Being the second home of the British Empire, the Scottish city of Glasgow is a thriving place with more than one university to it's name - however the eldest of them all is the one that proudly bears the city's name. As one of the first centres of educational excellence, the University of Glasgow has a long and illustrious history with a few key differences to what many might expect from a university, be it the two student unions, not picking your courses until after you arrive or the university's very own cinema.

History

Back in the days when Scotland had its own monarchy, King James II persuaded Pope Nicholas II to grant a bishop to open up a university. In 1451, 40 years after Scotland's first university, St. Andrews, was established, Bishop Turnbull founded a university in the European tradition meaning that Scotland could, like England, boast two universities. Initially operating from Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow moved to High Street in 1460 where it remained for the next 400 years in a building described by contemporaries as 'the chief ornament of the city.'

Throughout the 17th and 18th Century the university played an important role in both the era of Enlightenment as well as the Industrial Revolution, for which it fostered research and inquiry. Oddly though, with the Industrial Revolution came overcrowding and a squalorly level of living which, in 1870, forced the university to move to its present location in the West End of the city, in the Gilmorehill area. Although this building is relatively new, compared to the long history of the university, which celebrated its 550th birthday in 2001, the Lion and Unicorn Staircase and Pearce Lodge of the 'Old College' was moved, stone by stone, to the new Gilmorehill campus in 1870.

The University

The Institution

The current campus is centred around the main building, a Victorian mansion designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott on top of a hill with a spire, added by his son John Oldridd Scott, that can be seen from the edges of Glasgow city. This building, on University Avenue, while being the main building of the university does not offer all its facilities. A terraced row of houses opposite, on University Gardens, holds the home of many subject departments and rooms for tutor groups, at the end of this is one of the two student unions, the Queen Margeret Union. Opposite this is the grey, towering Boyd Orr building, built in line with post-war public building design, as well as the maths department and the geography department's Gregory Building, which leads to the thriving part of West End nightlife, Byes Road.

All along University Avenue, as well, run buildings owned by the establishment, including a gym, a church, a reading room and a nine storey library. At the bottom of this road is the Gilmorehill Building, a converted church which is used primarily by the Theatre, Film and TV Studies department - it boasts a cinema¹, rehearsal studio², black box performance area and an underground archive of books, newspaper articles and filmings. At the other end of University Avenue is the most recent addition; built in 2003, the Wolfson Medical Building boasts state-of-the-art equipment for medical students and staff and a lavishly designed, curved glass building.

While most of the university's facilities exist around the main neo-Gothic building, there are a few exceptions. Other than the Student Apartments, most of the halls of residence are not directly on campus. Also the Garscube Campus hosts the veterinary department for the university, three miles away, with a proud new sports facility. Even further away than that, the Crichton Campus technically constitutes part of the university despite being in Dumfries, in South West Scotland.

Faculties

Glasgow has a slightly different educational set up than most universities in the United Kingdom. Rather than being admitted into your department when you join, students are admitted into a faculty and decide once they are there³ what courses to take. The faculties are thus:

• Arts
• Biomedical & Life Sciences
• Education
• Engineering
• Information and Mathematical Sciences
• Law, Business and Social Sciences
• Medicine
• Physical Sciences
• Veterinary Medicine

While some faculties, such as engineering or medicine, will require students to take a precise selection of courses, many, such as Arts or LBSS, allow students to pick three or more courses a year at their leisure. These selective faculties also allow their members to take a course from another faculty, which provides a handy loophole for acceptance.⁴ In faculties which allow freedom of subjects, students take three courses, more if they require, in first year. Traditionally they will drop one subject in second year and keep on their main two, and then for honours, third and fourth year, take either their main subejct or a joint honours. This allows for a much more diverse and interesting educational system, and stops students from being shackled into one course they may not enjoy as much as they initially thought.

Status

As the fourth oldest university in the UK, and only the second in Scotland, Glasgow can count itself as one of only four universities that are considered the 'ancient universities of Scotland⁵' which have award a different academic degree to those other institutions in Scotland - they are very similar to the degrees awarded by the ancient universities of England, with the exception being the Scottish Master of Arts (MA).

As well as this historic status, Glasgow University is a proud member of the Russel Group, an elite group of 19 research-led British universities often compared to the Ivy League. As well as this British group it is a member, and indeed founder of, the international group Universitas 21, misleadingly titled, this group of 20, not 21, universities from 12 different countries are also intensively research-led institutions which sets the standard for world-wide higher education.

