Students

University towns are already awash with fur-trimmed gowns and proud parents, but behind the smiles there’s a glimmer of resentment: four in 10 of those graduating this year think they’ve been ripped-off. According to a survey of 1000 final-year students by ComRes, students are split over whether they think their degree was good value for money. One factor determining their verdict was their subject, with two-thirds of those studying science, technology, engineering and maths saying their course was worth the fees. Just 44 per cent of humanities and social science students agreed.

I get defensive when feminists are accused of being prudes. There’s nothing prudish in critiquing a monotonously promiscuous culture; in despairing of unrealistic body standards, or believing, as I’ve argued before, that porn is healthy, even necessary, when it’s privately stashed under the mattress, but doesn’t belong on the high street. Then a bunch of students does something so reactionary in the name of feminism that we may as well scatter séance candles about the university library and revive en masse the spirit of the Victorians.

If I had a penny for every time a politician or a journalist insinuated that of all the issues facing Britain in the 21st century, public transport was the thing that affected my life the most, I would own a bus company. If I had a penny for the amount of times someone asked how angry I was about Clegg and tuition fee rises, I would have no student debt. But this is the political climate we currently live in. Modern politicians have well and truly shafted young people, and not just through policy changes or obvious attempts to bribe their older, greyer core vote. I'm talking about Westminster’s desire to constantly label all young people the same.

 New York It’s a new semester and a new start at the University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, once encouraged America’s youth to ‘come and drink of the cup of knowledge and fraternise with us’. But this term, any student who fancies a swig from the cup of knowledge had better be sure it doesn’t contain any unauthorised alcohol — in fact he should beware fraternising at all, especially in a ‘frat house’, for fear of breaking the strict new rules. It’ll seem incredible to fans of the 1978 film Animal House, but at the University of Virginia, one of the heartlands of America’s famous ‘Greek’ system, the chilly hand of authority has clamped down on frat-house life.

Welcome to 2015, the year that speaking and writing freely had to stop. Anything that might cause trauma to anyone of any race except the white one will be expunged, and the perpetrators of politically incorrect speech or written word will be airbrushed for ever. The word trauma derives from the Greek and means wound. The literary canon will be the first to bite the dust as it’s one big trauma, especially for feminists. The Great Gatsby, for example, is bonfire material because of a variety of scenes ‘that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence’. And let’s not forget The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as racist a book as ever there was — worse than Gone with the Wind.

Thoroughly cheering news emerged this week that left-handed people are likely to earn between 10 and 12 per cent less than their right-handed colleagues. (So 11 per cent less, then). Good. I have never cared for left-handed people, considering them arrogant and possessed of unsavoury personal habits — and were I an employer I would not give jobs to any of them. I would let them moulder on benefits, and laugh and point as I passed them waiting at the bus stop on their way to the dole office. Awful people. The most famous left-handers from history were Gerald Ford, Fidel Castro, the spoon-bending self-publicist Uri Geller and the controversially sexist Victorian Jack the Ripper. I think that tells you all you need to know.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Sean O'Callaghan and Govinda Clayton join Lara Prendergast to discuss talking to terrorists." startat=808.5] Listen [/audioplayer] In a world often devoid of good news, there has been a fine development on the farthest-flung shores of insanity. The British National Union of Students aspires to represent students, though traditionally tends only to represent those students who are politically ambitious and possess left wing views. In any case, its latest idiocy is that it has tied itself in knots over the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - Isis. A condemnation of the ebullient Islamic group was tabled by a student of Kurdish descent.

The press love a bit of Oxbridge competition, but Oxford is embroiled in a far older and more ruthless rivalry: town vs. gown. It was in a dispute between the university and city of Oxford that Cambridge University has its foundations. In 1209, according to Roger of Wendover’s chronicle, an Oxford liberal arts scholar accidentally killed a woman. The Mayor led a group of townspeople to the killer’s house, only to find that he had fled - instead, they seized the three innocent scholars with whom he rented the house and hanged them. Fearing future tyranny and terrified of their fellow citizens, an exodus of Oxonians left the dreaming spires for a provincial backwater on the river Cam.  History repeated itself in 1355. A pub fight escalated into the two-day Battle of St.

On waking up (at noon) on Thursday morning, I found I had a text from one of my fellow History freshers. Sent at 6am and accompanied by a screenshot of a half-finished essay: ‘WHY am I still up?!’ The all-nighter is a notorious Oxford experience, and not one I thought I would ever have to sample. ‘I’ll be fine getting the work done at university,’ I blithely assured those warning me of how unstructured a History student’s life is, ‘I like to keep busy.’ What I failed to appreciate is that it’s impossible not to be busy at university. School without lessons was dire — by Tuesday afternoon of the pre-Christmas week of ‘fun’ I had lost the will to live, let alone make Chemistry-themed paper-chains.

My freshers’ pack (a yo-yo, two balloons, a sachet of instant hot chocolate and a condom) is barely visible beneath English Historical Documents, volume 1. Two nights of dancing knee-deep in foam has taken its toll on my shoes, and I feel slightly tricked - encouraged to partake in a week of university-approved partying, and then, two days in, given a 19-item reading list and an essay due in for next week. School friends’ Facebook pages are torturous: three weeks into term at other universities, yet to hand in their first piece of work and seemingly out every night. At dinner the conversation has morphed from ‘So where are you from?’ to ‘You haven’t started writing yet either, have you?’.