Reading 5

Fines mean less to wealthy students so we´ve opted for community service, says St Jhon´s college.
Community service tasks such as cleaning toilets and digging trenches are the fairest way to punishmisbehaving students, says a Cambridge University college.
St Jhon´s college Cambridge has defended its decision to make students carry out manual labour for bad behavior – as reported by theCambridge Student – saying such tasks are more evenhanded than the financial penalties imposed by other Cambridge colleges and UK universities.
``the dean´s policy is to make such an order in preference toimposing a fina. The college recognizes that the effect of a fine varies according to students´´ ability to pay it, St John´s says.
Other colleges at Cambridge University have collected a total of38,209$ in student fines since October 2011 for offences ranging from missed tutorials ( a 15$ offence at Girton college) to ``noise violation´´ ( 180$ at Pembroke college).
It is common practice foruniversities to fine students for wrongdoing – students at Leeds Universitity can be charged up to 100$ for littering in student halls, while Keele warns students they could be fined 23$-34$ foroffences such as smoking cigarettes indoors and making verxatious complaints.
There are no national statistics to indicate how much students are fined in disciplinary charges each year, but freedom ofinformation requests show university libraries accrued around 67$ from students with overdue books for the six academic years from 2004-05.
Jaime Stern-Weiner, who graduated from Cambridge Universitythis summer and was often hit with library fines, admits that there is sometimes a need to punish students. ``Libraries need to have books returned so others can borrow them, and you need some incentiveto get them returned. While I don´t love paying fines, I hate not being able to find a book in the library that should be there´´.
But Pete Mercer, NUS vice-president, warns that university...