Student Activism: The Third Side of the Argument

WALDRON STONETUMBLER argues there’s a side of the Student Activism debate that everyone has ignored.


Over the holidays – as, dear reader, you are probably aware – The Tab has been a hotbed of activity and debate surrounding student activism and whether or not it’s all right to tell politicians to ‘Fuck off’.

In the comments section there has been much to-ing and fro-ing as to the need to protest and the merits of curse words, suggesting that there are better things that could be done or that Cambridge Defend Education is just a bit silly.

Others have pointed to these comments as perfect examples of why student activism is so desperately needed. I will not disagree that the conversation is an important one and one that we all really need to have – with each other, and with ourselves.

At the same time, however, no one has noticed the elephant in the room: the risk of attack from the near extinct, but no less deadly, giant sloth.

This is not a joke. Whilst we’re all either standing out on King’s Parade holding signs like twits, or watching the sign holding twits and making acerbic remarks, our defences are being left unmanned (or “womanned”… come to think of it, maybe “personned” is better).

Today Cambridge. A few years after that, New York?

Those sloths may be slow, but they are determined. I’m no Slothropologist but I’m fairly sure that over the evening that the protest took place, they could have chewed their way through the barricades.

And then what? Our only hope of survival would be to cover ourselves in Vaseline and hope to slide as far away as possible out of their three-toed grip – and then we’re totally fucked, because, dear readers:

CAMBRIDGE IS FUCKING FLAT.

No matter how hard we try, we’re simply not going to get very far. And no amount of pretending to be slugs is going to fool them either. And there is no Plan C.

No undergraduate degree will prepare you for this.

What they’re after, I don’t know. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them take it. We’ve been lucky so far – but who knows for how long our luck will run on? I urge you, if you love Freedom, to email our fine CUSU leader and let them know a referendum on this issue is essential.