“The exam is now over. If you continue writing it will be considered an academic offence. Now please wait in your seats…” All students stared into the distance, most nursing serious monkey claw pen-writing hand. Outside it was grey. As we trickled out most people returned to the library, some back to bed, only two of us wandered towards the pub. “Shit Tom, we’re finished.” “Yeah.” “It’s all over…” “Yeah.” “Like actually it’s done – are they not done? Why aren’t they celebrating? Should they be celebrating? Why don’t I feel happier? Are you happy? Have we passed? Shit Tom! We’re finished!” A duck cackled in the distance. “Yeah.”

A boy smiles at me and I smile back as I slip past him to the bar. “You don’t remember me do you?” “Uh…” Bad question to ask in Ziggys. “In Freshers’ week you showed me how to use the library.” “Oh yeah! You’re the fresher who was in the library!” I genuinely did remember him, and there genuinely had been a fresher in the library in Freshers’ week. “I hope you haven’t been back to the library since – it’s your first year!” “I haven’t, don’t worry – can I get you a drink?” “Uh…” “I couldn’t use the library if it weren’t for you! Take it!” He pushes a glass into my hand and bounces back to his friends. My good Samaritan moment had come back to me, a rare golden Ziggys moment… Suddenly I jump as I note a stray hand on my person. “What are you doing?” A new boy struggles to focus on my face. “Sticker! Vote!” I look down at the elections sticker to which his hand was still attached. “That’s my breast.” My new friend grins. “You have nice boobies.” Snap back to reality.

We’ve lived in our house for two years. It’s difficult for your average student to grasp household appliances in that time. “You’re going to laugh, but…” “But what?” “I still don’t know how to use the grill.” “I see.” “Can you show me?” “No.” He stands in the doorway staring at me. Sigh. “Turn the knob on the left to 9 o’clock to set it to grill, then set the temperature about half way.” “Right…” Long pause. “Where’s 9 o’clock?” “I’m sorry, I’m not answering that.” He sets about rattling in the kitchen. Around me more of the same species sit grooming and picking themselves. My eyes drift onto the green mould behind the TV. I soon find myself considering the black mould in the shower…and the pizza crusts on the table…and the spongy substance under the sofa…home. Bang. Silence. Muttering in the kitchen. “What do you mean you can’t put metal in the microwave?”

To sweep aside one vein of argument: practically speaking, what was proposed was not ridiculous. Small changes to the “sex” section on university paperwork is a negligible undertaking. The provision of gender-neutral toilets “where possible” is also not unreasonable. Lest we forget, we’re in the middle of a huge campus extension, a perfect opportunity for change and development, and I’m certainly not persuaded that Heslington East is so well-planned and close to completion that the provision of gender neutral toilets would be a great difficulty.

Furthermore, when it comes to this campus the use of disabled toilets is an easy and perfectly acceptable temporary solution. It is blowing it out of proportion to see this as labelling trans-gender students as disabled: it is merely a matter of convenience.

But what about not practically speaking? What about those who stood up, if mainly behind a veil of Internet anonymity, and said “man up” and “grow a pair”? Their inconsiderate puns, not mine. The ignorance within the main body of opposition was astounding. It is one thing not to believe there is a distinction between gender and sex but it seems clear that most people simply didn’t understand the distinction between the two. Sex is, as Peter Warner-Medley suggested, biological; it is “asking what’s between our trousers”. The question of sex creates obvious issues for transgender students, who define against their sex, so gender seems the more appropriate question. However, it is not like “putting on a form what cock size are you or how big is your penis”, quote Warner-Medley again. Whilst the ignorance of the opposition has been astonishing, the heavy-handed attitude of some LGBT supporters has exacerbated the situation.

In general, including “T” in the LGBT umbrella is unhelpful in every way other than administrative convenience. By entering into the discussion on transgender we are separating out the issues of gender and sexuality. People are using this debate to take another swipe at the gay community when really it is totally irrelevant. Whilst the gay community are deservedly retaliating, it surely leaves non-gay trans students feeling isolated and misrepresented.

What needs to be taken into consideration is that this is a difficult debate because for the majority of people it is wholly unfamiliar. I was born a “girl” and I’ve always felt like a “girl”. It did not occur to me that one day I might not feel this way. Why would it? It had to be explained to me that someone might feel that their sex betrays their true gender. Even as someone who’s never felt any gender-sex confusion or disparity, I understand, and in a society where it is far from an accepted norm, to be honest, I don’t envy it.

Those who are in favour of welfare considerations for trans-gender students need to recognise the leap in understanding it takes for those who have never experienced gender issues. The misunderstanding of key terminology such as “sex” and “gender” is symptomatic of a wider confusion and it is going to take time and patience to educate and explain. On the whole, it’s not bigotry but ignorance that causes the arguments. Some people will of course remain in opposition, but more people would be won over if the main participants in this debate took a step back from all the anger and frustration.

Ignorance aside, it is astonishing that people feel the need to arbitrarily dismiss the welfare needs of a minority, even if it is a minority they do not understand. But with the motions passing, it proves once again that the most well-voiced opinions are the most angry, not the most prevalent. We should be proud to be part of an accepting and progressive community who uphold minority representation.

Strolling off campus after a hard day at the library. Truly, we are an academic institution of impressive rigour. Even if I see Sporcle flicking up on laptop screens, I know they are just taking a well-earned break. Glowing with a sense of achievement I see a crowd gathered on the edge of campus. Fifteen students are gathered, peering over the fence into a field. The nervous chatter indicates something has happened. Some kind of accident? I stop as I reach them. “Mate, you heard about that porn star who died from fucking a horse right?” In one sentence all my illusions of student intellectual rigour disappear. The faces around me are not concerned, as I first thought, but fascinated. We are staring at a horse whose erect penis gave fifteen students cause to pause. I stay only a minute but I am fairly sure that in that moment I lost a substantial amount of self-respect.

How not to issue a complaint. “I don’t swear- I’m from Glasgow!” The bouncer is big, bald and not very bright. “Look, I paid to be here so you can’t shove me around and swear at me. I’m going to make a complaint.” The delivery is impressive considering the intoxication levels. “Are you calling me a liar? I said I don’t swear.” “You pushed me and I’ve seen you be mean to other people too.” Some say our drunken protagonist is rowdy, I see her as a hero. “I ain’t never seen you before, you pushed me.” “I didn’t bloody push you!” “I told you, I don’t like fucking swearing!” “Why would I push you? You’re fucking huge?” One of his ‘fucking huge’ hands clamps onto her arm. “That’s it, I don’t have to put up with this shit. This is abuse.” By now our hero is being manoeuvred down the fire escape. “I don’t have to put up with your shit. Nobody likes you.” “You’re barred.” “I’m never coming back.” “I’m never letting you back.” “Good.”

The library makes me want to cry. I look down at my reading then look up at the unmitigated number of unsocialised morons I am committed to studying with. I am mesmerised by a couple snogging opposite me. There’s no need to feel self-conscious about staring, they never come up for air. Don’t get me wrong; I have revised in the library with my boyfriend. But I haven’t revised him. What these two have forgotten is that we’re free now. No parents to burst through your bedroom door because they heard the whoosh of a zip and the creak of a bed spring. Heavy petting can continue undisturbed. So why here? You’re not doing any work so you may as well give up.­­ If you really get your kicks out of library fumbles then for God’s sake go and do it between the shelves, some of us are trying to read Kant.

Squinting through the incessant snowfall I walk very slowly. I like to ride my bicycle but some opportunistic scrote rode it away without my permission. I like to ride the bus but it stops at six. At home I have two crusts of bread, some peas and no tangible central heating: there is little reason to hurry. Somewhere over garden fences I hear children laughing. Scrawny eight year olds ramming snowballs down the hoods of the scrawnier eight year olds. Deep within me something thaws, the children playing, the picture perfect frost, the- THWACK. Fifteen year olds cackle from their bus stop shelter as I scrape snow out of my ear. There are three of them and a field full of snow behind them, so I put my head down and keep walking. They shout after me. “Paki!” I look round in total surprise. “What?” Another snowball to my face. “Yeah you, Paki!” I have yet to fully process this event.

With the winter persistent and the economic situation deteriorating I’m making some lifestyle adjustments. It began with small things, like a heightened appreciation of duvets and cosy nights in, but as time goes on something bizarre is happening. I spend my evenings sitting under a blanket wearing two jumpers, two pairs of socks, a thermal vest, thermal leggings, pyjamas and a woolly hat. Darning my tights I wonder how effective gravy and an eye pencil really is when it comes to imitating a good pair of nylons. I rub my feet and worry about chill blanes. At least the warmth of my Horlicks is comforting, and it’s bread and dripping for tea. Somewhere in 2009 my former self mocks me.

A slightly vertically challenged and generally quite British looking friend of mine lumbers through Ziggy’s. His night has only got better since he discovered they now serve red wine. Spotting someone he looks very excited and attempts to grab their attention. “Ehhh chico!” The Hispanic bystander seems a little confused. “I’m sorry?” Trying again my friend flings his hands out once more. “Chico! We’re in the same seminar! Ehhhh!” “Why are you calling me chico?” “I’m Guatemalan, you’re Guatemalan…” “No you’re not.” “I am! My name is (thin veil of anonymity) – it’s a Spanish name!” He looks up hopefully, looking for recognition from his brother, his chico. “Oohhh, yeah I saw your name on the seminar list. I couldn’t see anyone who would be South American, so I thought you weren’t turning up.” Alone again: in Ziggy’s, with red-wine lips and a lack of cultural identity. Bad night.

It’s a long time since I rode the bendy purple beast from campus to town and oblivion. “Hi,” says boy. He’s floppy haired and I’ve met him before – but then again, so have a lot of girls. “Hello.” “What’s your name?” I look at him carefully. This time, I decide, I am going to assert myself. “I am not going to tell you, because I’ve met you three times on this bus and each time I have told you my name.” “No!” “Yes.” Silence. He appears to be waiting for me to soften. “But I want to know you.” (From the back) “I bet you do!” (Applause and whooping) I sigh. “It begins with ‘L’.” “Lucy? Laura? Um…Lucy? Laura? Lauren?” This is clearly one of the most confusing things ever to happen to him. “There aren’t any other girls names beginning with ‘L’! Um Lucy? Laura?” By now it’s time to get off the bus. “It’s a flower. See you later.” “I’m Welsh!” he calls after me, “We’ve only got sheep and trees in Wales!” Later that night, across the dancefloor: “Liiiilyyyyy!!!!”

Balls. Testicles. Gonads. Nuts. I am plagued by them. I don’t own a pair, I am not especially interested in them, and yet I cannot avoid the intimate discussion of them. Size, shape, tenderness, texture, pliability… Damn you who brought the mumps fear on us. I managed nearly two and half years here without mumps paranoia and then one day you got the hamster cheeks. All the boys I know are walking around with one hand on their cheek mump-gland and the other on their testicle-mump gland. I never thought “how’re your balls today?” would become such a regular refrain. Tender plums. Swinging melons. Shrivelled grapes. The extensive analogous discussion has put me off fruit. Since probably immune and certainly without testicles, my greatest concern should really be scurvy.

