An Orwellian Nightmare, with a Silver Lining

   
            Universities are for… well, drinking, smoking, sleeping around, not sleeping, sleeping late in the mornings, and writing pretentious essays that you’ll wince about when you remember them later in life.

        In other words, they’re for making all the mistakes you like, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter, those years don’t count, and if you want to argue with your tutor and claim that “Catilina was in fact having a torrid affair with Cicero and the whole near-civil war thing was a lovers’ tiff”, or that in fact “Freud was a woman”, or that “something science-related and silly” (We need more non-artsy wankers on the staff – Ed.) for shits’n’giggles, you should be able to do it. Since we live in a liberal, democratic society.

            Yeah, right.

            This week it’s been reported that in his upcoming study, due to be published in May, LibDem Lord Carlile is likely to be making some recommendations that are going to change all that. Is the government worried about binge drinking in our student population? No. Are they worried about STDs (remember Snipers, wrap it when you’re tappin’ it) or unwanted pregnancies? No. Are they worried about rising levels of student debt, and the fact no-one currently at university will ever get a job, ever? Hell no, they apparently like that.

            What the government is worried about is that our universities might in fact be a hotbed of seditious and dangerous thought. According to the BBC "one suggestion is that lecturers should more closely analyse essays and work submitted by students to spot troubling or revealing ideas", so that they can report it to the Ministry of Love. Now it’s not like there haven’t been problems at our unis before, but it’s a long time since Philby. Modern students frankly don’t have time to spy for foreign governments, because they’ve all got three jobs in an attempt to avoid too much student debt. Oh wait… this is all making sense now! Higher student fees aren’t for economic reasons; they’re a sneaky government strategy to make sure students don’t have time to get political. Except, of course, the Oxbridge elite who don’t need the loans, who are somehow going to end up running the country no matter who we actually vote for.

            But hold on a moment; according to that perfectly reputable and reliable source of information, “Government Statistics”, children nowadays are getting smarter, remember? (Well, they’re certainly passing more exams, and exams aren’t getting any easier, are they? Of course not, says the DfE). So, logically – and I studied logic at university – then university students must be getting smarter too. No doubt Cam the Man wrote “I want to be PM” in his essays and no-one noticed this threat to national security, and Clegg's tutor dozed through the bit where Nick manifestoed “I want to be an arse-licking weakling who’ll toady up to anyone who pats me on the head and pretends I matter”, but today’s freshers are craftier. None of them would be such a rank amateur as to write “I want to blow up Parliament” in an essay on, say, post-Thatcher British theatre. They know to ask privately about how to source the munitions and materiel.

            In conversation with an eminent professor this week (over cheese and wine, natch; being a reporter is a swanky profession), I asked his opinion on the suggestions. He found it rather amusing, noting that if the Ministry of Love want to spend hours reading about what his students have been up to, they’re welcome to it. They might be a little surprised to receive a weekly bulletin saying who has been reading experimental postmodern short stories. Has Lord Carlile not noticed that, by and large, most students nowadays don’t read subjects that lend themselves to seditious thought? Quite what they expect to find out about those enrolled on Surf Science in Plymouth, I’m not too sure. Will students taking the David Beckham module find themselves reported for expressing a positive opinion about someone known to be an occasional cross-dresser? Actually, since at any given time about half the Conservative cabinet is wearing lacy panties under their Saville Row, that probably won’t be frowned on too much.

            Depressing as I found reading about the Prevent Review, I did however find one ray of hope onto which I could cling. The review is apparently attracting attention in other countries, and we’re going to export parts of the counter-radicalisation effort to the States. The Obama administration has given White House room to a UK senior official with the goal of replicating parts of the policy for them.

            That’s right, we’ve finally stopped importing their shite, and instead we’re sending them some of ours back.
            There’s no cloud without a silver lining.