The People

Students

On average, the university holds just under 16,000 undergraduate students and some 4,000 postgraduate students; on top of these 20,000 people studying there is a staff of 5,700 which makes it quite a large economic contributor to the surrounding city. Glasgow holds the highest ratio of stay-at-home students over any university in the United Kingdom, and 50% of all its students come from the West of Scotland. However, at the same time it is one of the most popular places for international students in the UK, outside of London with students from over 80 countries attending. In terms of international students, Glasgow also holds links with many other academic centres around the world, with which it exchanges students in Europe, via the Erasmus-Socrates Programme with 31 other EU countries, as well as exchange programmes with many countries outside the EU.

Famous Alumni

With such a long history, Glasgow can be proud of many many famous names too numerous to list - but we shall try. Firstly, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), who much of the West End of Glasgow is named after and a statue of him stands just below the main university building in Kelvingrove Park⁶. He is famous for numerous inventions, discoveries and modifications in the fields of maths, engineering and physical sciences - he even has his own temperature scale. He attended the university and later came back there to hold the chair of Natural Philosophy (physics) for 53 years. Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a famous economist, philosopher and author who began his life at Glasgow University at the tender age of 14; he would later become a Professor of Logic before holding the Chair of Moral Philosophy. There is a lecture building named after him. Joseph Black (1728-1799) is another famous alumnus who has a lecture building, primarily devoted to chemistry, named after him⁷ due to his foreward thinking into the modern understanding of gases. James Watt, who holds claim to the engineering department's building, worked at the university while he conducted some of his early experiments with steam.

Six winners of the Nobel prize have attended the University of Glasgow. These laureates are alumnus Sir William Ramsay (1904, Chemistry) who discovered inert gases and thus added the eighth, or noble, group to the periodic table. Frederick Soddy (1921, Chemistry) lectured there during the 1920s and conducted much research into the origin and nature of isotopes. Boyd Orr (1949, Peace)was a graduate who campaigned for an adequate diet for the people before the Great War and produced a plan which led to a higher nourishment for the nation as well as working closely with the United Nations; he also has a lecture building named after him. Sir Alexander Robertus Todd (1957, Chemistry) is another graduate who presented important research, particularly into the field of nucleic acid. Sir Derek Barton (1969, Chemistry) was a Regius Professor of Chemistry during the 1950s and received his award for his work on conformational analysis. Finally, Sir James Black (1988, Chemistry) who worked for the Veterinary School in the 1950s discovered important principles for drug treatments.

In terms of politics, the university has educated former Conservative Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Cambpell, both leaders of the Liberal Democrat Party, former leader of the Labour Party John Smith and suffragette Elizabeth Lyness. Also the first First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, Donald Dewar⁸ attended the university after leaving Glasgow Academy and was an avid member of the debates team and President of the Glasgow University Union.

Student Life

Glasgow University Union

Glasgow, because of historical sexism, has two - yes two - student unions to its name, who says sexism is bad? The history of the first of these two unions is thus: In 1885, a group of men were having an alcoholic beverage and became rather philosophical, as you do, and decided that there was not enough non-academic activities for students and set on an idea for 'social intercourse' between men, and only men. They must have had rather a few of these alcoholic beverages because they voted in three Presidents of the Glasgow University Union⁹, despite not having an actual building. It would take another five years for the university to allow a plot for the building to be built and a £5,000 donation to build it. Named after the generous benefactor, the John McIntyre building was the original building of the GU, though it is now the home of the Students' Representative Council (SRC). It is at this building that the last known duel of Scotland occured, two men Robert Begg and Carlo La Torre were on opposing sides of the Rectorial Election being held at the time; according to the university magazine 'blood was drawn in the corridor' over the honour of Lord Kelvin, neither man was disciplined either as it was 'an affair of honour.' Incidentally, Begg won.

In the 1930s, though, times were a changing and the union moved to the bottom of University Avenue, opposite what is now the Gilmorehill Building for Theatre, Film and TV Studies. Originally built in keeping with the architecture of the area, the main building of the GU is an impressive, traditional looking site with stained glass windows and has a subterranean beer bar, small arcade room, vending machine, ridiculously large toilet area and a cash machine downstairs. On the first floor is the GUU shop¹⁰ and the cafeteria, incorporating a Subway which has proved popular with students mid-way through an evening of drinking and dancing. The second floor holds a reading room-cum-coffee house and a small library, the Bridie Library, next to it with a limited book selection, past exam papers. Opposite this is the Debates Chamber which continues usptairs, where spectators can look on from the balcony. Also upstairs is an impressive billiard's room which homes a bar and eight full-sized snooker tables. Both the snooker team and debates team consistently do well in international competitions.

In the 1960s the Extension was built with less care for in-keeping with Victorian architecture. The typical sixties square box extension was originally built for extra lecture theatres. Since then it has become the Hive, the centre of nightlife in the Union, which was opened in 1992 and attracts students from this university and others, as well as non-students. It attaches to a few other bars, Playing Fields which is a sports dedicated bar with a TV, Deep 6 and Altitude are two other bars in the Extension. A virtual tour can be taken on the website.

