Into the Boarchive – Volume 48, Issue V

This section – looking back at stories from The Boar’s archive – originally appeared in Volume 48, Issue V of The Boar, published on Friday 6 March, 2026.

1976: Boris meets his end

No, don’t worry: the departing hogs on this Boar’s editorial board aren’t running away with the slow computers from Office 1. Our swine end has only come from our impending graduation. However, half a century ago, a very different ending was in store for The Boar – not for their editorial board, but for the paper itself.  

While Warwick students and staff alike only have to wait a few months for the next print edition of The Boar to drop (we know Stuart Croft will be eagerly awaiting – read: dreading – its release), this wasn’t the case in 1976.  

The paper, which was only in its infancy, was ready to wave a premature goodbye to the bedrooms of Rootes and Butterworth’s office walls after only three years, declaring on the front page of its 11 March edition (in a very meta-fashion) that “Boar goes bust”. 

Mark Whyte’s victorious election as SU President was overshadowed by the story, with The Boar’s editorial board announcing it was broke and no longer in a position to churn out copies of the then-weekly newspaper (the editors’ degree classifications no doubt breathed a sigh of relief).  

A bail-out from the SU provided relief for one last copy of the paper (where else would have students saved up to 50% on train fares than with Transalpino?!), but any future edition of the paper was on the rocks. Would students ever be pestered to pay 5p for The Boar again? 

Spoiler alert: the answer was yes. The paper jumped back into action in the September of that year and has not stopped producing editions since. This News Editor may be waving goodbye to the offices, but long may this grand institution continue.  

And by this grand institution, of course I mean ‘Into the Boarchive’. Future News Editors, enjoy scrolling the archives. 

2006: A sticky theft

On Valentine’s Day 2006, The Boar carried the story of a rather unique love affair. Someone’s deep affection for laptops led them to begin a spirited campaign of thievery, snatching two students’ devices from their rooms. If you’re picturing this elusive thief sneaking into unlocked rooms and melting away with armfuls of tech, you’d be wrong, however. This was a far more innovative crime, one which sealed this Houdini’s place in the Boarchive.  

Like an Ent from Lord of the Rings with Mr Tickle-style arms, this person dangled twigs and branches through open windows, hooking laptops from students’ desks and leaving the scene undetected. ‘Twig-wielding criminals hook laptops on branches’ read this paper’s headline, accompanied by some neat photography work from Boar staff of yore reenacting the desk’s POV as the menacing wooden limb approaches in a gloved hand.

If they were attempting to leave no traces, however, this timber swindler failed. First-year student Suzie McQueen returned to her room after the weekend to find twigs scattered all over her desk, while fellow Cryfield ground-floor resident Alice Harkness was met with a large branch on her desk and twigs encircling her computer. Minutes later, she witnessed the “terrifying” site of this floating hand proceeding to move the curtain aside – evidently checking for witnesses after an initial failed attempt. 

Debates around campus security, especially concerning female undergraduates in ground-floor rooms, swiftly followed these incidents, with many Cryfield residents calling for more CCTV and security lighting at the rear of the building. Two decades on, however, security concerns remain an issue in the area, if the presence of an ‘ex-prisoner’ squatting in a Cryfield block last term is anything to go by.  

Still, one must acknowledge the positives. The lumber heists drew to a close after this short spell, the mysterious woodland perpetrator withdrawing into the yellowed pages of Warwick folklore.