University of Nottingham

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The arms of the University of Nottingham. Notice the tree, a reference to its history as a lumberjacking college.

The University of Nottingham is a world-renowned lumberjack training facility, in Nottingham which, since the Representation of the People Act of 1918 and especially the Second World War (which lead to its gaining of a Royal Charter in 1948), has broadened to become a place of learning for those too poor to afford the equipment needed to be a lumberjack. Women too, have been allowed to attend since the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975, but since lumberjacking is deemed too ‘rugged’ for women, they are unable to get into the School of Lumberjacking and can either choose to go into the School of WAGging or study a subject like the other poor students. In its capacity as an educational institution it consistently ranks as high-end mediocre in league tables and is a famous second choice for those who failed to get into the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge or Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The University of Nottingham was formerly situated in the very heart of Sherwood Forest, but, naturally trainee lumberjacks need targets and it is now surrounded by a very different kind of jungle; the urban jungle. The University has come under fire in modern times from lefties, for being at the heart of the genocide of Sherwood trees. However, lefties are unsure whom they would prosecute and whether the charges would be genocide or ethnic cleansing and so, much like other hippy organisations (see UN) nothing has been done or likely will. Ever. It is also said that the University of Nottingham is protected by ‘the Man’ and so even were the lefties to prosecute, the University would be cleared of all charges.

History

The University of Nottingham was founded by Robin Hood just after the Crusades as the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking. His lady companion Maid Marian needed some landscape gardening, but there were no lumberjacks in Nottinghamshire at that time. Indeed landscape gardeners would not arrive in Nottingham until the twentieth century; Mr. Hood realised that this would not do and so founded the college, so that they might at least clear Maid Marian’s garden of trees and it would be more pleasant place to go to.

Due to the College’s role in teaching men to be good with axes, it has always had strong links to the military. Henry V was so impressed on a tour once with the lumberjacks trained there that he took them all with him to France when he conquered it. Unfortunately, most of them died in a freak, petrol-fight accident before they could make a real impact on the campaign. However, from Henry V onwards, most of the Royal tree killing that has needed to be performed, has been performed by alumni from the College. A particularly glorious example of this happened in 1588. Queen Elizabeth I was well aware that the Spanish were planning a sailing expedition to Torquay and some, in fact, had gone ahead to make sure all their bookings were ok (this was an age before email). A cantankerous hotelier, a Mr. Basil Fawlty, grievously insulted the Admiral, Duke Manuel de Barcelona, and turned what the Spanish king, Philip II, intended to be a jolly into an invasion. Elizabeth was caught with her petticoats down and needed new ships fast, but nobody had ever cut down trees that fast. Elizabeth turned to the only establishment in the kingdom that had a slim chance of success. Alumni from the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking cut down 1 million trees in two weeks, falling short of their target by 15%, but a storm meant that the 15% would have been unnecessary anyway and the Queen rewarded their endeavours, foresight and efficiency by forming the Special Arborist Service (more commonly known as the SAS) in 1589, and to this day it recruits mostly graduates from the (now) University of Nottingham.

With the wood cutting techniques pioneered by the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking, Britain was able to build many warships such as these to beat the French. Huzzah!

With the advent of the industrial revolution and the mechanisation of the lumberjack way, the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking was forced to change with the times or be left as a second rate learning institution stuck in the past, much like the University of Oxford is today, and became a regional centre of innovation. It fully embraced lumber mill technology and pioneered the water-powered band saw as an effective way of killing trees. It also invented the ice cream scoop at around the same time, twenty years before ice cream was discovered, but that is neither here nor there. The research that the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking carried out and the sharing of it placed the United Kingdom in good stead for the Napoleonic Wars; it has been said that the main reason why Napoleon was so angry and went to war with most of Europe was because he was a little Frenchman, who couldn’t get good wood. The British, at the time, got good wood often, and this was in part, due to the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking, and with their wood the British dominated the French.

