Exterminating stereotypes
Don’t tar all students with the same beer-soaked brush
“I don’t like students. You will be exter-min-ated!” Not a sentence you expect to hear on a night out in York, particularly when issued from a life-sized Dalek belching smoke and squirting water at a group of unsuspecting, drunk students nearby. No, this scene is not a figment of my over-imaginative mind, nor an alcohol-induced construct, but a futuristic anti-student device currently roaming the streets of York.
The owner, Andrew Simpson - who professes a passionate dislike for students - spent eight months building the ultimate nemesis of all intoxicated students. But why would someone go to such lengths to prevent students weeing on his garden wall? Do we really deserve such zealous animosity?
In all fairness, the common view of students isn’t particularly positive. The links between students and excessive alcohol consumption, disorderly behaviour and avidly collecting all forms of street furniture and supermarket trolleys are hard to deny. The splatters of sick riddling the pavement on a morning in Heslington; the recent complaints by residents of Hes Road regarding the anti-social behaviour of students returning from town; the media fascination with the quantities of alcohol drunk on sports’ socials: all are manifestations of students’ most deplorable features.
Nonetheless, I don’t believe that this image of students is accurate. It is more of a generalisation, conflating the extreme with the commonplace. Some of us may see fit to imbibe numerous alcoholic beverages, decorate the concrete with a distant memory of a former meal whilst attempting to swear inordinately, before being taken home in a trolley with a traffic cone for company. However, others do not. Posters issued by the University’s Social Policy Research Unit indicate that four out of five students at York University drink only twice a week, if that; perhaps we’re not as debauched as some may think. It’s unfair to tar all of us with the same, beer-soaked brush.
My exoneration of students from their characterisation by society extends, paradoxically, into their interactions with the local community. Students can be incredibly selfless and positive creatures; think of RAG, the Union’s largest society with over two-thousand members, all helping to raise cash for local, national and international charities. Consider York Students in Schools, where you can spend a morning a week assisting in classrooms. And what about Student Action, where around seven-hundred students a year help with projects in and around York? We may be a noisy and disorderly lot, but surely we pay the community back for the trouble we cause.
So is Andrew Simpson justified in his attempts to “EXT-ERMIN-ATE” the student population? Personally, I think not. And I believe that a Dalek would take fantastic pride of place in my room, amongst my collection of traffic cones and other pisshead memorabilia. Daleks of York take heed: never underestimate the blind determination of an inebriated student…
Tom
Take your head out of your ass.