Back when I was clever, I went to Oxford. My time there was not wasted. I learned that the best place to get stationery was the OUSU* shop in Little Clarendon Street, or Little Trendy Street as it is properly known. There you could get jolly nice ring binders with the university crest on them for £3.50, I think it was, and, if memory does not fail me, bottles of Tippex for 70p. Proper Tippex with a cute little brush, not a silly foam applicator. Also available were bottles of Tippex thinner. Change and decay all around I see: apparently Tippex thinner is no longer a thing.
Buuut…
The Oxford University Student Union voted for a policy that transgender, working-class and female students needed more protection and urged the university to give faculties guidance and make more use of trigger warnings.
The motion, proposed by Alex Illsley, co-chairman of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ campaign, stated that there were multiple examples of “ableist, transphobic, classist and misogynistic content” on reading lists. He cited an article advocating that it should be a moral duty not to have disabled children, which was included on a medical law and ethics reading list, and one “advocating for the murder of disabled children after they have been born”.
Perhaps not all change is decay. In a departure from its usual policy of dignified pusillanimity, the University grew a pair:
The university issued a statement saying there would be no changes as a result of the motion. “[There are] no plans to censor reading materials assigned by our academics,” it said. It referred to its policy on free speech, adding: “Free speech is the lifeblood of a university. It enables the pursuit of knowledge. It helps us approach truth. Recognising the vital importance of free expression for the life of the mind, a university may make rules concerning the conduct of debate but should never prevent speech that is lawful. Inevitably, this will mean that members of the university are confronted with views that some find unsettling, extreme or offensive.”
*Back in those days OUSU stood for something. Though it always seemed a little odd that “The one that isn’t the Oxford Union” didn’t start with a T.
This hasn’t happened in a vacuum. FSU.
As you know very well, Natalie, comments like this!!!!
are exactly the kind of thing the oppressed students need trigger warnings about – though come to think of it, that word ‘trigger’ is redolent of weaponry and war (and of phallic imagery), just the kind of thing they also need a (T-word) warning about. The capitalist patriarchy is everywhere – even in the words they use to resist it!!!
I think they should take a really radical step to free themselves – they should go back to making ‘goo, goo’ noises.
Ian beat me to it. Toby Young’s young organisation is already creating ripples in all the right places.
I sometimes let my melancholia get the better of me and write long depressing things that I think Perry calls “Paul Marks suicide notes” – perhaps I will get round to writing a real one at some point.
But is not good when my (horrific) view of the decay of the world gets vindicated by the brainwashed types who dominate the institutions.
You are supposed to prove me WRONG you bright young people whose bodies and brains are in their prime – you are supposed to show some independence of mind and love for free inquiry.
You are acting like Central Office bureaucrats rather then fearless young seekers-after-truth you are supposed to be.
@Paul Marks,
How is this about you?
Chris Rock and others used to enjoy playing at universities – now they hate it as students are hostile to (or fearful of) of humour.
If this remains so (if the Frankfurt School of Marxism retains its grip) the both the government bureaucracy and the Corporate Big Business bureaucracy will be even worse (even more intolerant and twisted) than they are now.
Come out to South Dakota and watch the newly-graduated Ag Sciences students buy up their parents’ farms and turn them into profitable concerns.
Come to the University of Minnesota Medical School and watch the students prepping to be our next round of docs. Or go to the U of M College of Science and Engineering and be amazed at the hard work going on there.
Just stop watching Humanities students. Jeez, I’d write my own obituary too if I concentrated on such useless panderers. 😯
Paul, only you could turn the Oxford powers-that-be telling these leftist milquetoasts to get stuffed (& even spelling out all the right reasons why) as cause for despair 😆
Chin up, old chap, this is actually a win for the side of the angels!
OUSU are slipping. In my day (binders 89p IIRC, from Smiths) there would be some sort of hoo-ha every autumn. Never mind what about, or whether the authorities took any notice; clearly the idea was that the first year students would arrive into an atmosphere of ranting, chanting militancy and, they hoped, think that was normal. It’s May now; even the most gullible of them must be getting the idea.
Isn’t the purpose of a liberal arts education to “confront with views that some find unsettling, extreme or offensive.”
Echo chambers may well be comfortable, but they are hardly educational.
