A joint statement by Shannon and St Hugh’s said, “St Hugh’s College and Damien Shannon are pleased to announce that they have resolved the dispute between them, and that the Court proceedings in Manchester County Court are at an end with immediate effect.”

In the agreement announced tonight, Shannon will take up his place in Michaelmas. The university has also agreed to review the Financial Guarantee Policy, which ruled that Shannon did not have sufficient funds to live in Oxford, such that he could not study at the university.

The St Hugh’s statement promised a university wide review into the fairness and practicality of graduate funding. “On completion of the review” it said, “recommendations will be put to the University’s Council and the Conference of Colleges for consideration. It is anticipated that the process will be completed by September 2013.”

A source at St Hugh’s told Cherwell that Dame Elish Angiolini, Principal of St Hugh’s, had questioned the merits of the financial guarantee system and whether there should be other options when funding isn’t available.

Shannon was unable to take up his offer last year after the university found he did not have £12,900 living costs. He was suing the college for “selecting students on the basis of wealth, and excluding those not in possession of it.”

In an email to students, St Hugh’s College stated that, “St Hugh’s College and the History Faculty of the University of Oxford have jointly made available to Mr Shannon a place on the one year MSc in Economic and Social History, the course for which he originally applied. Both parties have agreed to pay their own costs and no moneys have changed hands.”

David Messling, OUSU Vice-President for Access and Academic Affairs, told Cherwell, “This is a positive development, and it’s heartening that all involved have recognised the unjustifiable nature of the Financial Guarantee policy as it stands. OUSU, working with MCRs, are closely involved in the review of the Financial Guarantee to ensure that any future policy will not act as a disproportionate and unfair barrier to graduate study.”

He continued, “This case has shone even more light on the issues of postgraduate access – some of the answers are to be found here in Oxford, but many are on a national level where there is mounting need for means-based postgraduate financial support.”

Oxford University Press is expected to announce redundancies as part of an overhaul of the English Language Teaching (ELT) division. OUP could not confirm how many jobs are expected to be lost in the process.

OUP spokesperson Dan Selinger told Cherwell the review “was designed to assess the external competitive environment, and to explore ways in which the ELT Division can continue to meet the changing needs of teachers and learners across the world.”

OUP are currently engaged in a consultation period regarding the redundancies, and the reorganisation process began in late February.

Selinger continued, “New roles will be created, others may change, and some current roles will no longer exist.”

OUP communications director Rachel Goode said that the redundancies are part of a modernisation procedure. She told the Oxford Mail, “our current structure within ELT dates back to the 1990s. We need to change in order to respond to the changing demands of our customers.”

According to the OUP website, the ELT section is “responding well” to recent demand for digital resources. It states that all its courses “now include integrated digital components, and a growing number of its titles are available as apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.”

OUP is a department of the University of Oxford and has branches on every continent. It is reportedly the largest university press in the world; it produced more than 3500 academic titles last year, and employs around 6000 people globally.

OUP posted £106 million in net, post-tax profits for the 2012 financial year, down from £112.2 million in 2011 but a significant improvement on the 2010 figure of £90.4 million. In 2012, it contributed £54 million for the university finances.

The confirmation of job losses comes as Oxford and Cambridge university presses and publishers Taylor & Francis face controversy over efforts to sue Delhi University for producing ‘course packs’ using extracts from their publications. 309 academics have signed an open letter to the publishers expressing concern at the move.

According to Indian newspaper The Hindu, the letter stated that “we would like to place on record our distress at this act of the publishers, as we recognize the fact that in a country like India marked by sharp economic inequalities, it is often not possible for every student to obtain a personal copy of a book.”

Thomas Metcalf, Emeritus Professor at the University of California, and an academic whose work has been reproduced in Delhi, wrote he is “happy to accept smaller royalties on sales of my books to widen the audience, especially in a developing country such as India”.

The Publisher’s Association has acknowledged that course packs like those reproduced in Delhi play an important role in providing affordable study materials to students in less developed countries. It expressed its desire for legal copies to be obtained from the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization, where a copyright tariff is levied.

In a statement, the Association said “it is vital that those creating coursepacks act within the legal framework which supports the production of high quality educational content. Through this court case we have sought to challenge the illegal duplication of copyrighted materials for sale by a commercial photocopying shop.”

