Many might consider us all as already belonging to one thriving cult – of students, identifiable by all the activities and interests it strives to include - and to regulate.

Cults are associated with both cliquey membership and widespread materialisation. But it is in this balance of the few and the many, seen in varying levels of cult-dom, that lie some of its more concerning elements.

York has a distinct lack of cults. We pride ourselves on well-organised membership of familiar societies. But there is some quite cultish society activity – nocturnal self-incarceration for the sake of a newspaper has even been observed.

To the outsider (politicians in particular), our being wide-eyed and interested - or impressionable, prompts the nervous observation that universities are fertile ground for a whole manner of cult-growth.

Yet it seems the cult of York is forged only in our indistinctiveness. At least we may be more immune to infiltration by cult-representatives, if not banks enticing us with ten thousand popcorn makers. Cults, though are formed through internal and external identification.

For members, cults in fact allow like-minded individuals to enjoy their devotion communally. A cult’s marginalised status binds its followers together in common cause – whether its possessive protection, or more vociferous defence.

Yet members’ dilemma is in spreading the message, but thereby compromising their partisan hold on the cult and its future direction.

Take TV shows. Their cult status, and the number of their avid followers, often paradoxically increases if axed by the big bad broadcasting company, and again if saved by fans’ campaigning. Television is increasingly appropriating the cult into the mainstream for commercial, if not artistic purposes. In tv phenomenon Lost, these influences add an enigmatic quality to otherwise straightforward clichés.

Lost revealingly launches fans’ conspiracy theories as to where it’s leading. This sense of a controlling but elusive authority pushes the boundaries of fiction and production, as viewers implicitly recognise that it’s the fiendish writers and executives that are really behind it all.

Sinister goings-on are not confined to an imaginary island. Cults have a power to bind people together; it is a dubious quality, and a consuming power, that does not necessarily lie with the members who uphold it. More authoritarian forces can be at work. Cults ‘surrounding’ dictators are often allied to nationalist movements, though uniting the people only under the autocratic rule they are used to maintain. Separate to and yet spread throughout society, the cult functions to similarly position its privileged and powerful leader.

An influential group of uni cults recognises cultural and political trends outside its boundaries. Though this is not to diminish the often harmless peculiarities of individual cults. Maybe York needs a few more. Societies should shun their status and indulge in the possible luxuries that await in the arena of the cult. Albeit funding may not come so easily from the Student Union, but then not much in the way of cash is flowing at the moment. I implore societies to seize the moment, go underground and liven up campus.

(James Bamford)

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