In recent years, the biggest challenge that the University of Nottingham has faced is diversification; changing times and social mores, and law has required the university to allow women and plebeians into its ranks. Pressure to admit poor people had been growing steadily in the Victorian era. The Industrial Revolution had led to a population boom and the Enlightenment meant that more and more people were questioning the old order. People began to think there was more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking working all day and being poor; they began to see education as a way out of poverty. Things couldn’t change though until everyone mattered and that change came after The Great War. Poor people were allowed to join Nottingham College of Lumberjacking for the first time after the Great War, although the vast majority still couldn’t afford to. To placate the critics, who rightly said that the College had not really changed at all since the vast majority still couldn’t enrol, the College renamed itself University College Nottingham, with the School of Lumberjacking as its foremost School and it created several other Schools, Faculties and Departments to educate people who just wanted to learn stuff other than lumberjacking. In recognition of the College’s efforts, it was awarded a Royal Charter in 1948 and then became The University of Nottingham.

Some typical Nottingham WAGs doing what they do best, look orange, get drunk in revealing clothing, only to complain the next day about how bad they feel and how all the men were leering at them the night before.

With the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975, it became illegal to tell women that they were not as clever as men and should anyway be in the kitchen, and the University could not reject female applicants on this basis (or for any other reasons due to their gender). Obviously, women would never make it in the cut-throat, men’s world of lumberjacking, and so the University created a school that would take rich people’s daughters and turn them into orange-skinned, blonde-haired bimbos WAGs, a post-modern take on the oompa-loompa fashion fad of the late seventies. Lumberjacking and WAGging requires students to have a rich parent or two and to have either gone to an independent school or have a keen sense of fashion, leaving many who might want to enrol feeling left out. For those people, the University of Nottingham provides facilities, at a cost, to learn to do other things. English, Psychology and languages are common choices for the females of this category, and engineering, maths and sciences are common choices for the males. It’s been said that the university is also pretty good at these courses, but since it’s not Lumberjacking, most people don’t care.

In recent years, the University discovered that there was the potential for many axe wounds in the virgin rainforests of Malaysia and China and opened campuses campi in these countries. This has worked out well for the University because the Middle Class parents who send their children to become lumberjacks also like helping poor countries and the University is essentially helping the Chinese and Malaysians by teaching them modern lumberjacking methods for entirely commercial reasons.

Campi

The University of Nottingham has long since overgrown its Nottingham College of Lumberjacking campus, and has several other campi, both near to Nottingham and abroad. The main and oldest campus is University Park Campus. There is also the Jubilee Campus, Sutton Bonnington Campus, the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and also the University of Nottingham Ningbo but to almost all students, but these are all completely irrelevant to most students.

University Park

University Park is "where it's at", in common parlance. It is the main and biggest of all the campi, and purists consider it the only 'true' campus. It is where the original Nottingham College of Lumberjacking was founded. University Park is now landscaped, with many open, grassy areas and even many trees, which surprises many visitors. These are usually trees that have saved the life of a lumberjack, but occasionally there are trees that have been allowed to live for their contributions to the arts. All of the Halls are on this campus and most of the students, including all of the lumberjacks and WAGs. The University's most important and prestigious buildings are on this campus, including the Portland building, the Trent building and the Hallward library.

• Portland Building is the literal centre of campus, as well as being the spiritual, social and economic centre of the university. The earliest part of the Portland building was a chapel built by Robin Hood, who died before he could see his temple defiled by scum, theives and frauds pedalling goods to students at inflated prices; the most culpable of this are the Blackwells and the Costa Coffee (which is in Blackwells). The school shop sells all kinds of wares and is like a convenience store and souvenir shop in one. It sells a wide range of Ginsters consumables, with the result that students contribute to 14% of the economy of Cornwall. The Students' Union is based here, running all things student like a pseudo-democratic politburo, sending dictats to their political commisars disguised as society 'presidents'. The university also uses the building as an administrative centre, with the result that Portland is to the University what Whitehall is to London. The Portland building is, however, more relevant to students as the centre of their social world, with food outlets to bring members of the opposite sex for a cheap date and, more importantly, as the start and finish of Campus 14 in the student bar, Mooch (see below).

