Oxford Student Union to censor newspaper, Soviet-style

The University campus was once a hotbed for radical political protest. Students used to engage in hunger strikes and anti-war demonstrations, fighting for what they perceived to be genuine threats to peace and freedom. But student activism has changed somewhat since those heady days of the 1960s. From controversial speakers to sombreros and stand-up comedians, today’s students seem to need protection from just about everything that offends them. It would appear they now need protection from the printed word.

Officials at the Oxford Student Union are planning to create a Student Consultancy of Sensitivity Readers. Under plans voted in by the student council, an elected group of people will be paid to scour the university’s newspapers and remove from publication anything they find “insensitive”. 

Why? Well, according to the student council, it will help protect students from any “potential damage” that might come from reading something they find offensive or disapprove of. 

Apparently Cherwell, the university’s oldest student union newspaper is a breeding ground for “insensitive material”. Students at the University believe there are a number of “problematic articles” being published in the Cherwell that are “implicitly racist or sexist.”  

Michael Crick, the veteran BBC broadcaster labelled the decision “horrific”. Crick, himself a former editor of Cherwell, went on to say: “If you’re going to have a boring, dull, vetted newspaper…nobody’s going to read it.”

Crick is correct. We’ve fought long and hard for press freedom in this country – and there should be vanishingly few grounds to interfere with what a newspaper decides to publish. If you read something you find offensive, the answer is simple: read another newspaper. 

There’s something vaguely reminiscent of the old Soviet Union about all this. Pravda was the official publication of the Soviet Communist Party until 1991. Like all printed media in the USSR it was under strict editorial control of the party. Crick compares the unions’ hunt for “insensitivity” to government officials inspecting newspapers prior to publication. 

The whole point of university is to be exposed to ideas and theories you may not agree with. The way you deal with them is by reasoned, rational discussion. You don’t censor them just because of the “damage” it may inflict. The only “damage” words cause is bruised pride. To employ “sensitivity readers” implies today’s students are sensitive and fragile – in need of special protection against the vicissitudes of life.

This is not an isolated case. It was only a few days ago that we learnt Goldsmiths University had done a similar thing. It recently announced that ethnic minority students will be able to delay their exams and get extensions on their work if they’ve suffered “racial trauma”. It’s not entirely clear what is meant by “trauma”, but in our contemporary clown world it usually means equating words with violence. Black and ethnic minority students now need only “self-certify” their subjective claim of trauma before it’s reviewed by the university for approval. To assume that these students need help by virtue of their immutable skin colour is patronising and an example of the bigotry of low expectations. It must be mentioned that no special measures are given to white students. Although when Kehnide Andrews claims whiteness is a psychosis, perhaps white students can turn that to their advantage and get an extra week on that difficult physics paper.

It is easy to laugh and dismiss these examples as further evidence of campus craziness. But when you shield students from the realities of the world and fail to expose them to “insensitive” ideas it can have life threatening consequences. You know, actual physical damage. The security guard who failed to challenge the Manchester Evening News Arena bomber did so because of the fear of being called racist. 

University is where adult life begins for thousands of students every year. When they graduate they will have to enter a world where they will experience difficult and controversial opinions on a daily basis. Far from preparing young adults for a world outside of academia, this nonsense will turn a new generation of students into fragile, politically-correct ideologues whose natural response to criticism will be to stick their fingers in their ears and run away.

This is as far from the true purpose of university as it is possible to get.