One first-year historian said, “It seems ridiculous that a profitable company is going to have to lay off staff, when its top brass are almost certainly on fairly large salaries. These will simply be more bodies to add to the mass of skilled workers who will now find themselves jobless.”

A machine developed by scientists at Oxford University has been used to keep a liver alive outside the human body for the first time. 

The technology, under development since 1994, has already been used successfully in two transplant surgeries as part of a clinical trial at King’s College Hospital. 

Around 700 liver transplants are carried out in the UK every year, but more than 100 patients die whilst waiting for surgery. The machine’s inventors, Professor Constantin Coussios and Professor Peter Friend, believe that the device will eventually double the number of successful liver transplants in the UK to well over 1,000 per year. 

Using current medical techniques human livers can only survive for a maximum of 14 hours by being kept ‘on-ice’. The new machine mimics the processes of the human body by providing the liver with blood, oxygen and nutrients. This increases its lifespan to 24 hours and significantly reduces damage to the organ sustained through oxygen deprivation.   

Professor Friend, director of the Oxford Transplant Centre and one of the founders of OrganOx, a University spin-out created to aid the development of the technology, said, “Transplant surgery is a victim of its own success with far more people needing transplants than there are donor organs available. This device has the potential to change that situation radically. By enabling us to transplant many organs that are unusable with current techniques, this technology could bring benefit to a large number of patients awaiting transplants, many of whom currently die whilst still waiting.” 

Iain Christie, 62, from Torbay, Devon was the first person to receive a transplanted liver kept alive on the device as part of a clinical trial at King’s College Hospital in London. Mr Christie was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in May of last year. He was told that without a transplant he could expect to live between 12-18 months. One month after the surgery he said: “I feel very proud and lucky to have been part of this medical advance. My health is better than it’s been for years and I feel I can go on now instead of thinking that life is finished for me.” A second patient who received a liver using the same technique is also said to be doing well. 

A third-year St Hilda’s medic praised the work of all involved, commenting that: “This is a great example of the many ‘quiet revolutions’ that go on every day in the research institutions throughout the University. This development has the potential to save hundreds of lives around the world and proves that Oxford is still at the cutting-edge of the global medical technology market.” 

OrganOx are now working on commercialising the machine for use in Europe and the United States. The Oxford University team now believe that the technology could be developed for use with other organs, including the lungs, pancreas and kidneys. 

George Galloway MP has tabled a motion in the House of Commons urging St Hilda’s College to reinstate librarian Calypso Nash.

Nash was controversially fired for not preventing a ‘Harlem Shake’ in the college’s library at the end of last term. 

The motion claims that “the College authorities seem to have suffered a severe sense of humour loss” and describes the Harlem Shake as an “incident for which the Librarian bears no responsibility.”

It goes on to inform Parliament that “St Hilda’s College was named after Hilda of Whitby who was noted for her wisdom and good advice” and suggests “that the College authorities should draw on St Hilda’s wisdom in relation to this incident.”

Furthermore the motion “urges the College authorities to think again [and] see the funny side of this.”

Ron McKay, a spokesperson for Galloway, told Cherwell that the motion was submitted “because of a gross injustice and the over-reaction of the authorities.”

JCR President Esther Gosling said, “The response to the story has been overwhelming and was never expected. The support for our quest for the reinstatement of the librarian is very much appreciated. We hope the matter will be resolved soon.”

Another Hilda’s student, Ellen Gibson, told Cherwell, “For once, I wholly agree with Galloway. Nash was not involved in the Harlem Shake and was not in a position to stop it and so her dismissal is completely uncalled for.

“Also, the disciplinary attitude which seems to have been taken towards this incident in general seems excessive- the dance lasted only 30 seconds and did not cause major disruption; the JCR unanimously decided to support those being penalised demonstrating how little offense was caused to those who actually use the library.”

The Bradford West MP’s motion also refers to the JCR motion recently passed at St Hilda’s. It mandated the JCR President to ask for a written reason from the college explaining in detail their decision to fire Nash from her job.

The ‘Harlem Shake’ at Hilda’s has become an “online sensation”, according to the Commons motion. The Mirror, The Telegraph, and The Times  have all reported the issue, following Cherwell’s coverage of the episode earlier this week.

St Hilda’s College declined to comment.