“Just stop watching Humanities students. Jeez, I’d write my own obituary too if I concentrated on such useless panderers. 😯”
Guess who gets to rule the world, the humanities students or the farmers/docs/engineers?
The humanity students obviously, they are the journalists, the todays priests who define what is right and wrong depending on who did it and where and when it was done.
(T)he University grew a pair
Perhaps everyone has misunderstood this statement. If all the females* grew a pair of testicles** and all the males* grew a pair of breasts** then they would ALL be transsexuals and therefore all forms of bigotry and intolerance would automatically cease in some magical fashion?
This still leaves the other 32 (or whatever the number is as of five minutes ago) self styled “genders” hanging in the breeze but you can’t expect perfection all at once. That lot will have to suffer until next week
*Or those that self identify as such.
**Note that they can optionally self identify as having the appropriate (or should that be the inappropriate?) organs which as any self aware woke SJW will tell you is exactly the same as actually being whatever you want to be. Or am I sort of disappearing up my own tailpipe here?
I bought some Tippex a few months ago–it was a going concern then. Has it croaked? I hope not.
Mr Ecks, it is the thinner, 1,1,1 Trichloroethane that is being banned. That was the original solvent, it’s the ozone layer issue with halogenated hydrocarbon compounds. Weird smelling stuff as I recall.
Tippex has gone the way of typewriters I imagine, rare, and curiosities both to the young.
Tippex itself still exists, Mr Ecks. But without the thinner it clogs up long before the bottle is used up. O tempora! O mores!
Paul Marks and others, it may make you feel better to know that later in the Times article it says,
The point I was trying to make by mentioning the Tippex was that OUSU’s only significant effect on my life as a student was the provision of stationery. I do seem to recall it did a bit of voting on things and issuing angry statements as well, but its efforts to provide reasonably priced staplers were a great deal more successful than its efforts to remove nuclear weapons. Like the UK’s Independent Nuclear Deterrent, my ring binders (much better quality than the 89p W H Smith’s ones, Peter) are battered but still functional 35 years later.
Mr Ecks,
Do you mind if I ask why you bought Tippex? It seems odd in this day and age. I mean I have one USB DVD drive which is shared between all of my wife and my computers – and that mainly gathers dust. I mean I’m glad I have it for the two or three times a year it’s needed and even then I’m not sure it’s absolutely necessary.
I still write stuff Nick–not for business or anything but I still write. I write up my notes for various courses –martial arts or whatever I have been on over the years
I largely dislike computers and find no benefit in them save they make knowledge easier to get and provide anti-TPTB communication. I esp despise constant annoying updates like the Windows 10 crap replacing W7 etc.
Is Alex Illsley also against abortion or just against free speech? That is, is Alex only objecting to discussing abortion of the disabled, or against discussion and actual abortion of the disabled, or against discussion and practice of abortion of anyone, even the ‘abled’?
Heh. W H Smiths’, battered but still functional 43 years later. Free market tops communism once again. 😛
“anti-TPTB”? I’m curious. Point taken about writing old school. I kinda regret I’m barely pen-literate. Especially when I look at my old student notebooks. I mean they’re not the Book of Kells but compared to my 2020 scrawling…
Samizdata is “anti TPTB” largely is it not Nick? And luckily many others.
We, yes it is Mr Ecks! But I didn’t know the abbreviation – had to Google it 😉
Perry – as Private Fraser (from “Dad’s Army”) it is my job to say “We are doomed, DOOMED I tell you” – before getting on with things. I am glad that Oxford is (for the present) telling the student activists to go bleep themselves.
bobby b – the left are in the science departments as well (I swear it) – but I am cheered by your words.
And I wish I could visit South Dakota (for example there is an art gallery just outside Watertown I would like to see – and I would like to see Pierre with the might river rolling by) – although, no offence meant, I think I would give Minnesota a miss.
The lakes sound wonderful – and many of the communities also. But the Swedish style POLITICS is not to my taste.
Still if family farms are continuing – that is excellent news. Little House on the Prairie (the books rather than the television series), survives.
Ian – EVERYTHING is about me, did you not know that I am the centre of the universe.
Natalie – that is good news, thank you.
None taken. I’m spending more and more time in SD and out of MN for good reason. Their new governor has refused to lock down the state – heck, they’ve had a total of 21 deaths in the entire state, while we’ve had 430 or so in Minnesota – and she’s taking huge national criticism for it. She’s my new favorite.
Snap.