Once more unto the Duchess. I was going to write “come and create a socially awkward situation” on my forehead but as it happens, I don’t have to. Cue gentleman acquaintance. He starts chatting, Vodka and indie-disco “choons” mean I can’t really hear what he is saying. I don’t want to seem rude so I keep smiling. Then silence. “Sorry I didn’t quite catch what you were saying?” “She’s really offended.” “Oh…I…” “I just think it’s funny. It was a joke right?” “What?” “What you wrote?” “I offended her?” (insert Radiohead over his voice) “I offended her about notebooks?” (insert MGMT) “I’m really sorry is she properly upset?” “Yes,” He laughs and says goodbye. I think I’m sorry, though I may have misunderstood. And I don’t remember writing anything about notebooks. Answers on a postcard please.

These were among the first words I heard said at York about drugs. That was two and a half years ago and until writing this feature it was still probably the most honest thing anyone said about drug use. In my experience, drug use at York is below average, concentrated and exclusive. Without the big city dealers of Leeds, London or Manchester, or even the cocaine cloud of real public school aristocracy to be found at Exeter, Durham or Oxbridge, it’s easy to speculate on the lack of a big York drug scene. On top of that, play the University of Dork card and it seems inevitable that York is dry.

On the other hand, with very little effort I managed to find users on campus willing to talk. “I’d be delighted to help out,” came back one message, “Should I give you a taster of what I’ve tasted? I’m a fan of white lines running through my mind, love a bit of chronic, have dabbled in the old love buttons and also massively appreciate a bit of my good friend mandy. So I expect I could cover most bases for you.”

Mandy, white lines and love buttons, aka MDMA, Cocaine and Ecstasy, are A-class drugs. In a survey of 100 students last week, only 17 said they were aware of the use of Class A drugs among students at York. Possession can earn you seven years in jail, supplying can get you life. Nobody said there weren’t risks.

The usual student age group reports the highest number of admissions to hospital in England with a primary diagnosis of poisoning by drugs. In 2006/07 there were 2,674 such cases reported in 16-24 year olds. In addition to this there were 6,743 admissions with an initial diagnosis of drug-related mental health or behavioural disorders.

Leah Betts, whose stepfather was once in the drug squad and whose stepmother went round schools warning of the dangers of drugs, died in 1995 after taking one ecstasy tablet. The parents co-operated with the national media to release emotive pictures of Leah in her hospital bed. The papers went mad for poisoned ecstasy tablets, citing previous victims and forewarning the “party generation”. It later emerged that Leah had actually died from drinking too much water whilst taking ecstasy. It is also alleged that she was drinking heavily and had been smoking cannabis.

Ecstasy was rated 18th in the list of the 20 most dangerous drugs. Just above poppers and way below alcohol, solvents and tobacco. One ecstasy tablet can kill: according to Drugscope there have been around 200 “direct” ecstasy deaths since the 2000. But did one ecstasy tablet kill Leah Betts?
At the University of York the colleges all employ broadly similar drug policies. Wentworth chair Carl Thompson explained it as on a “case-by-case basis but built around 2 principles: a) help if the person needs it and b) the need to uphold the discipline and welfare of the whole college community, i.e. make sure everyone follows the University and UK legal rules.

Vanbrugh provost David Efird made it clear that University rule was final. University policy is:“Under legislation dealing with dangerous drugs, the unauthorized possession of certain drugs is a criminal offence. The University will not tolerate possession or use of any such drugs within the University or by any member of the University. Any student who has possession or makes use of any such drug, or who supplies any person with such a drug or knowingly assists him or her to obtain possession of it, becomes liable to disciplinary action by the University, independently of any penalty imposed on conviction by a court of law.”

Several other college provosts referred to informal warnings to begin with. Thompson reported that a “stern bollocking” and a possible referral to the police and academic registrar was the likely outcome of those “suspected of smoking a joint”. In cases of more serious drug use colleges defer to Security Services and, if necessary, recommend seeking advice from the Open Door Team and medical centre. In general the provosts suspected a lower than average level of drug use. Steve Page, Manager of Student Support Services, confirmed that they apprehended four cases of students using illegal substances in 2007/8. Derwent provost Ron Weir was keen to point out that “the consequences of excessive alcohol intake present a much greater welfare problem.”

The 2008 NHS statistics on drug misuse show that there were 1,573 deaths related to drug misuse in the previous year. The number of alcohol related deaths was 8,758; more than double what it was in 1991.

Drug legislation is constantly fluctuating and education is almost entirely based on zero tolerance. Young people are entering drink culture enthusiastically and drug culture ignorantly. When both habits come with substantial risk it is clearly time for drug use to be more openly discussed. With the dangers and pleasures well known young people can take responsibility for their uses and abuses of illicit substances. Colourful, flippant and level-headed: four York drug users explaining their habits and exploring the prejudices of non-drug users. “It’s not cool,” said Max*, “It’s just drugs.”

Four students from the University of York reveal their habits and recall their experiences on illegal substances:

Max, 21, biology

Hometown:
Shrewsbury
Favourite drug:
“Well drugs are all about situations aren’t they? But I’d say I’ve done ecstasy more than anything else.”

Max is a bit “alternative” and darkly funny. He is allergic to alcohol, so rarely drinks and isn’t a big cannabis user. He has taken pills, ketamine, cocaine, cannabis, speed and the occasional legal high. Having already dabbled in weed, his “real” drug career began with ecstasy.

“Back in the heady days of college… It was brilliant, so much fun. The first time… aw memories. I think availability would be one of the main issues now, especially for first years. I’d have to go over to Leeds, buy a bit to have them as stock.”

Max drops one to two pills on a big night out, this is usually about once a month.

“I’ll do them and then I’ll be like awesome, yeah, had a wicked time. Don’t really fancy doing it for a while now. It was always like that, just because you do feel it. That kind of ‘oh we’re really battered let’s do it again tomorrow,’ that just pisses me off because it’s like ‘well then you’re going to be a vegetable for a month.’ Or more if you’re lucky.”

Max thinks it can be easier to set yourself limits like this with drugs.

“You do see the mess people become on alcohol. And yeah people become a mess on pills, but it’s almost like it’s not necessary to become that much of a mess. Drinking does more harm than drugs. Or at least my usual drugs of choice. In the short term at least. The long term…who knows…people haven’t been doing it for that long.”

He doesn’t deny the problems associated with drugs but he doesn’t believe him or anyone he personally knows has a problem.

“Of course I’m pretty sure most people don’t think they have a drug problem. But when people are like right – and this is the same for alcohol as well – I’ve got to take something to enjoy myself tonight and make a beeline for whatever substance. I think that’s a problem in itself.”

In first year, in contrast to his drug use at college, Max received a cold reaction from his peers.
“Pretty much the whole floor was sat around in the first week and someone goes ‘so…anyone here done any drugs?’ There were a couple who were like yeah you know weed blahblah and it came round to me and I was like, shall I? Is it pushing it a bit far to say tht I’ve done class As? So I went for honesty and they looked round at me like I was a heroin addict.”

Being an ignorant non-user is of no harm to yourself. But if you’re ignorant of the risks and change your mind about drugs, Max argues that’s where the real danger lies.

“The way it’s taught in school is like one ecstasy could kill you instantly! When actually it’s one ecstasty along with a bit of insufficient knowledge. It encourages people to avoid drugs until the point where they’re so misinformed about it that they’re like ‘yeah well I’ll just do drugs and then do whatever the fuck else. Then die on it. It’s not great is it?”

Best Experience

“One of the best times was another New Years’ Eve. We went to a party in an abandoned bowling alley. But it’s all about the situation rather than the drugs, I was just surrounded by a lot of good friends and it was a great night.”

Worst Experience

“It was two New Years Eve’s ago and we decided to take it easy and do legal drugs. It was called accelerate or something, it’s meant to be like ecstasy. It is the most horrendous thing I’ve ever taken. Horrendous as in like fucks you up. By the time I got to the club, I was like oh my god I’m going to be insane for the rest of my life. I better start making plans for being insane.”

Jack, 22, Environmental Science

Hometown:
Shropshire
Favourite drug:
“Cannabis, definitely.”

Jack is an Environmental Science student who likes traveling, the countryside and smoking weed. He admits that this makes him a bit of a cliché, but on talking to him he is far from “hippy”. His drug use is a matter of fact and not something he gets existential or overly bohemian about.
He started smoking at the age of 15 in the nurses’ lounge of a hospital where his friend’s dad was a porter.

“It just became part of what I got up to. I probably smoke slightly less since uni. That’s just because I’m not living with people who smoke it all the time. It’s nice when I go home and everyone does it. Something I would not want to be without, but I’m ok that it’s not all the time. Weed is my favourite because you don’t get off your head, you know what you’re doing and it’s quite a nice thing to do in the evening.”

Jack also dabbles in MDMA, Cocaine, pills and magic mushrooms. MDMA for parties and the others he takes every now and then just socially. He smokes Cannabis most days, and will usually smoke on his own. I suggest that some people find taking drugs alone too introverted and symptomatic of a drug problem; in short a bit odd.

“I think they’re a bit odd. Cannabis is a chill out drug really. MDMA and Coke are obviously more of a social thing, if you’re going out and dancing. It depends on the drug really. If you’re not in control of what you’re doing. If you’re not aware of the effects on you and you don’t know what’s happening to you – that’s a drug problem.”

In Jack’s mind, his usage is not a problem. Recently. he has gone a maximum of about a week without smoking when he hasn’t been able to get hold of any.

“I gave up for a summer a couple of years ago and that was fine, I don’t think I’m addicted. It’s just difficult when some things you do are associated with drugs. If the drugs aren’t there then that’s hard. But as long as you’re doing something different it’s fine. The hardest part about giving up drugs really is trying to get more drugs. If you know you can’t get any for a while, or you decide you’re not looking, then that’s fine.”

In contrast to Max, Jack hasn’t found York particularly hostile to drug use, and speaks of a minority of people who use and talk about it, and a majority for whom drugs are not a feature of university life.

“I think drug use at York is concentrated in certain people, certain people take them all the time, other people don’t do it at all. I know more at home, but that’s just because I hang out with drug takers. If I hung out with loads of different types of people, like I do at uni, it would probably be about the same. I’m sure a lot of people who haven’t taken drugs are quite scared of them but that’s understandable. Anything that’s unknown is kind of scary really. People are quite set in their ways as to whether they’re for or against it and that’s fine with me really. But people I know are pretty open about drugs.”

Jack doesn’t think much of the health risks associated with Cannabis use. He certainly doesn’t think the problems are distinct from those from drinking and finds that anti-social drug users are more likely to be taking class A drugs.

