Yes
By John McStravick
Students have always been, and still are, of great political importance. The very fact that, for most people, their fist vote is cast as a student, in a University environment of major academic and social change, is paramount in forming long-term political outlooks.
Parties know this. Encouraging young people to support them is likely to be easier than convincing them to switch allegiance later on. In addition, not only do students represent a significant chunk of the voting demographic, but the vast majority of those who will go on to hold positions of power in media outlets and other organisations will have degrees.
It is often assumed that students are less politically aware and active than they were in, say, the 1960s simply on the basis that we don’t see as many images these days showing scores of young people on the streets with placards. This is misleading.
Five decades ago there was a need to fight for social change that isn’t present today – something that we should celebrate, not lament. Hand in hand with this is the fact that there is less diversity between the leading two parties than there once was. If voters were to be presented with the kind of dichotomy that they were by Thatcher in the late 70s and 80s, or that offered by Labour before their ’97 lanslide, people would no doubt return to being more vocal in their views, not least students.
Those who hark back to the days of student protest fail to see the change in political landscape. Commentators on Barack Obama’s victory cite the Democrats’ use of technology as being key in reaching out to voters, especially young ones.
The portents for the demise of print media are numerous, a gap surely destined to be filled by blogs and smartphone news apps. The posts of right-wing bloggers Paul Staines (aka. Guido Fawkes) and Iain Dale alone are already read by nearly 200,000 people every month, many of whom are students.
Recently, internet petitions and links from websites such as facebook.com led to a record number of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission regarding a homophobic article written by Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir and, just a month earlier, effectively undermined a gagging order from Carter-Ruck, preventing The Guardian from reporting the dumping of toxic waste by oil company Trafigura.
As we enter a new age of unprecedented political freedom of speech, the bright and passionate young minds of technophilic students will be at the forefront.
No
By Jack Knight
Let’s be honest – British students have never been a political force. It’s a myth, baloney, a putrid pile of piffle!
Let’s have a look at the Vietnam protests. In the US, students held protests throughout the 60s and 70s- massive ‘sit ins’ across thirty-five university campuses, police shooting dead four students at the Kent State University, protests and student strikes shutting 450 universities within a couple of days. Compare this to British students, who had some involvement in two marches. Wow!
But maybe I am being too lofty and should look closer to campus? The only significant York students led political movement I could find were reports of a riot when the Boomtown Rats played a concert in Central Hall. (Yeah, Central Hall used to be a famous music venue! You can blame Geldof for ruining that one for us).
Having said this,people still demand we look at the Barack Obama campaign or the 1997 Labour victory as shining examples of how students are political forces and thus important. But what we see in these examples are not the wonders of poltical activism, but massive simpering Celebrity-based apolitical festivals of blandness with the words “democratic”, “change” and “policy” crowbarred into their promotional material. It’s simply the political posturing of ideologically naive students . Added to this idiocy is the disadvantage of being so pathetically arrogant in these ideals it makes you want to gnaw your own leg off, in a heoric attempt to throw it at these “political” debutants!
British students have never been the political giants some people like to think they are. It’s probably best to take former students’ stories of their ‘political days’ with the same cynical disengagement you apply to your Grandparents saying they had to “walk 15 miles to school everyday’.
But you probably all know that anyway, don’t you? We are criticised for our ‘apathy’, but really it’s just plain and simple realism. We know we have a voice and a vote like every other person come the next election, but we know we are not going to change the world with publicity stunt protests and grandiose visions.
It’s all because we don’t have a collective voice or ideology. We are all at university, that is the only thing that groups us together. We have no more political unity than a group of cat-owners, people who like Dr Pepper more than Diet Coke or those fellows who like to chew the ends of their pens.
When someone finds this elusive student politics ideal can they please tell me…and also lend me their map for Eldorado which I will get to on a unicorn! All just utter twaddle!