Students should spend more time on constructive pursuits

I REFER to the article “Students want Smuts statue to fall at UCT”, Cape Times, June 22.

I am surprised that students today have the time and apparent liberty to deface university property at will.

In my student days, with lectures, practical classes, tutorials, visits to the library and other matters of academic interest and just the feeling of privilege to be part of a tertiary educational institution, I didn't have the time or the inclination to disfigure university property.

Perhaps today, courses have a lower standard or perhaps students are more intelligent than in my day so that they have the time to attack statues.

Instead of using their time and energy to worry about what Smuts may have done or not done, why not use their obvious passion and zeal for the removal of “colonial symbols” to open and manage a soup kitchen for the hundreds of homeless people in Cape Town.

Now, there would be something constructive.

KEVIN MEINEKE | Hout Bay