“I don’t understand people who take class As for the sake of it, then find something to do when they’re on drugs. If there’s something going on and you take drugs for it that’s one thing but people who just take it… If people are completely off their heads it’s the same as being surrounded by a load of really drunk people when they’re drunk for the sake of it. You just get a bit bored of it all really.”

Best Experience

“The best time would have been on MDMA at a New Years Eve party. The drugs definitely helped, though I think it would have been a good night anyway.”

Worst Experience

“The worst time was from taking far too many mushrooms, but that’s the only bad time I’ve ever had.”

Julian, 20, PPE

Hometown:
Oxford
Favourite drug:
“Probably MDMA, it’s not an absolute it’s just the best out of what I take the most.”

Julian is a PPE student and he is as serious and articulate about his discussion of drugs as he is about most things. A self-confessed hedonist he has tried by far the most drugs of anyone interviewed.

“A few months after my first weed experience I’d be taking drugs every weekend. Ketamine the most, or pills, then LSD, MDMA, Cocaine. Also a few harder-to-get-hold-of drugs. Magic mushrooms, mescaline, 2C’s… Oh and DMT, which is not quite a holy grail but it would raise some eyebrows.”

By this point Julian is just listing numbers and letters at me. 2C’s are a family of hallucinogens and DMT is supposedly the chemical released in your brain when you die. It is a powerful hallucinogen and, unsurprisingly, a great deal of urban mythology surrounds it. Julian stresses that he doesn’t think the quantity of drugs he has taken is above average, just the range.

“I knew that if I did find a drug taking friendship group at university I felt that there wasn’t a chance that they would be the same sort of group that I’d met at school. I wouldn’t feel safe.”

Julian says he would have jumped at the chance to take drugs even without meeting these school friends, though his use did accelerate because of them. On my suggestion that it sounded like a hippy pursuit Julian is hilariously appalled: “Hippy? No! Bohemian, Blakeian – wanting to try anything, just to believe something about “opening the doors of perception!”

It seems however that he and his friends are “growing out” of their habits.

“LSD has gone wrong enough times that I am very weary of it. A very bad acid experience, you feel its cobwebs in you for a while afterwards. And for a couple of my friends drugs became too big a part of their life. They decided that actually that they’d do something productive with regard to getting an education, getting a life.”

The idea of having a life outside of a need for drugs is central to Julian’s idea of not having a problem.

“Anyone who needs drugs, in any sort of way, to be sociable or to make them cool, has a problem. The most annoying type of drug taker is a cocaine user. People think it’s cool but it has the general affect of making you a knob: arrogant, inconsiderate. No other drug does that quite so incredibly.

“A really good measure of when drug taking becomes a problem is when conversation revolves largely around drugs. Conversations about drugs can fill hours and tomes. There are people who can fabricate verbose analogies about how they’re a tree (I’m quoting now) and they have their acid branch and they have their MDMA branch and they’re currently nesting in the MDMA branch but soon they’re going to migrate to their K branch and oh dude this K hole… It’s tiring. If drug taking is all you do, you’re either addicted or you’ve become a boring person.”

For Julian, there are risks, but it’s just too exciting not to try.

“It’s just, with alcohol you get the same thing every time and you tend to end the night with your face in the toilet bowl, you feel this process of this is disgusting. Some drugs are disgusting of course, but they are just so much more interesting.”

Best Experience

“The entire three day weekend that was Glade festival 2008, which I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes sober of. It was just un-spoilt drug fun from begin to finish.”

Worst Experience

“The worst time was taking LSD when I’d promised myself two previous times that I wouldn’t again – and I lost myself. I woke up in a pool of my own vomit and ran out into the street into the town barefoot. I thought I was insane as a punishment for bringing about the end of the world.”

Jessica, 20, English and History

Hometown:
London
Favourite drug:
“Ooh! It’s difficult to pick between cocaine and MDMA.”

Jessica is a confident and attractive English and History student. There seems to be no question of her “needing” drugs: she’s vivacious without them, they just enhance a good time. Jessica regularly takes A class drugs for a “big” night out. In York it’s not that often but in London it’s around four times a week. She doesn’t see herself always taking this many drugs, but she doesn’t see her habits changing in the next ten years.

“I didn’t do any drugs other than weed until I came to university. Then I did MDMA for the first time at the beginning of second year. Then I tried some cocaine, and then I tried some speed and a bit of ecstasy as well. I’d always wanted to try it, I’m the kind of person who thinks you should try anything. I just wanted to be in a safe environment where I trusted people, and finally I was in that environment. Some friends offered me some and I was like fuck it.”

The “fuck it” attitude, however, is precisely what worries people about starting drugs and being ignorant of their affects. But Jessica is open about not knowing all the effects of the drugs she takes, and holds that she has still set herself boundaries.

“I’m scared of ketamine. That’s a personal line I’ve set for myself, because I’ve seen what it can do to other people. It’s about being able to say no to yourself. I also don’t take too much cocaine because it’s so addictive and I steer clear of ecstasy because it’s cut with a lot of shit. But other drugs, like weed. The conversations you have, the way you think about things. It’s so cool and so funny.”

Jessica smokes Cannabis around five times a week but says she would stop any drug that she felt like she “needed.”

“I’ve had a lot of people look at me being like ‘why do you need drugs to have fun?’ But I don’t. If you literally can’t go out – like alcoholics need to drink to enjoy themselves – that’s a drug problem. I know more people with a borderline drinking problem. It would be very easy to approach a friend because you think she’s doing too many drugs and be like ‘what are you doing you’re ruining yourself’. Whereas with drink people are like ‘I’m just having a good time, leave me alone.’”
The way in which people view alcohol and drugs is very different, and all the users I have spoken to think that attitude needs to change.

“People are judged a lot for taking drugs. Which I think is unfair because there are things out there, things like cigarettes, like booze, and just general bad behaviour, which are just as bad as taking drugs and yet aren’t considered so socially unacceptable. With drugs, people just make a quicker and often less-informed judgement.”

However, regardless of eradicating double standards between booze and alcohol, it seems the exclusivity of drugs is unavoidable, and often very alluring.

“When you’re on MDMA you just want to dance or chatter away. The buzz is incredible. People who aren’t on drugs see that and feel distant. And I feel distant from them as well. One of the biggest conversations I’ve had with drug users is that you’re in it together. And you just don’t understand if you haven’t tried it. The idea of – maybe it’s romanticising it a bit much – but risking yourself for something, letting your mind go to a different place.”

Best Experience

“The first time I took MDMA was incredible just the buzz and the novelty of it all and the music was amazing and heightened to a different level. I was surrounded by really fun people and it was just incredible. Such a fucking good feeling and you don’t ever get that back.”

Worst Experience

“Never getting that back takes me to the worst time. I’d taken MDMA and I was waiting to come up – you have this anticipation because you know how fucking good it can be and you’re waiting to come up but sometimes it doesn’t hit you and you’re like oh my god I’m not feeing anything! Am I? Am I feeling something? Are my fingers tingling?!”

INFORMATION
Helpful Websites:

TalkToFrank.com:
A broad range of information on drugs and side effects. The UK’s national drugs campaign comes under the ‘Frank’ banner. Helpline at:
0800 77 66 00

Homeoffice.gov.uk
/drugs:
Legislation and further links

At york university:

To talk over any problems, or ask any questions, York Nightline is a confidential service at the University
E-mail: nightmail@yusu.org
Telephone: 01904 433 705

Find the details of your college welfare team at yusu.org, or e-mail welfare@yusu.org

***

“He’s calling, he’s calling! Shit, he’s calling!” I threw the phone down. “Who is it?” Lesley asked, from her pyjama clad position on the other sofa. “The boy, you know, the one from last night.” “The short one?” “The fit one.” “He was short.” “He was fit…” The phone stopped. “But weird…he kept showing me pictures of kitchen installations he’d done.” “Hot,” mused Lesley. “Who rings though? Seriously. This is the 21st century; direct communication was made unnecessary five years ago. Just text you fucking weirdo.” Text tone. “u made my nite babe. ne chance of gettin 2geva?” Silence as we stared down at the message. Gettin 2geva seemed unlikely. “Shit! He’s calling again!”

***

The toilet attendant’s voice drifted out from the gents. (to the tune of London bridge is falling down) “Freshen up for punani, punani, punani, freshen up for punani…” It was a classy joint. Somehow through the din, the sad voice of a lovelorn student drifted through. “But it’s really bad,” he said. “Why?” said the friend. “Because I actually like her.” “So that’s good right?” “No, like I like her,” he said. “No splaaaash no gaaaaash!” came his musical accompaniment. The boy continued: “Like so I’m going to have to tell her I love her.” The boys paused at the gravity of the situation. “No Armani no punani!” The friend coughed and said: “That’s nice I guess.” “Wash your fingers for the mingers!” Not long after that the two boys walked out. Lovesick had a strawberry lollipop in his hand: she was one lucky lady.

***

I was alone at the bar, squinting over the crowd of sweaty students looking for my sweaty housemates. “Why are you wearing a tiara?” slurred a stranger. He slurred heavily, moistly, and right in my neck. “Um, it’s just a hair band,” I replied. Why are you standing so close? Why are you over forty and at The Duchess? Why are you over forty and alone at The Duchess? He continued to stare at me until I coughed, touching my hair a little nervously. “Are you an artist?” “No.” “Are you French?” “No.” “Why are you wearing a tiara?” “It’s still a hair band.” “It’s a bit random isn’t it?” “I like it.” He looked deeply into my eyes/breasts and touched my hair band; clearly no one had ever discussed the issue of personal space with him. Taking a small step backwards I said: “I’m going to go and find my friends now.” “But I was trying to make a connection with you.” His fat clammy hands grasped at the air in front of him. “I see.” Run.

“My mum came up when it first happened and we have a family friend who works at a wig company so she borrowed a load from him and brought them up. She was like, ‘try them on’, but right at the beginning that seemed like admitting that it was going to a permanent thing. It’s admitting that it isn’t going to come back next week.”

Anna suffers from a condition called Alopecia Areata which, according to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation (NAAF), around 2% of the population can expect to be affected by in their life time.

Alopecia is any hair loss and Alopecia Areata is hair loss as a condition itself, not a symptom of something else. It is most commonly developed in young adulthood and under 1% of all cases develop into Alopecia Areata Totalis (total scalp hair loss) or Alopecia Areata Universalis (total body hair loss). Anna initially lost all of her body hair.

“It started just after getting back for second year, so a year and a half ago. And it was just very, very quick,” recalls Anna. “Bits of thinning sort of got a bit extreme and then it got to the point where I was going, ‘is it just me or is there less at the front?’ And you have to check with someone because you don’t want to sound like a massive hypochondriac and everyone’s like ‘it’s fine’. But it wasn’t.”

Within two weeks Anna had “massive chunks and holes” in her hair and by the time the doctor referred her to a dermatologist there was no real questioning the diagnosis. “It was pretty much half gone,” says Anna, “It just was what it was. They took blood tests and stuff but it was pretty obvious. I didn’t even know you went to a dermatologist for a hair thing. And they keep looking at your nails, which is weird.”