Hallward "Library". Notice it's cunning disguise as a multi-storey car park.

• Hallward Library is a fashion show that is posing as a library that is cunningly disguised as a multi-storey car park. This is to remind lumberjacklings that a tree may take any form to avoid detection and assassination. It is very cunning. Students go there to parade their new outfits, check out members of the other sex, hear funny comments that they can put up on a Facebook group and, if one believes the group, have sex. To keep in with the disguise, there are books there but most are completely irrelevant. During exam periods it never shuts, leading to a rare form of vagrancy; students leaving their homes to live in the library.

Sutton Bonnington

Sutton Bonnington campus is a mythical campus where it is rumoured Zapdos, Articuno, Moltres and other legendary Pokemon can be found. Nobody knows where it is and it can only reliably be said to be "not in Nottingham" though there is speculation that it is off Victory Road. While the University claims POKé Mastery of the campus, due to its uncertain location and a lack of physical evidence, that the campus exists is considered highly doubtful. Conspiracy theorists hypothesise that the campus is a secret lumberjack weapons' development facility, much like Area 51, aiming to harness the power of the Pokemon to kill trees faster; weaponising HM01 Cut is thought to be key to the programme. This is, however, considered implausible by lumberjacks and students alike since no one can get there. The Hopper bus that claims to go to the campus actually takes people to the middle of nowhere, and without people, there can be no research.

University Life

The School of Lumberjacking and the School of WAGging get along very well and often socialise together. Some say that this is because of their similar social backgrounds and sophisticated fashion sense that poor people can’t match. The real truth is that the WAGs think that the lumberjacks are ‘so rugged’, while the lumberjacks like wearing women’s clothing, for example, suspenders and bras. They are by far the most important people at the University and they let everyone else know about it. People must bow to them otherwise they have the right to glare at the person not bowing, and even decapitate that person.

Halls of Residence

During the first year at the University of Halls of residence, the students are accommodated in ‘Halls of Residence’. These were first set up during the reign of Edward I, almost a century after the College was founded. When the College was first founded, there were few students and they lived in the houses of their teachers, however, since the college was continually expanding, this became impractical and eventually the decision was made to make accommodation for teachers and students. They are called ‘Halls’ because they were so grotty and horrible, and the risk of sexual harassment from the teacher was so great, that the trainee lumberjacks frequently called them ‘Hell’, however, God didn’t like this at all, since not only does He own the Hell trademark, he considered the remarks to be defamatory and not an accurate description and so threatened to sue. The Nottingham College of Lumberjacking thought it best to avoid a lawsuit and promoted calling them ‘Halls’ and this has stuck. Over the centuries, as the need for more accommodation has grown, more Halls have been built. Nowadays, they are not so grotty and horrible, but the chance of sexual harassment is at least as great if not greater. There are currently 12 Halls in the University Park Campus, beating Dante’s The Divine Comedy by three. The University has more Halls on other campi but, with the closure of the Apollo space programme, nobody has been to them since 1975.

• Ancaster – was a gift from Henry VI (the head of the House of Lancaster) to the College. However, not only was he broke due to founding King’s College and Eton College, he was also crazy and didn’t include the L. Those who go here tend to be crazy or stupid. Or both.

• Cavendish – is one of the first Halls, named after Little John’s great-granddaughter. It is a special hall for special kids, most of whom have low social skills and an inability to understand humour. Due to this, a common misconception has arisen that everyone in Cavendish has Asperger Syndrome leading to many describing Cavendish and it's residents as "sick". This is not the case, many were just not breastfed as children. What has been true is that the hall has typically had a large percentage of Jewish residents over the years; concerned Jewish parents have traditionally been concerned that their children may face antisemitism in the real world and so have sought to group their children together so that they might concentrate without distraction on university work. Work, as the saying goes, makes them free, and Jews like nothing better than free stuff.

