Ohio State University unveiled its bacon vending machine on campus late last year – and has now followed up with a “pizza ATM” for students. “When a pizza is ordered, it automatically moves to the ATM’s internal oven and is baked until the crust is crispy and the cheese is melted,” university press officers helpfully explained in a media release on 15 January, attracting plentiful national coverage. “Similar machines have proved to be popular on the campuses of Xavier and Case Western Reserve universities,” said the release, referring to other institutions in the Buckeye State. US universities have waged a sports and amenities “arms race” as they compete for students – perhaps this Midwestern margherita market madness is the latest front.
The president of Somerville College, Oxford “has demanded that octopus is removed from the menu as part of a drive to make disadvantaged students feel more ‘comfortable’”, The Daily Telegraph reported on 17 January. Labour peer Baroness Royall of Blaisdon wrote in a blog post on widening access: “One of our students told me of her bemusement at being served an octopus terrine at the Freshers’ Dinner…I have asked our catering colleagues to ensure that the first dinner at the beginning of term features dishes everyone is comfortable with.” This is hardly terrine down the walls of Oxbridge privilege, which reaches into every aspect of public life with many tentacles. But has Lady Royall heard of pizza ATMs?
Whipping up outrage over the “extravagant” business expenses of UK vice-chancellors is much tougher this year, it seems. While investigations 12 months ago uncovered the £1,600 bill to relocate a vice-chancellor’s dog from Australia, it seems the most egregious claim of late is a £1 packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps from Marks & Spencer. The item, however, headlined a Sunday Times exposé on 20 January because it was bought by François Ortalo-Magné, dean of the London Business School, whose remuneration package totalled £501,000 in 2017-18. Other supposedly shocking claims by the French-born administrator include a £1.90 bag of chocolate almonds, a £1.25 antibacterial gel and a £10 drink described as a “222 detox”, according to material obtained via a Freedom of Information request. Trips to Dubai, New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong took his overall claim that year to £8,637, the paper adds. Students “paying £82,000 to study for an MBA at the school this year, with no expense accounts of their own to use as personal piggy banks”, may find these claims “galling”, the piece speculated unconvincingly.
Donald Trump’s affection for Liberty University is well known, having delivered a widely mocked commencement speech there in May 2017. But the US president’s links to “America’s holiest university”, known for its ban on dancing, run deeper, according to new disclosures by The Wall Street Journal. The paper explained how Mr Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen promised to pay $50,000 (£38,855) to John Gauger, a technology administrator at Liberty, if he fixed online opinion polls in favour of the billionaire real estate mogul back in 2016. Mr Gauger later told the Journal that he had been paid only about $13,000 by Cohen, who used a “blue Walmart bag filled [with] cash”. Jerry Falwell, Liberty’s president and a Trump ally, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that while he knew that Mr Gauger had worked for Mr Trump, he did not know the nature of the work. Strangely, this is still not the most bizarre link between Mr Trump and Liberty: last year, the Virginia college produced and released a movie about a former firefighter who said that God had told him that Mr Trump would be the next president.
Have UK universities fallen out of love with Twitter? The question arises after De Montfort University announced that it was switching off all its social media channels for a few days as part of a “digital detox”, BBC News reported on 15 January. The move would encourage students to “engage with people face to face”, said Lee Hadlington, an associate professor in cyberpsychology. Most surprisingly, the university’s vice-chancellor, Dominic Shellard – one of academic Twitter’s most enthusiastic users – also announced that he was deactivating his account. Back in 2016, Times Higher Education calculated that his then-39,500 tweets on everything from Lee Child thrillers to DMU’s croquet team were roughly the same length as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Fans of the @DMUVC account should fear not: the account will be restored at the end of the detox and Professor Shellard’s tweets have been archived by the British Library, should anyone be in desperate need to read them.