A big part of the difficulty of the disease is its unpredictability and the lack of real medical understanding of it. In around a fifth of cases a family history of Alopecia is present and some doctors have suggested stress may be linked as well. Alopecia areata is an auto-immune skin disease. In simple terms it occurs when the skin’s immune system treats the hair like something that should be attacked. Anna has no family history of alopecia and has not had big stress problems. She does suffer from another auto-immune disorder, to do with digestion, which may have made her more vulnerable to the disease. Full regrowth is fairly common but a prognosis is difficult and Anna has yet to receive a clear one.

Alopecia has received a fair amount of media coverage over the past few years due to the sudden hair loss of Gail Porter, previously most famous for being projected naked onto the House of Commons. Porter, having dealt with anorexia, severe bouts of depression including a suicide attempt, and a very public divorce, is quoted to have said she thought her hair falling out “must be a joke”.

Porter’s celebrity status has allowed her to make her baldness a statement and she has refused to wear a wig at all. She has no doubt struggled with the disease and her strength and sense of humour about it in the public eye are admirable. However, you can’t read an interview with her without comment being made on how beautiful she is anyway and how wonderful what she’s doing is. Life as a student suffering from the same condition obviously lacks the same glamour.

“It got up until Christmas and I don’t think I left my room without a hat. Even round the house. It just felt weird. Even now I’ve not really [not worn a hat] in public much, only round my house. It still feels weird. And yeah really cold!”

Anna only recently started wearing a wig and why she decided to do so is a difficult question to answer. “I just got bored of hats (laughs). I should have got it over with earlier.”

The movement ‘bald is beautiful’ has created in parts a bizarre reverse prejudice against wanting to have hair in the alopecia community. To most of us though, it seems excessive to accuse those who choose a wig of vanity. “It’s sort of like if you still wear lipstick and mascara then what’s different about a wig?” Clearly neither wig nor no wig should have a stigma associated with it. Anna prefers to avoid defining herself by her condition and this is currently the way she feels most comfortable doing so.

Discussing the online community Anna says: “There’s this Facebook group called ‘Bald is Beautiful’ which I joined early on and I still get people adding me. You know when someone adds you and you’ve got no friends in common? I see that they’re bald and you think this is the connection but should we really be friends because we share a disease ?”

“It depends what helps you I suppose. I have looked at some online support groups and it does seem that people define themselves by their diseases. How much medication, how many pills they take a day; it’s a competitive thing. I find it a bit odd.”

Odd and weird seem to come up a lot with Anna. She’s quiet by nature but it’s difficult to miss her disappointment in having to deal with all this. At an age when her peers are totally carefree she just wants to sideline her condition and get on with things.

“The good thing with being young is you can still have the hope that it will be fixed or over soon so hopefully by the time you’re twenty-five, thirty, you’ll be able to get on with the rest of your life. But then again you don’t want to seem like you’re putting you’re life on hold until you’re ‘fixed’.”
When you consider young people putting their life on hold it’s easy to get stuck on the big things: degree, relationships; but in reality Anna finds it’s the small things that feel important.

“Clubbing and stuff is difficult because… drunk people are twats. The first few times I was just so scared that a drunk person would remove my hat. Which would be quite a distressing experience,” laughs Anna, “And there was this one time, I was at a Christmas party last year and they were playing the chocolate game where you put on a hat and scarf and cut it up with a knife and fork, and I suddenly realised – it sounds trivial – if I rolled a six I would have to put this other hat on. Would I do it on top of mine? Would I take mine off? It was the most stressful dice roll I’ve ever made!”
Laughing a lot, Anna assures me that no hat issues ensued. She seems to approve of laughing at her disease, laughter and being allowed to be angry about it seem to be her main coping strategies.

“I have been down about it over time. Some days you’re like yeah this is fine, I can be a strong person bla bla. But…sometimes it’s pretty pants. And that’s the thing about people saying ‘I really respect you, you’re dealing with it so well…’ It sort of takes away permission not to be dealing with it well.”

Pressures to be ok have been greater than Anna thought they would. “Especially right at the beginning there were some people who’d be supportive and would send you texts saying ‘ooh I’m so sorry I’m thinking of you’, which is sort of fine, but then a couple of people who got upset because I wasn’t responding and being like thank you so much. It was like they needed confirmation of how supportive they were being. Its interesting, people’s versions of being supportive.”

In the beginning Anna was on steroids, before she was switched to immuno-supressants. Drugs trials are tiring and may have adverse affects. Medical journals report the psychosocial side affects of alopecia to be difficult to handle. Depression, anxiety and social phobia are all listed as common problems. Stories on help4alopecia.com, an online support network, talk about agoraphobia and emotional behaviour: in short it’s a time when you need genuine support, something Anna found difficult to identify. “You sort of feel like you’re someone else’s project. They’re going to make you feel better, and that’s their way to make them feel better about how good they are as a person.

“And they’ll lie to make you feel better. I made some off hand comment like ‘oh who’s going to fancy a baldy’ and laughed, ready to move on, and the other person was like ‘oh no no, it wouldn’t really matter’,” Anna laughs, “You just think shush. You liar.”

Anna seems to make much allowance for the fact that people don’t know what to say or do.

“With one of my friends I didn’t really explain properly what was happening and when I did finally talk to him about it he was like ‘oh thank god because I thought you had cancer’. I was quite sad because I thought: ‘do you not think that if I had cancer I would have told you maybe?’ But it was nice that he was concerned,” laughs, “And how do you bring it up? Do you just say ‘oh hi guys, you know I’ve been wearing hats all the time? Well…’”

Anna has had the total support of her family and has only had one direct negative reaction. “I was working at this kids’ club and this boy was like ‘I know why you wear a hat all the time, it’s because you haven’t got any hair!’ He was this whingey bastard but this other kid instantly talked about Kylie and Gail Porter, stunning people like that, which instantly made it positive. So basically the only proper negative response has been from some ten-year-old. Which is all right!”

In reality it’s not the negativity that is most difficult to deal with. “I’ve been going to church and stuff,” says Anna, who is Christian, “And a lot of the responses from people who I’m close to have been phrases like ‘God doesn’t give us more than we can handle’ and ‘this has happened to you so you need to keep praying’ and also ‘you can use it to show other people things’…that’s caused me quite a lot of issues with re-evaluating stuff.”

Anna is refreshing in her outlook. She doesn’t seem to be looking for any enlightenment from alopecia. “Even if there’s one part of you that’s like oh I’ve got a new feeling about life there’s still going to be this other part that’s just pissed off,” Anna pauses, “It’s shit, just let it be shit for a bit. The problem is with some people not letting it be a bad time, because they think if you believe in God you can’t have bad times.”

So Anna is still bald; a bald woman, which makes it difficult. And a bald student, which makes it very difficult. But she tells me her hair is slowly growing and is bright white, “which is cool,”. Her healthy attitude is probably best reflected in her amusement and bemusement when I first approached her about this feature.

“It’s not the most fun thing ever. I was speaking to somebody and they were like I can’t believe you stayed at uni but what alternative is there? I go home and what – just be bald and at home? You can’t just stop your life.”

Director: Danny Boyle    

Starring: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor

Rating: ****

Misleadingly, Slumdog Millionaire is billed as the ‘feel-good movie of the year’. ‘Feel-good’ smacks of kooky do-gooders and two-dimensional characters with a displaced sense of reality in search of love and fortune. On the contrary, Danny Boyle’s crime-romance-comedy-drama is bursting at the seams with energy, emotion and just the right amount of fairytale good luck. Writer Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) brings wit and humanity to what could have been a grim and downbeat script, and Boyle, enjoying a renaissance after the non-event that was Sunshine, is back on form with all the upbeat edginess of Trainspotting, complete with Bollywood shine.

This is clearly a product of Boyle’s creative vision, yet while Trainspotting was Glasgow grey, Slumdog Millionaire comes vibrantly to life with all the colours of India. Sweeping shots of Mumbai, fast-paced chases through claustrophobic slum alleys and exhilarating sequences of the two brothers riding atop trains across India make overwhelming viewing and put the brothers’ scrappy existence in stark contrast to the wonders of the Taj Mahal. 

At the heart of the stunning visuals is a familiar underdog story. Dev Patel’s sweet and earnest Jamal stands at the centre of a Dickensian storm of fate and circumstance. Born in the slums of Mumbai, we follow him and his brother from a childhood of exploitation and gangster conflict to Jamal’s appearance on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’.

Applause is breaking out everywhere as this unlikely underdog deservedly becomes a big Oscar contender.

A yurt, by the way, is a portable shelter with a wooden frame and a felt covering traditionally used by Central Asian nomads, but sometimes used in the grounds of a country estate as a political protest against waste and inefficiency – and other times just to save a bit of cash. Alice* is a 23 year-old law student from Oxford. Having spent some time in a yurt, she is now renting in Norwich where she studies and, mostly, still eats out of bins: “I’d say about 90% of the time, I very rarely buy food. But it’s not just about saving money, even if I had loads of money I’d still do it because it’s a protest against all the waste.”

Freeganism is difficult to trace and difficult to define. ‘Skipping’, also known as ‘dumpster-diving’ and ‘bin-raiding’, is the process of ‘liberating’ food from bins. The vast majority of food thrown out by supermarkets and food outlets is still in its packaging and not yet past it’s use-by date. This element is however just a small part of a multi-faceted eco-consumerist movement.

In 1999 Warren Oakes, Against Me! drummer, wrote the closest existing thing to a freegan manifesto: The pamphlet “Why freegan”. But freeganism existed before that. The ideology is said to have its roots in vegan anti-consumerist groups. But nowadays not all freegans are vegan. The website freegan.info, probably the most comprehensive website of the movement’s minimal Internet presence, cites waste reclamation, waste minimisation, eco-friendly transportation, going green (or foraging) and voluntary joblessness as central, but not universally held, freegan ideals.

What is clear is that a freegan is making a political statement about the inherent waste in society; a scavenger is just looking for ‘free stuff’. Freegans make this statement with the support of some persuasive and shocking statistics. These statistics highlight waste; 1,600 million apples, 1,030 million tomatoes, 2,570 million bread slices and 484 million unopened yoghurt tubs are discarded annually by households in the UK; they highlight rising food prices; India has banned the export of all forms of rice other than luxury basmati, pushing up global rice prices; and they highlight environmental impact; Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is losing 30,000 species a year. In the face of this the freegan ideology has a good deal of political clout. At a time when environmentalism and economic breakdown is hot on the lips of the international community, freeganism is a radical attempt to step out of such a monumental rate of consumption and destruction.