Earlier on it was mentioned how only men were allowed to join the Union. Surprisingly this stature was not overthrown with the feminist movement of the 1910s, or the second wave in the 1960s. It was not until a rather crafty move by the latterly-established Queen Margaret Union and some pressure from the university court over lease extension, that the vote was made to allow the fairer sex to join, in 1980.

In terms of members, the GUU most commonly attracts sportsmen and women. All of the university sports team meet in the GU, normally the beer bar, and fans of other sports, especially rugby, often find themselves joining. The kind of women who enjoy the GU could be described as socialites, ladies who enjoy getting dressed up in their gladrags and getting, what the locals describe as 'steaming', while taking a particular interest in the sporty lads who take a similar interest back.

Queen Margaret Union

In the 1885 some men set up a place for social intercourse for men, but what about students of the fairer sex at university in Glasgow? Well up until the 1870s, university education was largely neglected for women in general, but it was around this time that a movement sprung up, particularly in the older universities of England and Scotland, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Aberdeen in the latter with support from wealthy and influential professors. In an effort to persuade the University to allow women into the institution, they set up their own college, Queen Margaret College, to prove that women were just as good as men. In 1893, when it became legally possible, the university amalgamated itself with the college.

As well as educational facilities, the college housed the Queen Margeret Union¹¹, which only started electing a President and formally organising events from 1890 onwards. When the Union became to active to be housed in the college it moved to Buckingham Terrace, then what is now Southpark Avenue. Here it struggled during the Great War when working women were conscious of the money they spent that wasn't necessary, many would not afford the 12/6d membership fee. However, after the war things returned to the status quo and, in 1930, the union wsa gifted with the GUU's old John McIntyre building when the aforementioned union moved to their current address; the members refurbished their new building and it was considered 'the finest women's student club in the United Kingdom' but only 30 years later that, too, was too small for the thriving union. After continued petitioning, in 1969 they moved to their current location, an ugly, grey, box building at the end of University Avenue.

Despite maintaining a strong independent streak, just 10 years after the move change was afoot. From 1935 to 1980, the Union was the only organisation at the university run solely by women. It provided entertainments and debates solely for women. The QMU took part in national debates as a seperate entity to the GUU and also was represented independently by their President to the university, along with the GUU, the Athletics Club and the more recent Student's Representative Council. In 1979, though, the QM took an unprecedented move to allow males to join as members - the GUU board had a vote on the same issue that year and rejected the notion, but the following year were coerced into allowing women members.

Membership was still mutually exclusive and has remained that way, with students' matriculation card being punched with a hole to show what union they were a member of. As of the 2005/06 session, unions issue their own cards now to represent membership as a way to allow mutual membership, however the change in the constitution only happened at the QMU, it failed on an unforeseen technicality at the Annual General Meeting of the GUU. However, the only real difference is £1. Being a member of one union means a student can take advantage of all the facilities at both unions, the only difference is that on a club night, while members pay £1, non-members pay £2, while people not member of either union pay £3.

The membership before the millenium was only 3,000, half of the Glasgow University Union's membership, however the community has since rocketed to 7,500 where it has stayed roughly ever since. The Queen Margaret Union tends to attractive alternative, or counterculture, members mainly interested in rock music and metal. To this end, whereas the other union has mainly represented urban music, this union tends to play more rock influenced music and has a famous Tuesday night event, Revolution, which is devoted to metal and is so popular with Glasgow residents that it continues over Easter holidays, when most students are gone. Another popular event is Friday night's Cheesy Pop, which does what it says on the tin and again attracts a significant non-university clientelle.

What the building lacks in outside appearance, it makes up for in inside facilities. All the club nights take place on the ground floor in Qudos, a moderately large venue with a stage for the DJ or dancing, depending on that night. The stage also helps the QM maintain its status as a minor gig venue, showcasing many local bands, tribute acts and the more-than-occasional up and coming band, the most famous of which is probably Nirvana. Just outside of Qudos are two cash machines, a wardrobe, toilets (now including men's) and a coffee house with seats. The ground floor also has an off-license newsagents with discounted student prices, particularly on newspapers, and the reception. In Qudos there is an upper tier with seats on, which is another way to get to the upstairs bar, Jim's where many students hang out in between lectures. If, however, they are wanting to play pool, arcade games or watch TV in between lectures, the other bar on that floor is also handy, simply called The Games Room. Upstairs, on seemingly the last floor, is The Food Factory which provides food throughout the day and is proud to promote fair trade tea bags and confectionary. However, there is another staircase which not many people know about which can take you to the mysterious third floor¹² which is where all the beuracracy takes place as well as a study room and a TV room, where popular TV programmes (such as Neighbours) are watched, though it is shut and used as a blue room for performing bands on band nights.

Students' Representative Council

Clubs and Societies