More than one reader has mentioned that it has been a long time since I last blogged. As more than one reader is more than I had ever hoped for in my wildest dreams I feel I might do worse than oblige. As luck would have it I have recently come across an issue I feel requires some discussion.
I have been a non-student, upstanding member of society for all of two months now (three if my contract of employment is to be believed; spot the mistake) and I have already noticed that what passes for passable when you are doing a degree is not so normal when you join the rat race.
Luckily, it is not personal experience that has taught me this.
You may be aware of a recent case that has hit the nationals, that of John Hagan, a Nottingham maths finalist accused (and acquitted) of rape. Needless to say his recent saga has been all over the local papers in recent weeks. I know John Hagan, not well; he was in the year below me when I was a rep for my hall Broadgate Park. His high level of involvement in Broadgate life led to his election as hall president and it was in this position that he was said to have become involved with a drunk fresher in the year below him one night.
Now I am not sure of the facts of the case beyond what has been said in the papers, and this is not the place to speculate as to the wheres and hows and the ahh!-is-it-really?s.
However, the official story does need recounting. On the night after a fresher’s ball, Hagan slept with a girl one week into her course, which, apart from the stern (but sensible) advice of the Student’s Union does not seem unforgivable. Unfortunately she was drunk and, upon finding the words, ‘I pulled the president’ on her stomach in red biro the next morning, saw fit to call the police.
What ensued was a criminal case which saw Hagan accused of rape. A not guilty verdict seemed fair as lack of consent could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt, but what is concerning is not the set of bare legal facts so much as the context.
The situation described by the papers is not new. When I was in my first and second year of university I was surrounded by people whose sole purpose in life was to bed a fresher; their level of intoxication was not deemed a problem or even an issue worthy of mention. Had a fresher wound up in a stranger’s bed with biro scrawled across their stomach and no memory of the night before I would have been bemused by the hedonism of it all but certainly not surprised. In fact I would have been amazed if it had not happened.
This seems symptomatic of a failure to look after vulnerable students. Plenty of young people go to university ‘for the experience’ and that, while positive in some senses, needs to be checked by someone. I myself found some enjoyment in the consumption of large quantities of Sainsbury’s own Scotch Whiskey at £6 a 70cl bottle. Partly I enjoyed the warm smile it produced, and partly it was the confidence with which I could, by the final term of my first year, see off the best part of a bottle without so much as a stumble.
Now I can’t drink more than a generous single without beginning to notice; I have higher priorities and find sobriety preferable. As a fresher I saw the bottle as a continent and its end a frontier to be explored. With no real frame of reference to suggest this might be verging on the pathological I never had recourse to stop and think that I was behaving like a lunatic. If I spent an evening working my way through a bottle of cheap Scotch now, I would be faced with concern and possibly be physically constrained by people who just know it is not the way to behave. Then it was just a game, part of what it meant to be at uni.
I think that this might underlie what has happened in the Hagan case. To sleep with someone who is sufficiently drunk to not remember and call the police is a stupid and ruthless act. That such behaviour may have gone unchecked by a broader moral consensus about how students ought to behave is telling of quite how far we have come in thinking of the student lifestyle as a necessary and forgivable whirl of hedonism before the real world. Sanity ought to permeate these depths. Exactly how, I don’t know.
I have been a non-student, upstanding member of society for all of two months now (three if my contract of employment is to be believed; spot the mistake) and I have already noticed that what passes for passable when you are doing a degree is not so normal when you join the rat race.
Luckily, it is not personal experience that has taught me this.
You may be aware of a recent case that has hit the nationals, that of John Hagan, a Nottingham maths finalist accused (and acquitted) of rape. Needless to say his recent saga has been all over the local papers in recent weeks. I know John Hagan, not well; he was in the year below me when I was a rep for my hall Broadgate Park. His high level of involvement in Broadgate life led to his election as hall president and it was in this position that he was said to have become involved with a drunk fresher in the year below him one night.
Now I am not sure of the facts of the case beyond what has been said in the papers, and this is not the place to speculate as to the wheres and hows and the ahh!-is-it-really?s.
However, the official story does need recounting. On the night after a fresher’s ball, Hagan slept with a girl one week into her course, which, apart from the stern (but sensible) advice of the Student’s Union does not seem unforgivable. Unfortunately she was drunk and, upon finding the words, ‘I pulled the president’ on her stomach in red biro the next morning, saw fit to call the police.
What ensued was a criminal case which saw Hagan accused of rape. A not guilty verdict seemed fair as lack of consent could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt, but what is concerning is not the set of bare legal facts so much as the context.
The situation described by the papers is not new. When I was in my first and second year of university I was surrounded by people whose sole purpose in life was to bed a fresher; their level of intoxication was not deemed a problem or even an issue worthy of mention. Had a fresher wound up in a stranger’s bed with biro scrawled across their stomach and no memory of the night before I would have been bemused by the hedonism of it all but certainly not surprised. In fact I would have been amazed if it had not happened.
This seems symptomatic of a failure to look after vulnerable students. Plenty of young people go to university ‘for the experience’ and that, while positive in some senses, needs to be checked by someone. I myself found some enjoyment in the consumption of large quantities of Sainsbury’s own Scotch Whiskey at £6 a 70cl bottle. Partly I enjoyed the warm smile it produced, and partly it was the confidence with which I could, by the final term of my first year, see off the best part of a bottle without so much as a stumble.
Now I can’t drink more than a generous single without beginning to notice; I have higher priorities and find sobriety preferable. As a fresher I saw the bottle as a continent and its end a frontier to be explored. With no real frame of reference to suggest this might be verging on the pathological I never had recourse to stop and think that I was behaving like a lunatic. If I spent an evening working my way through a bottle of cheap Scotch now, I would be faced with concern and possibly be physically constrained by people who just know it is not the way to behave. Then it was just a game, part of what it meant to be at uni.
I think that this might underlie what has happened in the Hagan case. To sleep with someone who is sufficiently drunk to not remember and call the police is a stupid and ruthless act. That such behaviour may have gone unchecked by a broader moral consensus about how students ought to behave is telling of quite how far we have come in thinking of the student lifestyle as a necessary and forgivable whirl of hedonism before the real world. Sanity ought to permeate these depths. Exactly how, I don’t know.
posted by huwtube at 3:15 am
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