Simon, 25, has been involved in Freeganism for 5 years now: “During college I started thinking a little bit more about what I wanted to do with my life. I started seeing a lot of the problems in the world, but I didn’t know what the solutions were.” After college Simon began travelling and met some freegans. Their philosophy and lifestyle was exactly the kind of answer he’d been looking for.
Unlike Alice, Simon does not rent. He has spent the last five years moving around in a freegan community. “I have a lot of friends in a lot of different places and I move around, it’s kind of fluid. Currently I’m travelling in a converted van, running off waste veggie oil. Other than that I have squatted, I’ve lived in apartments; people have opened their houses up to me. I’ve even lived for two months in the woods.”

Many freegans consider residency to be a right, not a privilege. Free living is a protest against homelessness, exploitation and inequality. Squatters make a stand against councils and landlords who would rather keep properties boarded up if they cannot turn a sufficient profit on them.
Simon also follows the principle of voluntary joblessness, one of the rarer freegan ideals. “I guess one thing that makes me quite different from a lot of people is that I don’t work for money. So for the past five years I haven’t had a pay cheque or a salary. It’s just trying to get motivation for doing things out of love for others and not in expectancy of getting things in return.”

For Simon it isn’t enough to revert to bartering and non-monetary forms of trade: “I try to really ensure that the motivation is just there to help people, because if you’re doing it in the expectancy of even getting food in return it just becomes almost like the current economic system, where you just do something in return for getting something.” He has not worked for food, money or shelter in five years, though his community does sometimes accept donations so he has used money on occasion:“It’s nice not to (use money), but it depends on what is the best use of resources. For example you don’t want to spend lots on food that you can liberate from the bins, but you also don’t want to spend half a day doing that or spend a lot of fuel driving around places when you could just spend a few pounds and get some food. It depends on what’s the wisest use of resources.”

Simon and Alice seem to represent the divide between freeganism as a political protest and freeganism as a philosophy in it’s own right. Alice talks freely about the flaws and limits of freeganism, for her it is a corrective procedure of redistribution and a political protest. Simon, on the other hand, is totally convinced by the end point of freegan philosophy and is unfazed by the accusation of reliance on the system they mistrust: “We make use of waste but that doesn’t mean we’re dependent on the waste to live. Think about revolution for example. When revolutions take place within countries, they still use the same roads, they still walk the same pavements and they still make use of whatever that system they’re revolting against has made. In the end I think the freegan hope is that we get rid of it (waste) altogether, and change society’s motivation.”

To many all this talk of love and revolution smacks of unproductive hippy-talk. Your average middle-class liberal, though environmentally aware and desperately open-minded, becomes distinctly uncomfortable in the face of love-wielding radicals. Simon, however, talks with genuine warmth and his belief and experience in the capability of humankind to cohabit so peacefully is uplifting. When I questioned the realism of his approach as a long-term lifestyle he was full of nothing but success stories: “I do know families involved in the freegan movement. Does it work? Yeah I think it does. It works for everybody, it’s just about doing things out of love and sharing, I think you can do that just as easily as a family unit. Most freegan families I’ve met do home school their kids, but I know freegan families whose kids go to normal school too.”

Simon’s freegan lifestyle involves real dedication to his community and, he argues, it provides equality of opportunity giving people the time and support they need to develop their own skills: “A good thing about the freegan lifestyle is that, because you’re not spending your day making money you’ve got a lot of time to learn. So there’s nothing stopping people learning these skills and because we share and we live together it’s easier to learn. There’s more time when you’re not pressed to meet deadlines.”

On the whole, freegans like Simon are hard to count. Their limited societal presence, non-rent or taxpaying, home schooled and self-sufficient, means they are somewhat elusive, so it’s difficult to quantify the success of such communities. Simon’s non-trade principle, for example, seems very difficult to commit to on a large scale in light of humans’ very natural tendencies towards property and exchange.

“No trade and no money are different things,” says Alice, “You can still have trade without money. I guess ideally it would be great if there was no money but I think it’s ok to trade stuff.” Alice does see space for non-monetary systems in current society though. “On a local level, some cities have schemes where they swap vegetables for other things. So you can earn local currency by doing a job for someone.”

Even with ambitions of being a lawyer Alice sees no problem with continuing with waste reclamation; she too even knows families who have continued skipping and other freegan pursuits. She is, however, slightly hesitant about living in a freegan community: “I would possibly consider it, I don’t know if it would be compatible with being a lawyer though. I’m not sure really. The work that I want to do is more about because I want to help people. I’d love it if I could do it for free because I want to do legal aid and work that there’s hardly any funding for. If I was able to do that for free by living an entirely freegan lifestyle I guess that would be ideal. I mean doing work for free in the hope that other people will do the same is nice but…slightly not realistic. The real problem (with freeganism) is it’s not an ideal solution because not everyone can live in this way. It’s based on a wasteful society and that’s not an ideal.”

Alice continues to use freeganism to protest against waste, and her career ambitions set her apart from self-contained freegan communities. A current project she is working on is organised redistribution with her local Sainsbury’s: “I’ve been trying to set something up because Sainsbury’s have agreed to give food waste to homeless people. The difficulty has been finding a venue (for distribution) but I think we’re going to manage to set it up.” The benefit of redistribution of commercial waste is a particularly salient point when you consider that household rubbish makes up only 10% of the UK’s waste.

The philosophys associated with freeganism attract both criticism and praise. Speaking to York students Sarah and James, both 20, I got a sense of respect for the underlying principle but cynicism with regards to it’s long term success. Both Sarah and James have been skipping a few times as students, and are friends with several self-confessed ‘anarchists’: “It’s like there are two different kinds of freegans,” says James, “The selfish kind and the charitable kind.” James and Sarah agree with the statement against waste made by skipping but are doubtful about how genuinely charitable or political some ‘skippers’ are.

Freeganism has only been peripheral to Sarah and James’ lives. Most of their skipping companions have graduated now, and due to a combination of increased ‘real-life’ commitments like jobs and partners and increased supermarket security, by and large they have left their freegan ways behind: “It’s quite depressing really,” says James: “I don’t think any of them are squatting anymore. They leave, they get a job in a call centre…” muses Sarah, “But I guess it seems a lot easier when you’re still a student with a loan and financial support.”

Sarah and James do consider the impact of their waste on the environment, but they are very aware of the implications of a freegan lifestyle. For them a human’s natural desire for property is disrupted by the more extreme freegan philosophies and the outcome is confusing: “It’s like, you ‘liberate’ some cake from the bins,” says Sarah, “But you still want it to be yours, because if you get back and one of your freegan friends steals your cake you’d be like – that’s my cake!” And on that sweet note, according to a 2008 article, 86,000 tonnes of cakes and puddings are thrown away every year in the UK.

Despite any doubts surrounding freeganism the problem of waste is undeniable. The statistics are everywhere and they are grotesque. According to a 2007 article by the National Environment Officers Network, the UK alone disposes of 7 million more tonnes of waste per year than any other European country. Pockets of hope are provided by some dedicated freegan individuals, such as Alice, whose efforts have the potential to prompt real change. There is clearly something worth considering, hippy environmentalist or otherwise.

“The term ‘freegan’ is more than an image” says Simon, “There are hippyish freegans but there are also a lot of freegans I know that look straight. It’s about self-discipline.”

Looking round my sophisticated 21st birthday soiree I swayed only slightly. This was due to a great amount of self-restraint – by all accounts I should have been floored. And then I saw them: strangers. “Who are you?” “Um…what do you mean?” said one, the talkative one, their leader I presume. “I mean, who are you and why are you here?” I was so stern I slurred only slightly. “He said we could come,” the beta male pointed across the room. “Oh he did, did he? That’s interesting.” “Sorry, is there a problem?” “Yes. It’s my birthday.” “Oh right…” “Say happy birthday.” “Um, happy birthday.” “Thank you.” Long silence and intimidating stare. “Sorry, do you want us to leave?” 

Somewhere in a land far away where real men wear speedos and real women eat real men for breakfast five English young ladies were stranded in an empty bar, where they entirely lost a grip on their comforting British sense of cynicism. Tequila, tequila and tequila later those five young ladies were dancing on the tables of the empty bar. Empty, that is, except for one elderly gentleman: Pepe. Pepe was enthusiastic in his dancing but saddened by, so he mimed, their limited language skills. “No Pepe! No! No!” cried the happiest tequila girl, clutching her hands to her chest, “Comprende with our hearts!” 

People are boring in Vanbrugh. Dramasoc: “And she said what were we having for lunch and I said [wild gesticulation].” I sit there. “So are we cool?” “What do you mean ‘are we cool?’” “I mean are we cool now? Sorted, right?” “Why would be sorted? You’re being a dick.” “But I apologised!” “No you didn’t, you asked if we were cool.” “Yeah…are we?” “No. You still haven’t apologised.” “But I asked if we were cool.” “But are you sorry?” “Well yeah…are we cool?” “When you apologise.” “Mate! I just did!” “You didn’t and it’s bloody annoying.” “Oh. Right. Well…are we cool?” 

When you were going out with their friend conversation was stilted at best. Now it is intolerable. Pre-break up you didn’t even have to see them that much, since breaking up, however, you’ve got quite a lot of time on your hands. Time, so it seems, that is mainly spent bumping into this one “Oh my god hi!!!!!!!” She comes bounding across the library with excess vigour and limitless punctuation. “Um. Hi.” Full stop. “I haven’t seen you in ages!!!!!!????? Where have you been!!!???” So much punctuation. So high pitched. “That is true.” “It’s such a shame you don’t hang out with us anymore!!!!!????? Why is that??!??!!!!” Long silence…seriously? Takes Deep breath. “Hard to say. Maybe because you’re mate dumped me.”

There is nothing cool about third year. First year is a happy blur and in second year campus is yours. It felt like you only saw people you knew. We were established and justified then. Course friends, college friends, random every week in Ziggy’s friends… Third year begins and the strange faces start creeping in. I’m not seeing those I know anymore, I’m seeing everyone I don’t. I may not have been a big fish last year but I am a tiny fish now, and the pond is massive.

All this makes me very serious and not at all fun. I can barely even spell flippant. Every social engagement I have descends into depressed silence via some overly serious conversation on the credit crunch, third world debt or marriage. I even had a serious debate with someone over our preferred choice of burial, taking into account financial and environmental aspects. All in a half hour break from the library. (Mine, by the way, is not at all. Burn me and scatter me to the wind.)

Either there is an epidemic of anti-fun sweeping third year or someone needs to give me a good slap now so I can snap out of it while I still have some friends. I am too young to be this boring.

But it’s more than boring, isn’t it? It’s old. I am aging before my time and falling rapidly behind the trendy generation. The other morning, as I scraped at my dry weetabix and counted the hours before I could legitimately go back to bed, I made the mistake of turning on E4. E4 stands for fun, edgy, sexy young things. Their adverts are for fun, edgy, sexy young items. The advert I saw was for fun, edgy, sexy young perfume and showed, in all it’s stringy saliva-tastic glory, a man snogging a girl’s elbow. I’m just… no.

