloway resumed his masochistic affair with Oxford debaters by gracing the union with his incendiary presence.  A union official adorably asked the audience to be avoid catcalls and be “civil and nice”. One plucky student had other ideas; setting the cat amongst the pigeons by pulling an Israeli flag from under his jumper and calling Galloway a racist, at which point everyone started having kittens.

Down the road, Police were called to a St Peters bop after non-student crashers started punching people in the face.  The number of police present depends on how gullible your friend at Peters thinks you are; according to my friend there were two swat teams and a helicopter. However, the general consensus is currently hovering around the twenty mark. Either way it’s probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened at the college.

High above our stained and musty JCRs; in the towers and boardrooms of power; our esteemed leader and vice-chancellor Andrew Hamilton has had a bit of a rough week. In addressing a “funding shortfall of more than £7000 per student”, and insinuating that students should pick up the difference, Hamilton opened himself up to the full wrath of the righteous student journalist.     

All this pales into insignificance however, with the news that the Corpus tortoise ‘Oldham’ has died. The small college has been is veiled by the shade of death; its students aimlessly wandering their cobbled quad offering cries of ‘WHY?’ to the firmament above. But the sky is silent. All that remains for them to contemplate is the emptiness of mortality. Furthermore, the Wadham tortoise has also ‘run away’, an explanation that feels distinctly like college authorities trying to let their students down gently.  

Richard Foord is an editor and journalist at The Oxford Student, read Varsity's Amy Hawkins reply here.