• Cripps – is the Hall where OGs go to. They are the sworn enemy of the Bloods and drove Bloods Hall out of existence in the 1980s with plasters and soapy water due to concerns about AIDS. This is the only Hall to have a clock, and this was a gift from MC Hammer, so he could ask people what time it was.

• Derby – was a gift from the city of Derby. Nottingham and Derby are very close and so Derby was one of the first places to hear about the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking and send people to learn to lumberjack, so that they too might be able to one day go down to their gardens. All those from Derby were put together, and so when the Halls were built, a Hall was made for ‘all those from Derby and other foreigners’ and thus it remains.

• Florence Boot – used to be a fat camp, or ‘boot camp’ run by Florence, wife of + the Machine. However, Florence’s Boot Camp became too tedious to say and so people just call it Florence Boot. Chubbers go to this Hall.

• Hugh Stewart (also known as ‘HuStu’) – is one of the original Halls, named after two teachers. To this day it has suffered very little from the diversification, and comprises almost entirely of would be lumberjack trainees and their elite female counterparts, the WAGgers. It is a very prestigious Hall to get into and people should show deference to those in the Hall, where possible.

• Lenton & Wortley – is derived from the Middle English words laenten, meaning ‘cheap’, and wortley, meaning 'covered in warts'. Way back when, before Nottingham College of Lumberjacking was attacked by an old, old wooden ship at the same time as the American Civil war was going on, the trainee lumberjacks did not have WAGs or other female students. Instead one Hall was reserved for the prostitutes that cynically extorted the men, and it earned the Hall the nickname laenten and wortley because the whores there were cheap but covered in warts. Nowadays the Hall is forced to house men as well, but the women are still cheap and some are indeed wortley.

• Lincoln – was a gift from Abraham Lincoln. Before Abraham Lincoln became a born-again Christian, he made a small profit capturing wild slaves and making them work for him in return for clothing, food and shelter. The USA at this time had no lumberjacks because after the American War of Independence, all of the British left the USA to go to Canada, including the lumberjacks, which is why Canada is still so famous for lumberjacks. Abraham Lincoln saw a niche market and so sent some slaves to be trained in the art of lumberjacking at the Nottingham College of Lumberjacking. The USA was a deeply racist society at the time and he assumed that naturally, the College would want to segregate his slaves from other lumberjack trainees there. He was also worried that some of the people there would want to steal his slaves since there were no slaves in Britain at the time (England being even more racist and making slaves illegal). He thus donated money for a Hall for his slaves and it became known as Lincoln’s Hall, which in time became Lincoln. Nowadays it is still illegal to be a slave in England and so there are no more slaves housed in Lincoln. It continues, however, to have a high number of lumberjack trainees and also WAGgers. It is not as prestigious as Hugh Stewart, but people there like to think they are.

• Nightingale – is the Hall where boring people go to, who have nothing better to do than complain about cutlery not being left to dry the correct way up. There’s not much to say about it, or them, as a result.

• Rutland – is the Hall where gay men and sexually adventurous women go to. This has led to the famous chant, “Rutland take it up the arse!” Rutlanders claim to have the best community spirit of any Hall as result of their licentiousness, but many in the University frown upon their lasciviousness, considering that the Western World hasn’t seen so much debauchery since the Roman Empire.

• Sherwood – is the oldest Hall and was named in honour of the place where Robin Hood and his Merry Men refuge after being banned from Nottingham by ASBOs because they were wearing hoods. It grew out of Little John’s house, because he didn’t need much room and was extended over the years until other Halls were built. Sherwood was ravaged by diversity and there are now fewer lumberjacks housed there, but there are still a lot of people who wear hoods.