I’ve spent my life being treated as a boy by my male friends and now popular culture has completely eclipsed my sense of sexuality. I may as well abandon any remaining femininity and go and join a convent. Let’s face it. I wasn’t that good at flirting to begin with. I like to see it as being a young superhero. All young ladies have an untapped and difficult to control ability to flirt. One day I could master it and rule the world, or at least my own love life. In reality I accidentally send “shag me” signals to weirdos and spend the rest of the time staring into the middle distance.

I was out in a bar for my 21st birthday just a few weeks ago and a very squat bald man tapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d ruined his evening. For the record, I thought I’d been doing an excellent impression of being fun, edgy, sexy and young – maybe even feminine. Anyway, I’d ruined his evening, with my dancing apparently. I inquired as to how my fun, edgy, sexy and young moves could possibly be so intrusive on his evening? The man replied that they were not intrusive but wanton and provocative: I had been leading him on. Not the whole room, but specifically this bald man. I had, so I was informed, given him a “look” when I was at the bar. This was also wanton.

This is the height of my flirting skill. My friend who (to my unskilled eye) was acting the same as me had a man approach her with a similar line. Her man, however, was about 25, gorgeous and able to string sentences together. My (middle-aged) man came up to my shoulder, had a face that looked like he smashed doors into it for a living and a very limited vocabulary. Where did I go wrong?

And now, now not only do I have to be wary of my weirdo magnetism but apparently my elbows could be wanton. I may never go out again, and if I do I’ll be the one shuffling around, eyes to the ground and hands over elbows.

I think I’m actually the last person to give up on my female identity. No, not my female identity: just my ability to successfully cohabit, platonically or otherwise. Just this summer my own father said to me: “You don’t need people as much as me, your mother and your sister. You won’t ever depend on a long term partner.” Won’t I? Am I an empowered female? More likely he was just preparing me for the reality of spinsterdom, which I deserve for being old, boring and not remotely turned on by elbow snogging. Bring on the cats.

This week, Lily will mostly be

Avoiding becoming as iconic as James Bond and the victim of excessive product placement. The sheer amount of stuff I can buy that will turn me into James Bond makes me nervous. Drinking Coke means I get Bond girls, wearing Avon perfume means I am a Bond Girl – thank Our Lady Dame Judy Dench that I can’t afford an Omega watch. I am becoming hyper-aware of my own product identity and I am beginning to hear voices. (Cue kitsch-camp and happier if not holier than thou presenter voice)

Lily lurks in a dark corner of the library wearing an oversized Marks and Spencer’s sweatshirt and matching oversized grimace. She’s not unwashed she’s “grunge” and that’s not pen on her face – that’s a fashion statement. Remember to differentiate between lurking and skulking: skulking is for special occasions.

Lily now shuffles down Tang Hall Lane draped in a “vintage” scarf and a cool air of discontent. Notice the holes in her tights as she deftly dodges a chunder pile. Tres punk, anarchy lives on in her dishevelled attire. As she glowers in your general direction notice the dark circles under her eyes, that’s really “now”.

If you were to rifle through her bag you’d mainly find a lot of Kleenex man-sized tissues, for her man-sized cold. To really get inside the Lily look it’s important to be suffering from low-grade illness from October to March. Make sure you’ve got some broken bic biros, a “retro” Sony Ericsson and last week’s lost satsuma complete with biological community.

Running for the bus Lily falls flat on her Maybelline-maybe-she-wasn’t-born-with-it-face. Not for the first time today she realises that she’s actually quite far from a James Bond lifestyle.

Two years ago, my parents drove me north and left me in this concrete playground. Despite having previously asserted myself as independent, go-getting and all that wholesome good stuff I was pretty ducking scared. Welcome to York, it’s nice. To quote the University website “the whole site has been pleasingly landscaped around an elongated lake which forms a habitat for a wide variety of waterfowl”. The waterfowl obsession will come with time, but it’s probably best to stay ahead of the curve. Scribble down a few duck puns, and buy some duck-based merchandise. Do not try and befriend the geese, they hate you.

If you’re lucky, you’re not scared at all because you’re drunk and will be for the next two weeks. Just to set a couple of things straight: there is nothing you can do drunk in the first two weeks that can’t be undone, so I wouldn’t worry about all those plagiarism talks you’re missing. It’ll be fine; just copy off of someone else later. Anyway, you’re not worried because you’re drunk. To the rest of you, the best thing you could possibly do is go find someone to play with. It’s not important what they’re like, just remember to maintain that playground mentality. Grab the hand of the person nearest to you and say “do you want to be my friend?” They almost certainly do, and it’s not because you’re cool. Learn to understand “new friend” as “person I am standing next to so I don’t look like a loner while I look for real friends”.

Some people are lucky and grab the hand of their soul mate. Those who don’t happily trundle along for a while, hang out with those they are indifferent to, and snog people they are repulsed by. There’s every opportunity to make some of the best friends of your life at uni and your parents were right: there are 10,000 people here and not every one of them can hate you. Give it time and indulge in the phrase “Hello, I don’t know you” while you can; its validity expires in spring.

Remember that a lot of things expire in spring, like the legitimacy of excuses like “I thought Alcuin was in Derwent” and “I didn’t realise we actually had to go to lectures”, so take advantage of that fresher feeling. Everybody has a freshers’ story and it’s up to you to make it what you want it to be. Finally, forget all this “welcome” week business; it’s freshers’ week -your week! So take it. The rest of us have got a degree to be getting on with.

Award-winning French writer of the novel Grey Souls, Philippe Claudel makes his impressive directorial debut with the delicate I’ve Loved You So Long. The film centres on Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), the estranged Fontaine sisters, reunited following Juliette’s release from prison after a 15 year sentence.

Claudel examines guilt and forgiveness, and their hold over family life. The dark secret of Juliette’s crime takes an assured back seat to the quiet observation of Juliette’s tentative new and renewed relationships and Léa’s seemingly happy life is shaken and the reality of years of denial takes shape and her enigmatic sister captures everyone’s attention.

The subdued and elegant Scott Thomas is the glorious centre-piece of this film, playing a woman struggling to believe that she deserves to lead any kind of normal life. Her high critical acclaim from both English press outlets and their counterparts across the channel largely acknowledged the role as the best of her career thus far, not only lending credibility to Claudel’s first directorial outing, but also setsting the mood of the entire film. As she reconciles her feelings of rejection and worthlessness the film warms with her. She is on camera almost the entire time, often in complete silence and always mesmerising. As a drunk acquaintance says over dinner with the Fontaines, “Juliette, always silent, always judging us.”

The clever casting of Scott Thomas is just one of a series of perfect fits that Claudel has taken great care to achieve. The film is set in the North-Eastern city of Nancy, where both Claudel and Léa are professors of literature at the University. An offbeat regional setting serves well as the backdrop to his oddball outcast characters. Léa’s football mad husband, her self-named “Benetton family” and well-placed disparaging comments about Parisians quietly reference the area’s cultural tensions. To a British audience the film maintains its smoky French charm, without a hapless gamine or kitschy French folk soundtrack in sight.

The realism continues with an excellent supporting cast, particularly the family. Zylberstein is an excellent match as sister, and particularly for younger sister, both visually and in temperament. Her sweetness and constant hope for reconciliation and redemption lifts the tone against the bleak reality of Juliette’s actions. The effortlessly captured illusion of every day family life and sisterhood rocks brilliantly against the abnormality of Juliette’s history. Family life comes complete with cuddly granddad figure and precocious children. The tiny Lise Ségur is nothing short of darling in her role as the eight year old P’tit Lys.

The quiet emotional resonance of this beautifully-constructed study of estrangement typifies the French sensibilty towards film-making and will enhance the enigma of both Thomas and Claudel.

Another year brings with it another barrage of events and non-events, from YUSU’s farcical opening act of sexist goody bags, to the news story curtain call of cocaine. Now, it seems, is the appropriate time to stand back and see what will really affect students, both current and prospective, at the University of York.

Student reactions alone put two particular stories near the top of the news pile. These are of course the vote of no-confidence in one of our own sabbatical officers, Academic and Welfare officer Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, and the election of Mad Cap’n Tom Scott, the joke candidate, to the YUSU Presidency. These are both stories which we voted on, we made happen, and so they are in some way our legacy.

The Presidential campaign was record breaking in terms of turnout, not to mention distinctive in terms of candidates. Mad Cap’n Tom Scott swept to victory with 40.3% of an incredible 2,986 votes. But the precedent for high voting turnout was not set by that election; it was set by the UGM which ousted Fletcher-Hackwood. UGMs tend to skulk by with one or two paltry motions, but this one really raised the bar. 1400 students voted and a wave of lesser motions swept past the usually intimidating quoracy level, riding the coat-tails of the furore caused by the Chav D debacle.

But what have we, the students of 2007-8, really shown by our record-breaking interest? True interest in student politics? Or a keen eye for big personalities and fancy dress.

Neither the Fletcher-Hackwood story, nor the rise of the Mad Cap’n, make it feel as if the student body echoes with reverence for our illustrious leaders in YUSU. We lust for the blood and the chase. Personalities dominated: the fierce feminist, the ogrish Tory-boy, and later the pirate king of YUSU outcasts. They captured our imagination, perhaps admirably, and stirred up some support, if only for a little while. But around us bridges fell, bars stood empty and un-ethical merchandise was purchased again and again and again. All these things, which supposedly stir disdain within the student population, stand unattended to without a comical cast of principals.

When alleging blame for the pitfalls of this year, perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to damn YUSU or curse the faceless suits of Heslington Hall. We have made things happen. A pat on the back for everyone who voted. It must have been tough opening a new window (never close Facebook) and clicking the boxes at yusu.org. But far larger congratulations are in order for anyone who took a stand on all the things the rest of us persist in whining about, but cannot be bothered to take action for. The student who dresses up as a duck and becomes the bridge mascot will be the student who solves all our problems. What an unimaginative bunch it seems we can be.

Perhaps I have sounded a little critical. I am sure many York students are trundling around broadly satisfied, protesting about nothing in particular, and that’s fine. But spare me your whining if you answer only to the call of our more eccentric political activists.

All in all it’s just another year, but it is due time to consider what we can and can’t achieve as a student body. Above all else let’s remember to keep everything in context. Together we can exert fantastic diplomatic force, but life goes on. This year a man stood on a bridge and threatened to blow it up, a student was driven to cheat and to court by the pressures of his degree, and another was found drowned in the Ouse. Take forward the good times and the achievements of the year but remember these events, as these, the ones we cannot control, are the ones that punctuate our time here.

I am constantly repulsed by my fellow human beings. Shamelessly waddling around indulging in self-congratulatory grooming. Noses, nails, hair, genitals; scratching, picking, cracking, plucking. These people are grotesque and they seem only to disgust me. As a child I was brought up to be seen and heard in abundance. My verbal output was astonishing and I was encouraged to speak for myself, think for myself and carve my path to success in loud happy words. “Yes! No! Thank you! Let’s go to the zoo!” But small noises on the other hand, small noises were to be discouraged at all costs. Bananas were particularly reprehensible.

