Do they have too much spare time?

PROFESSOR Chris Barton (Sentinel Letters, November 12) claims that in his young day arts students could laze at the public expense for three years and then walk into good jobs; they felt entitled and privileged – the Golden Youth of their time.

There is alot of truth in this. In 1961 I was one of the first 52 students at the new University of Sussex. We were all arts students and, it must be admitted, often more concerned with our images than work. But subconsciously we imbibed culture.

The student body has long been a pioneer at its worst and most intolerant. It has prevented writers with the wrong views from speaking on the premises. It has tried to put students on staff appointments boards.

According to a retired don it has hinted that if good degrees were not given to activists disruption would follow. Now it has excommunicated Dr Kathleen Stock for maintaining biological gender is fixed.

In 1968 I did a one-year post-graduate course at the London School of Economics. It swarmed with economics and sociology students without any science students to dilute their mystic sense of mission.

Its activists led the student revolt. They wanted world revolution – though they continued to draw their grants. Now the LSE has completely changed. It has gone over to capitalism: nightclubs, gyms and degrees for tyrants’ sons.

But, like Sussex, its student body is tarred with the brush of the exclusion and persecution of academics with controversial views.

Yes, the students have time on their hands and can persecute non-believers in the current rigid orthodoxies.

The tacit understanding behind the lack of immediate pressure on arts students’ time has always been that it gives students time to think. But now it is taken to mean giving activists time to attack freedom of speech and enquiry and intimidate dissidents.

Heaven knows how it will all end up. Perhaps Professor Barton could give us his forecast.

MARGARET BROWN

BURSLEM