Author: LSU Media

Returning volunteer writer Ada Ughanwa discusses those known as ‘anti-vaxxers’ and whether or not they should take it in order to help our exit from the pandemic.  – ‘Anti-vaxxers’ are those who express a hint of doubt or share a slight scepticism towards the vaccine. As a result, they have been labelled as being the ‘opposition’ for the coronavirus vaccine roll out.  ‘Anti-vaxxers’ are concerned about the quick turnaround of the vaccine and the possible side effects it may have. Given the nature in which the vaccine was created, is it quite normal for there to be concerns such as…

Volunteer writer, Sebastian Wieneke, shares the speculative origins of April Fool’s Day as well as pranks/hoaxes that have been pulled before. On the first of April 1957, viewers of the investigative BBC programme Panorama were shown a hoax report on the “spaghetti harvest” taking place in the village of Ticino, Switzerland. The ‘farmer’ and his family are shown picking long pieces of the pasta off tree branches, while Richard Dimbleby goes on to explain that spaghetti farming here is small time compared to the “tremendous scale of the Italian industry”, and that each strand of spaghetti always grows to the…

Loughborough Students’ Union has released more details about the refurbishment taking place in their building. The Students’ Union have said that they had “began working with the University” to get funding for a new Union building, and had already conducted a series of focus groups looking at what the “key requirements” were for new spaces. The focus groups concluded that the Students’ Union needed to be an “inclusive, open, bright and airy” place that would be suitable for a “broad range of activities” with utilisation options for daytime and nighttime events. COVID-19, LSU stated, has impacted their income “significantly” and…

Following entering a partnership with Red Square, Loughborough Students’ Union will no longer serve VKs upon reopening, Label has discovered. Loughborough’s favourite drink, VK, will no longer be served at Union bars when they eventually reopen, not even the aptly named ‘Blue’ one, and will be replaced with Red Square versions (called ‘Red Square Blue Ice’) Admin of Loughborough Towersposting & Fusion lad, Jack Martin told Label that he was devastated: “They’ve ripped the beating heart out of our community, now what are we supposed to launch at people during Mr. Brightside?” This is not true, but imagine the outrage…

At a timely point, volunteer writer Ada Ughanwa pens a poem reflecting on a year of lockdowns. As we leave the downs that locked us before, We wait in eagerness to see what’s to come The world as we know it, has changed its face whilst we sit at home waiting for another day A day that seems so far yet it’s so close to come, our days will soon feel like days. We will cherish every moment that we are out with nature, we will hug and appreciate our loved ones We will look to the stars with no care…

Sci-Hub has been in the news recently as The City of London Police announced that the website is a risk to students. Seb Wieneke investigated the arguments surrounding freedom of information and academia… Describing themselves as “The first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers”, many in academia have at least heard mention of Sci-Hub. Created by Russian computer science researcher and “pirate queen” Alexandra Elbakyan, the site currently claims to have access to over 85 million academic papers, and it is estimated that it includes 80% of the…

LSU CASH’s Workshop Coordinator and volunteer writer, Megan McKone, gives a rundown of HIV and AIDS as well as how we can break the stigma surrounding them. HIV stands for the human immunodeficiency virus. Both men and women can contract HIV or AIDS, although it has been particularly associated with the gay and bisexual community, straight women and straight men may still have HIV passed onto them.  There is a lot of stigma around HIV and AIDS, which largely stems from the amount of gay men who had tested HIV or AIDS positive. HIV/AIDS patients were often refused treatment due…

Label volunteer, Rebecca Pearson, shares her experience of learning French during Lockdown and how leaning a new language can be beneficial. At the start of this year – as a little challenge to keep myself occupied during lockdown – I committed to learning French. Both French and Spanish have always been languages that I had wanted to learn, and since it was only Spanish that I had the opportunity to study for A-Level, I thought that lockdown was the perfect time to delve into the French language. I may have been slightly over-ambitious when I first started teaching myself French.…

It has been announced that from the end of this year the AU Clubs Officer will no longer be an elected position within the LSU Executive Team and instead will become a 2 year graduate position. Currently the elected student representatives for sport are the AU Clubs Officer (Rachel Caverhill) & Sport Executive Officer (James Greer). Their role is to run and promote sporting activities within LSU and to provide support and guidance to each of its 60 clubs and their 5,000 members. In a statement to AU club members, the Sport EO explained that following consultations with the AU Exec &…

Loughborough swimmer Luke Greenbank has broken the British record for 200m backstroke at the British Swimming Invitation Meet in Manchester. Greenbank, who had previously set a new personal best of 1:55:59 in the heats, finished the race in 1:55:34, breaking the British record previously set by James Goddard at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games by 0.24 seconds. The Tokyo-bound swimmer finished a massive 5.30 seconds ahead of his nearest rival, Loughborough’s Elliott Clogg, who finished with a time of 2:00:64. Another solid weekend in Manchester, over the moon to come away with a British record in the 200 back 🇬🇧Huge…