I can remember Saturday afternoons when I was watching Scooby Doo and Mum was reading next to me. “Can I have a snack?” I asked. “Sure,” she replied. “Go grab a piece of fruit.” On bringing back a banana I was sent away again, charged with eating the offending item alone in the hall. Only with that barrier of brick between us was my mother relieved of the slurpy smacking of a six year old with a banana. That is food etiquette at its finest, and every child should be taught its eating-place.

To the sin of gratuitous fruit eating you can add any small fidgety movements that you thought made no sound – clamorous thumb sucking and deafening hair twiddling. If you thought these were silent indulgences, I assure you, you were wrong. The very movement of the air particles is enough to disrupt the peace of any being of heightened sensitivity. Such was my childhood that I dared not take up nail biting until I left home. Even now I only do it at times of great stress, and always absolutely alone.

Let us take a moment to consider leprosy. In biblical times lepers were cruelly outcast. The prevailing misconception that leprosy was highly infectious meant that lepers were pariahs, essentially due to being a little less than an oil painting. So undeserving, especially when you consider (which I always do) the noise-making implications. Other than the gentle thud of a finger hitting the ground, leprosy is blessedly silent. The common cold, on the other hand, is a veritable cacophony of hawking and hacking. Common as the cold is, it plagues us all, though perhaps if one took more care to put some clothes on before going to Gallery it would plague far fewer. In the infamous words of my father, “are you wearing a vest with that?”

Ultimately nobody wanted to sit around looking at lepers, so why do I have to put up with listening to snivelling infirms? We’re such an openly vain society that we will quickly condemn for their visuals, but we put up with listening to a lot of crap. A bulbous nose or prominent mole is enough to lose someone Facebook friends, but day in day out we put up with listening to the misinformed, the malign and the ill, with all their grating speech impediments and graphic phlegm movements.

I of course went through my period of noisy rebellion. Rampaging through the house sniffing like a hound, grinding my teeth like a drug addict and raining banana eating fury upon my mother. But she was patient, she knew I would settle. Take a moment to look around you at York, we are surrounded by the children of dogmatic parents kicking against their past. Observe the Tory kid trying his hand at socialism, the country bumpkin gone “ghetto” and the vegan hippy child sneaking off to McDonalds. Eventually they too will learn the inevitable. We don’t become our parents: we always were them. My obsession with twitching and all it’s awful sound effects is nothing new. I distinctly remember sitting in French at the tender age of thirteen, contemplating mass murder as I stared at my classmate picking her face. Not just picking it, I hasten to add, but rubbing thickly and wetly into the picked pores. I could actually see the grease sliding round her face. Later she would offer me a Malteser with her sticky stubby fingers. I would decline.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the complete lack of any discerning sense of propriety in communal bodily functions. But I will always maintain that it’s rational, reasonable even, and I’d go so far as to say good for society, to throw things at people who crack their knuckles, and to insist that any kind of picking, scraping and twiddling only to be done in private. It’s masturbation; gratifying but you wouldn’t do it on a bus. There’s a fine line between hereditary superiority and madness. Handed down to me through my parents, I can utilise my genetic super-power of heightened aural awareness.

If you don’t understand it to be a super-power, then I’m probably already looking for you. You are the miscreant satisfying your animal grooming tendencies in public. I can hear you, from the other side of the bus, from six seats behind you in a lecture theatre and from outside your window. I am quietly taking a mental note of every single deviant who can’t keep their hands folded neatly in their laps. Nobody needs to see you tearing those tiny bits of skin off from round your cuticle, sucking them clean and then polishing your bloody nail stumps. You make me sick.

This week, Lily will mostly be…

Walking instead of riding a bicycle, because mending a puncture is utterly beyond me. Not literally beyond me, I am not an idiot; I am capable of doing it. Furthermore, I am not a princess; I am perfectly willing to break a nail. I am, however, an arts student, which means I simply do not have the time.

Whilst still a whippersnapper, all untucked shirt and high sitting rucksack, I was a machine. In one lunch break I could attend two music rehearsals, eat my sandwiches, finish my IT coursework and still find time to skulk illegally in the changing rooms with a packet of skittles and a copy of Cosmo. Now I have to ruthlessly schedule time slots or else whole days slip through my fingers. Who would have thought that Neighbours and doing some washing could so completely fill a day?

Last week I woke up to find a post-it to myself from the to-do list fairies. The message said to post a letter and I posted it good. Up at nine, off to post office, and then lunch at one. I have no idea what happened in between. I’m pretty certain I had no time to do anything else.

So that settles it. I will never have time to mend my bike. Walking is my fate. The fact that it takes three times as long to walk to campus than it does to ride has no measure on it. The fact that I discovered the puncture day one of this term and it is now week six also should be of little consequence. Adults certainly don’t understand how difficult life can be as a student. Either because they are deluding themselves that their own degrees consisted of nine to five hard graft and efficiency, or else they come from the ‘old school’. In which case I too should have left school at sixteen and learned some bloody discipline.

Anyone setting out to see one of ‘those’ Jack Black films is likely to be disappointed by Be Kind Rewind. Silly voices and gurning, though present, are kept to a minimum. At the same time, those actively avoiding it for fear of another Nacho Libre are missing a heart-warming treat.

Michel Gondry has been dubbed a ‘daring’ director since his critically acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a tough act to live up to. He has yet to recapture the all round brilliance of that film, but his imagination remains practically unrivalled. Be Kind Rewind brings us more of the fantasy of his The Science of Sleep, but more accessibly. There is sheer brilliance in the camcorder remakes, or ‘swedes’, of well-loved and well-known films. Cardboard cut outs and tin foil suits are a refreshing break from the usual CGI parade.
‘Sweding’ is very Blue Peter, and the awkward characters in hopeless situations are equally charming and close to home. They are silly, but also sweet and sad, and held together by an unexpected dose of community. A pleasant break from indie-film cynicism.

Gondry’s creativity admittedly tends towards the tenuous in terms of plot. I felt unconvinced by some of the plot, and additionally the film has a frustrating habit of not following up sub-plots. I was dying to see certain romantic tensions fully resolved.

Regardless of the silliness, Be Kind Rewind is a sweet, heartfelt and occasionally magical film at risk of being stepped on by the award season giants. Def and Black are amiable buffoons and Melonie Diaz, a lesser-known actress overshadowed by the boys in her role as the put upon Alma, was delightfully fierce and vulnerable. It may not have the epic proportions of There Will Be Blood, or the relentless wit of Juno, but I haven’t come out the cinema so happy in a long time.

It’s grim up North, or so I’m told, but for the past two years I’ve been living in an affluent pocket of Southern ideals. There are yummy-mummies and wine bars in abundance in York city centre and our neighbour, Harrogate, even has a Waitrose. You don’t get much more Southern than that.

Is it becoming irrelevant to talk about a North-South divide? Culture, business and wealth are thriving in the North, whilst London exhibits the biggest social contrasts in the country. What could really be so different about the North and South other than that we disagree on how to say ‘bath’? An accent says a lot. However, while the North-South divide is by no means the startling industrial gap it once was, stereotypes are still thrown around and the socioeconomic statistics still sit firmly in the South’s favour.

According to a profile of England, published last October by the Department of Health, the health differences between the North and South follow us from birth to death. The average Northern five year old has two decayed, missing or filled teeth, double that of the average Southern or Midland five year old, and those in the South can expect to live three years longer on average than those in the North. The average Northerner is also statistically more likely to smoke and drink to excess, and suffer poor mental health. In addition, if you grew up in the South you are far more likely to attend a Russell Group university.

In the South, house prices average £265,000; over £100,000 more than in the North, where the average house is worth just £159,000. The cost of living is higher but wages, for the most part, seem to reflect this. The average worker in Great Britain earns £11.50 an hour. For a worker living in Liverpool the average earning per hour is £10.86, dwarfed by rates such as £17.64, in the London suburb of Richmond-upon-Thames, and £15.14 in Inner London.

It sounds like it could be a pretty high-pressured life in the South, which is probably why even music tastes differ. According to a recent HMV sales survey, the number of beats per minute systematically increases as you go North. Those in the West Country are chilling to trip-hop beats of less than 70bpm, whilst Newcastle-on-Tyne embraces a culture of fast-paced dance and rock at up to 160bpm. The survey noted the difference in tastes as corresponding to regional influences, lifestyle, and most interestingly, drug use. It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out which drugs are prevalent in an area where the beats slow to less than the average heart beat, compared to the dance-dominated Northern scene.

In 2007, Danny Dorling, a professor of human geography at Sheffield University, redrew the North-South line using various parameters of poverty and inequality. He rated the most significant to be life expectancy and house prices, followed by others such as education and voting patterns. The line diagonally joins the Severn estuary and Grimsby. Leicester has been defined as Southern and Nottingham has been labelled Northern. The small matter of 30 miles was deemed by Dorling to be the first indicator of the gun crime, acute poverty and chronic obesity in Nottingham.

The idea of a North-South divide has been present since the Industrial Revolution. By merit of its geography the South was always one step ahead in terms of industrialisation. London led the South to commercial economic success whilst the North remained the home of industry. This study highlights the unhelpful and arbitrary nature of officially marking the division. Dorling has effectively defined North and South as socioeconomic failure and success respectively, and says for example, that London is “not really in the South” due to its high rates of poverty.

It seems ridiculous to perpetuate the idea that it is the geography of a place that dictates the quality of life. The statistics comparing the North and South are not uniform. London has the highest rates of drug abuse in the country, and the Midlands, not the North, have the highest rates of obesity. To neglect these disparities within the North-South divide, and to take this divide as law, is to ignore the real factors of socio-economic inequality.

That isn’t to say there are no consequences of the split. According to a Nouse poll of one hundred students, 49% had felt affected by the North-South divide. One student polled said: “Do you want an example of how I was affected? I was called a dirty Northern monkey when I was eleven.” I asked some students at York how they feel about the North-South divide.
Anne lives near Liverpool and seems somewhat exasperated by talk of North-South disparity. She is quick to bring up the rising profiles of the old industrial cities. “Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle; working class cities. They had docks, they were industrial, but it’s not like that anymore. Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture and Manchester is a thriving business city.”

For Anne it’s just a matter of time before more Northern cities catch up with London. Manchester and Liverpool, as she mentioned, are well on their way, and there’s no reason why others won’t lose their industrial connotations. Moving away from the big cities, the North also has its fair share of affluent smaller towns. York is the second most popular tourist city, after London, in the UK, and Cheshire has the greatest density of millionaires per square mile in the UK. MTV have even set Living On The Edge, their UK OC lifestyle show, there. “LA attitude, Cheshire postcode” is its tagline.

