Freshers’ Week: Students, resist SU coddling and insist on being treated as adults

Sep 23, 2016 by Jill

by Tom Slater, Spiked:

Freshers’ week, once a time full of boozing, socialising and awkward dorm-room fumblings, is now little more than an induction into a brave new world of campus authoritarianism. New students today – arriving to find consent workshops, trigger warnings and fancy-dress bans – aren’t treated like adults, starting an exciting new chapter in their lives. Instead, they’re treated like children, in need of constant coddling and intervention. That’s why, this freshers’ week, spiked’s Down With Campus Censorship! campaign has brought together students, recent graduates and young writers to wage a war of words on the campus madness. Read our ‘Freedom for the freshers’ coverage below. And, if you’re a freedom-loving student, join the campaign today.

How to survive freshers’ week.’ It wouldn’t be a new academic year without a procession of these wobbly lipped guides offering new students a hand in negotiating the supposedly scary world of university life. This year is no different, with student websites and magazines offering such sage advice as ‘Trust us, you’ll get homesick at least once… give your mum a call and everything will be okay’; ‘Never, ever leave your drinks unattended at any time’; and ‘If all else fails, you can always fall back on the excuse that you have work to do when you feel the need for alone time’. You’d be forgiven for thinking freshers’ week was a horrendous ordeal.

But these babying how-tos, the assumption that freshers’ week is something to endure rather than enjoy, are only the softest expressions of an increasingly infantilising campus culture. Today, new students are not treated as adults, embarking on a new and exciting chapter in their academic and personal lives – they’re treated as children in need of constant coddling. British students’ unions, crosses between mini GDRs and oversized crèches, now believe it is their job to micromanage every aspect of students’ lives, from what they can read, hear or say to what goes on in their private lives – flinging STD tests, mental-health leaflets and Safe Space policies at anyone who passes by.

Read here