This years award ceremony was an enormous success with over 20% of this years graduates attending. A full 90% increase over last year. An added attraction to this years procedings was the awarding of Honorary Degrees to both ex-TV weathergirl Wincey Willis and south London businessman, childrens entertainer and dental technician "Mad" Frankie Fraiser. 

Due to her tight schedule, Ms Willis was sadly only able to attend the ceremony for long enough to receive her award and consequently missed out on the fun of the official dinner. In her brief speech she said that receiving a degree from the University of Bums on Seats was one of the most significant events of her entire day.

"Mad" Frankie Fraser

Mad Frank however, was able to take an entire day off from rehersals for his Stratford pantomime (co-starring Chaz and Dave) and spent it with us here at UBS. He also gave a very enjoyable speech which included many colourful stories of his life in and out of prison. 

Senior College Bloke, Ron Richards writes "I've known Frankie for donkeys years on and off, and he's always been a diamond geezer on every job we've worked on togther. Its about time he was rewarded for all the good he's done to the peckham community."
 

This week, the University held a press conference where it unveiled the plans for a new building intended to be a management complex for the senior college staff.

The building is being financed jointly by UBoS and the luxury hotel chain "Posthouse-Fortune" as part of the governments public/private partnership initiative.

The new building has been named the "Gerald" building in honour of Lord Gerald, the Managing Director of Posthouse-Fortune, and not the "Gerry Building" as recent rumours have suggested.

John Freemason, the Academic Registrar commented "The Gerald Building is one of the most exciting and expensive projects ever undertaken by UBoS and we are confident that it will greatly benefit staff and students of the college by allowing us to redically reform our management infrastructure."

The Gerald building is expected to be completed by mid-2000 at a cost of just over 2 million pounds. and will be opened by Sophie Wessex. Apart from office space, the building proudly boasts a recreation suite including a swimming-pool, gymnasium, and sauna.

Once the management have migrated over to the new building, their existing offices in the "Tebbit" building will be converted to teaching rooms, as will some of the toilets and disused broom cupboards. We are also happy to report that the pipe that was leaking over the seating area in the main lecture theatre has now been taped-up. We are assured by safety inspectors arranged by Ron Richards, that the mould-like spores growing around the site of the leak, whilst smelling unpleasant, are 'probably nothing to worry about.'
 

Welcome to Issue 2 of skidmark, and to a new academic year at UBS. Since our last issue the University has broken two of its own records. Not only is our undergraduate intake this year the highest ever, but we also awarded a record number of honours degrees following the launch of our new E-degree scheme.

Professor Dubious writes: "The success of our national TV and newspaper advertsiing campaign, coupled with our ingenious Fasttrack E-degree scheme has led to us having a record intake of fees this year. I'd like to give a big thank you to all staff of "Dynamic Image", our advertising agency. Despite this success, we must still remember that we have room for many more places."

UBS seek a dynamic intelligent team-player to work alongside the existing management  teams and steering comittees to project-manage the development of future strategies for the  management infrastructure. Answerable to the Deputy Academic-Strategy Sub-officer, the successful candidate, should ideally also have an interest in golf, freemasonry and sitting in meetings. Send a CV to:

personnel@ubs.ac.uk
(Powerpoint 2000 format only)
UBS is essentially an equal opportunies employer

Following the Government's recent announcement of increased funding for Re-skilling and retraining courses, the University launced its new faculty called "Adult Re-Skilling and Education", or ARSE.

ARSE will be responsible for running a series of evening classes and part-time courses that range from NVQ to HE level qualifications in addition to Government funded re-training schemes for the long-tem unemployed. 

Senior ARSE administrator Val Nazi writes "We are very pleased about the launch of ARSE, which  will provide a valuable source of income for the college. We will also be running non-certified courses such as 'Alternative-healing for the disabled', 'Scottish country dancing' and 'Tarot as a source of income'."