There is no doubt, Anne tells me, that people think differently of the North and the South but she firmly believes it should be dismissed as a previous generation’s prejudices. “Nobody wants to be prejudiced, but you get it from somewhere; it’s kind of handed down. When my mum, who’s from Liverpool, met my dad’s mum, who’s from London, my dad’s mum just looked her up and down and said, ‘I don’t like Cilla Black.’ My mum was like, ‘Good, neither do I!’”

When asked whether she felt affected by the North-South divide Anne asked whether I meant affected or offended. “I would say I’m more offended. It’s hard to explain. I would feel more prejudiced if I had experienced it more. As it is, it just offends me rather than being a part of my life.”

She tells me that saying she’s from near Liverpool can get a negative response. “They think scousers, common, and therefore really brash and from an estate or something.” Anne’s pretty sure that if she said she was from Manchester, she would get a more positive response and this is further evidence that it’s not just about North and South anymore. In her opinion, there are undesirable areas all over the country. She laughs and recalls an Essex girl saying, “Don’t you fink [sic.] Northern’s like an ugly talk?”

“I suppose I held some prejudices myself, but only in an insecure way. I came to university thinking everyone was posher than me, rather than from London or the South.” In Anne’s block, almost all the girls on her floor spoke Received Pronunciation (essentially Queen’s English), whereas the bottom floor girls all had regional, mostly Northern, accents. According to Anne, both sides initially acted defensively.

Her accent left her a little caught in the middle but ultimately the she feels the animosity dissipated fairly quickly.
Rachel also lived on Anne’s floor last year, but is from London. Both are tired of what they call everyone’s “reverse snobbery obsession with being poor.” No one wants people to think they’ve had an easy ride.

“I hate sounding like every other first-generation middle class kid with poor parents. Every time someone tells you that their parents were poor you just think grow up, join the fucking club,” says Rachel, who speaks with RP and went to a high-ranking grammar school. She is keen to point out that she would never have gone to a private school. “Sometimes I think if I was a failure people would think it was funny. If you sound like you might be remotely privileged, you lose any credibility in your successes.”

Anne, however, is quick to condemn the privileged and lazy, implying that Rachel might be naïve to think that if she slacked off people would forgive her accent. “I’d have similar opinions of someone who left school at 16 and worked in a shop, then bummed around a bit, then worked a bit, then didn’t do much, to some ‘yuppy’ son who stops and starts at uni, wasting everyone’s time. The only real difference is that he can go back and work for Daddy.”

I always thought people shied away from talking about class, but every student I approached talked openly about the class implications of the North and South. Both Rachel and Anne resented what they explicitly named as class stereotypes, associated with their accents. “People have mainly just taken the piss. Let’s not exaggerate; it’s mostly in jest. But it is sad that people are genuinely hesitant to be accepting of people with certain accents.” Rachel clearly feels like more of a victim in this block-related dispute, but according to our poll, only 34% of Southerners have ever felt affected by a North-South divide, compared to 74% of Northerners.

John, from Doncaster, is a Northerner who seems to have been more affected by the division. “There is a distinct difference between the world I’m in on campus, and the world I’m in at home; possibly because most people here seem to be Southern.” The random selection from our poll suggests that Northern and Southern students are roughly equal in number at York, with 34% of our answers coming from each and only 14% coming from the Midlands. It’s hard to say who should feel outnumbered, as most Midlanders complain of being called both Northern and Southern.

John disputes that there isn’t actually that much of a divide on campus, rather that it seems “overwhelmingly Southern”, talking about how he has “Southerned up, or rather, Southerned down” since he’s been at York. For John, as well as Rachel, the biggest source of conflict has been his accent. “People didn’t understand the way I spoke,” he says, “I was proud of being from the North, but now I’m not.” However, he harbours little actual resentment, and seems quite contemplative rather than angry about his loss of pride.

“There’s nothing in the North that there isn’t in the South, apart from, you know; racism [laughs wryly]. How can you be proud of something you didn’t even choose?” John very much sees his university transformation as a good thing, but he bristles at people, particularly other Northerners, suggesting that he thinks he’s better than them. “Just because you listen to Wagner over the Arctic Monkeys doesn’t make you a snob. I fail to see how one is better than the other, they’re merely interests. I think people just feel intimidated.” Once again students seem to feel affected by this inverse snobbery, there is a real sense that they feel like they are held back by having to “remember where they’ve come from.”

London is a recurring theme in the North-South debate. The HMV survey highlighted a desire to buck the London-promoted music trends in other large cities, particularly in Leeds. Sarah, from Kent, giggles over the “North London mafia” on campus and how people are constantly trying to bring London and its music scene to university. Anyone who’s been to both London and York is no doubt acutely aware that this will never happen.

Sarah is by far the most indifferent to the divide of the four I interviewed. She is adamant that it’s all in our heads. “People think there’s a North-South divide, but it just not really the case. Industry has disappeared, it’s not like everyone in the North still works in coal mines. It’s not the ‘80s anymore!”

The effect that the North-South divide has had on Sarah seems to be limited to during the first weeks of university. “In freshers’ week it just helped us make conversation. ‘Where are you from? The North? Ooh, say bath!’” Sarah seems to reflect the general mood quite well. People are aware of the problem but unless they’ve had personal experience, it doesn’t seem to bother them that much. The Northerners are more aware of its affect and, on campus at least, due to the indifferent attitudes of the Southerners, it seems they are pre-empting bad feeling that isn’t really there.

An obsession with such a distinction creates social paranoia, though students are aware that in the liberal “campus bubble” prejudices are diluted. As Anne said: “How it affects students is a lot less than how it affects the ‘real world’. It’s just a bubble.” She feels that the actuality of the divide comes down to little more than accent, geography and banter.

The problematic factor remains class. “The North South divide has fallen because there’s a new definition of working class in both the North and South,” says Anne. Whilst most at university are quick to establish that they are not upper-class, students also describe a change in attitude towards the working class, even if such a thing even still exists. Apparently such people are no longer “working”, but are instead seen as benefit “spongers”. Sarah says: “People are recovering from having jobs taken away from them. People expect to have money. The clamber for wealth means there’ll be one giant middle class.”

But perhaps even class is a masking factor. As the middle class grows, the gap between rich and poor will only get wider. Maybe clinging onto outdated and simplistic prejudices like class in relation to analysing the North-South divide only serves to hide the socio-economic problems. Inner-city poverty, under funded comprehensives and isolated minorities. Yet we seem unable to got rid of these inherited prejudices, and so they continue to affect students on this campus, and all over the country. On a broader scale, however, the “great” divide remains an insult to those either side of it who really are disadvantaged.

At the PEP presidential debate it was suggested to the Cap’n that it looked like he could win. He laughed, we laughed; hilarity was sure to ensue. But suddenly, he exhibited a shrewd aptitude for policy decisions and, most importantly, a lot common sense. My problem with Mad Cap’n Scott is not that I think he will fail us, or horrendously embarrass us, on the contrary; I think he is hugely competent. It is that I cannot believe he is really joking.

On the record we have a candidate who insists that he “ran for comedy” until the very last minute and who has, in his “brief explanatory note from the guy behind the eye-patch”, underlined the broad unimportance of student politics. In reality we have someone who cannot stop himself from caring. He has already run for a serious YUSU position, Societies and Communications, and this time round he had every opportunity to keep up the comedy act. Why did he not yo ho his way through the debate? Why will he not swashbuckle into YUSU and tear it apart from the inside? And at the last minute, why didn’t he simply turn down the position?

The fact is, Tom Scott has a responsibility to the students, and by taking the job he has pledged to represent us as best he can. The only reason he would take the presidency is if he believed he could do a decent job. The Mad Cap’n may have been a spoiled ballot paper for many, but a portion of the student population really believed in him. With such a diligent and well-executed campaign, even his scurvy crew must see he could do YUSU some good.

Going into the position with the acute awareness that students are so disenfranchised from YUSU that they voted for a fancy-dressed nobody can only serve to push him into a fresh approach to student politics. Tom Scott doesn’t consider campus politics unimportant, otherwise he wouldn’t have felt the need to make such a point for outsiders. This is a victory for all non-YUSU climbers. So many students feel ostracised from their Union and now, whether he likes it or not, it has fallen to Scott to do them justice.

The Mad Cap’n is right that we should maintain some perspective, those who get too obsessed with university politics have fallen prey to the campus bubble. But YUSU is not credited for half of what it does and the president has substantial affect on the running of it.

So as old-hats at No-Confidence campaigns rub their hands with glee it is up to us to give our Cap’n some support. “It was the will of the students” when Grace was voted out, to quote many of the anti-Grace brigade, and similarly it is the will of the students that Scott be our President. To claim otherwise is double standards. The students have truly been seduced by Scott’s promises of frivolity and adventure and that is a resounding statement against stale unaccountable student union politics. Unless the Cap’n shows a little belief in himself, and the rest of the students begin to see what he’s capable of, the campus politic’s vigilantes will take him down.

So take off the hat Scott, because it wasn’t your comedy alter ego that won this, it was the belief that you care and will work hard to deliver.

“Hey.” I snapped my phone shut. No one need realise that I wasn’t really texting one of my many friends whilst my cocktail partner was in the toilet. No one needs to know that I’d just beaten my tetris high score. I am terrible on my own in bars. “So, what brings you out tonight?” Discussing our hometowns, courses and plans for the night, I ignore that his eyes remain firmly on my cleavage and wish Katie would hurry up. “So anyway…are you a lesbian?” Pardon me? “I thought you were hot, so I should check.” He makes a fair point, because goodness knows it would be a waste of five minutes if I was gay, whereas since I’m not, I’m certain to succumb to his charm. “Err no…but I do have a boyfriend.” But apparently that’s fine. What’s breaking down a little bit of fidelity compared to a sexuality life choice? If only all boys were so pragmatic.

Pub golf is the messy means to a sticky end. Designed with vomit in mind, participants are doomed to bruises, headaches and abject humiliation. Normally quite a mild mannered if a little nonsensical drunk, excessive mixing turns me at best paranoid and delusional. “Is it because you hate me?” He was leaving, sober and unwell, having already withstood a substantial amount of drunken rambling. “You hate me don’t you? I’m sorry.” A fading voice in my head was telling me to ask him if he’s ok going home alone and say you’ll call him in the morning. “It’s because I’m ugly isn’t it? I’m sorry.” For some reason I choose to ignore his request to see you tomorrow. “Why do you hate me? I’m sorry.” A kiss on the cheek and he’s gone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The punctuation of the paranoid drunk.

Two bare pairs of feet pad towards each other. Each girl recognises the painful thwack of flesh on paving slab. My eyes sheepishly meet hers. I’m sure I look more smudged than her. She looks practically clean – definitely not post-coital. Whereas I look horrendous. Matted fringe, crumpled dress and scuffed heels in hand. Who would have thought I just spent the night top to tailing in a single bed with a charitable girl friend who happened to live closer to the bars of my undoing than I do? Perhaps my fresh faced friend approaching will do me the honour of thinking that I am living up to the “walk of shame”. Because, let’s face it, promiscuity is cooler than me.