Have they been dragged up by their parents?
THE university’s students have only recently returned to town, and almost immediately they have seemed determined to demonstrate their contempt for the place, and its residents, by treating the streets as large garbage receptacles.
On Tuesday, October 10, I walked around the small block formed by York Road, Radmoor Jitty, Burleigh Road, and William Street to find the pavements and gutters strewn with rubbish.
Discarded empty bottles and cans of alcohol were everywhere; left on pavements, on garden walls, thrust into privet hedges, or carelessly thrown into gardens.
Broken glass bottles lined parts of the road. Remnants of fast-food containers had been dumped on the ground, in several cases with the remains of uneaten food and drink left inside, ready to attract rats.
Radmoor Jitty was carpeted from end-to-end with a outstand- ing collection of all of the above types of refuse, simply dumped there by supposed ‘adults’ who apparently can’t think beyond their own selfish pleasures and desires, and who are too lazy to dispose of waste responsibly.
Clearly, the majority of the university’s students are merely transient visitors to the town (relatively few will settle here), and as such they have little interest in investing anything noticeably positive in the wider host community. Instead, they appear to treat the place as a sort of ‘student camp’ where they should be able to do as they wish with little or no interference. And so, instead of respectfully helping to take care of the place and thereby making a more supportive contribution to the environment and the health and well-being of the people who live here, they prefer to pollute the town’s streets with their rubbish and drunken vomit and noise. It must be, after all, a necessary part of enjoying the rich tapestry represented by the University’s much vaunted ‘Best Student Experience’ accolade.
One has to wonder where students get these attitudes from.
Have they been dragged up by their parents to believe themselves so entitled? I mean, would they behave in these ways in the streets where their relatives live? I very much doubt it. So why do they believe it is OK here?
There is clearly a pernicious ‘student culture’ involved, which contains strong elements of such self-indulgent values, and into which new students are rapidly inculcated. Such a hedonistic culture is very unhealthy for all concerned: for the students themselves and the town’s residents, as well as for the reputation of the University.
This negative culture should not be ignored; it needs to be acknowledged and robustly resisted by the residents of Lough- borough, and by the town’s various authorities, including those of the university.
The situation is already bad and would appear to be getting worse, and this largely unrestrained culture seems endemic within the student body.
Only today I heard from somebody who recently requested his next-door student neighbours to turn down their very loud music late one night, and was firmly told by them that he was living in a ‘student area’ and should expect to hear loud music being played at night. Their attitude was that he (a working man who needs to sleep at night) was in the wrong for making such an ‘unreasonable’ and ‘selfish’ request in the first place. It was spoiling their fun!