• Willoughby – is a corruption of ‘will lobby’, a reference to middle class, lefty students who disagree with the Man. It is the Hall where middle class, lefty, Marxist, Guardian-reading students go to. Other students got so fed up of the students in Willoughby complaining but doing nothing that they derisively said of them that they ‘will lobby’. Needless to say, the middle-class lefties are often too stoned off marijuana to actually get round to lobbying, but are content enough that their disagreeing and ‘good intentions’ what counts.

Drinking

Drinking forms 90% of the social interaction between all of the students. Most people there will not speak to anyone unless drunk and so a lot of university life revolves around getting drunk to talk to people, and fortunately there are many places and rituals that facilitate this

• Campus 14 is a ritual that most students at Nottingham take part in at least once in their time there, and is considered the modern equivalent of the Grand Tour. As with many rituals there is a certain dress code for the event. This dress code is fairly loose, and basically consists of pirate costumes, Zulu outfits, caveman clothes, or tasteless modern equivalents. Fashion and taste are not allowed. The students start in the Student Union Bar, Mooch, and go to each Hall bar before they close, and then back to Mooch for the fourteenth drink. For men, a pint of beer or cider or a double measure of spirits in each bar is required. For women the requirement is half that of the men.

• Tuesday morning Oceana is a ritual that confusingly happens on Monday nights. Theories abound as to why people continue to call it Tuesday morning Oceana, although many speculate that there are time wormholes on all of the stairs leading to the basement and these cause massive confusion as to what the year is, let alone the date. This is a popular event for many.

• Crisis is a ritual that happens on Wednesdays. It is called Crisis because a week seems like a lifetime to the average student ("I've not started my coursework; I've got a whole week!") and people have mid-life crises at the event, which used to be known as Rock City after the venue all the time. Mostly it's girls breaking down over their not being as good looking as they think they are or other such nonsense. For guys suffering a crisis, it's usually alcohol related, like sexual harassment leading to rape charges. Crisis is also well known as a Pokemon battle arena. The most common moves used are Attract, Charm, Flirt, Lovely Kiss, Flash, Harden and Bubblebeam although some trainers prefer other, less conventional methods, such as Leer and Hypnotise.

• Ocean is not to be confused with Oceana. Ocean happens on a Friday night and is where all the lumberjacks and WAGs, basically the cool people, go. Everyone there is very important. Ocean is so named because the caring, cultured, well-parented children of the bourgeoisie tend to go there to relive the charitable exploits of their respective missions to South East Asia, especially on the beaches there next to the ocean. It is not at all because it is a dive. The lack of air conditioning is intentional and adds to the 'vibe', making it feel like everyone is back in the tropics, and the resulting smell reminds people of the third world countries they saved on their socio-cultural tours. It is a known fact that people have sex on the beach there, adding to the oceanic theme.

• Market Bar is a trendy bar that was originally named "Leroy's" but, way back when racism was cool, but before it was all mainstream and officially segregated, it was famous as a place where black people could get away from cotton picking without suffering racist abuse, and so white people would derogatorily call it 'Slave Market Bar'. Since racism fell out of fashion, the black community adopted the unofficial name to take away its power, dropping the 'slave' part that was felt to be inappropriate. Ironically (or coincidentally) it now functions like a farmers' market for sex-starved, single students; they cram into a tiny room and try to buy affection for one night with drinks that could be bought at normal prices elsewhere were it not for the extra dirt of the place.

• Bodega is a bar that started with a challenge; a well-known failure, University of Nottingham drop-out and all-round "Master of Wood, Water and Hill" Tom Bombadil was told that he couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. The nay-sayers were right, and he failed to organise a piss up in a brewery. He did, however, organise a dazzling successful piss up in a bodega. It was henceforth called 'The Bodega' or simply 'Bodega' and has turned into quite a fashionable place for those students at the University of Nottingham not wealthy or cool enough to be Lumberjacks or WAGs, and has a reputation for being cutting edge in both fashion and technology, even adopting the seemingly pointless and nutritionally worthless electric bananas.