Students and students unions have always been the bane of their elders. I was a student in the early 1960s, just as The Sixties period of protest and flower power started. I seem to remember that that the then NUS President was called, Jack Straw, whatever happened to him?
Eventually they grow up and make as bigger mess of the world as their parents.
Student unions used to be hotbeds of resistance to authoritarianism. It appears that they are now becoming the seedbeds for it and harbouring some shocking little prigs. That could be just apppearance, mind you - we hear more about pronouncements like this than about the other 99% of what goes on.
Agreed, elegran. I guess it boils down to there being lots of different kinds of cleverness but there does seem to be an overabundance of intolerance and authoritarianism in students' unions nowadays, both here and in the US.
Supposedly is spot on, jalima. High IQ and/or an ability to get good exam grades does not necessarily translate into good sense. Clever people can be very dense about some stuff as well as being impressive about some other stuff.
"Students at Oxford have been told to use gender neutral pronouns such as “ze” rather than “he” or “she”.
Told? TOLD!?!? Good grief! They really don't understand freedom at all, do they?
Not that, as a student, I ever took any notice of anything a students' union rep ever said, mainly because I never listened to them because, strange though it may seem, I was there to study.
Still, such communistical announcements makes you worry for universities.