The Great Taboo

This week, something huge is happening at UCL. It’s so groundbreaking, so revolutionary, so world-shattering that absolutely nobody can talk about it. Not a whisper. From the Union corridors of power to the Vice Provost’s cleaning staff, the secrecy is total and unrelenting. Nobody can get a sniff of what is happening.

But they soon will. We are educating the public sphere; we are the 21st century cahiers and radical pamphlets. We are leading the revolution.

From tomorrow we will break out of our shackles of ignorance; our minds will blossom with radical discourse and we will storm the Portico like sans-culottes toppling the Ancien Regime.

It all begins tomorrow and let’s turn the calendar back to zero. The date is 1/0/0. We are in a brave new world of knowledge, of tolerance, of inclusivity.

For on Monday begins UCL Taboo Week.

But wait, you can’t tell anyone. The revolution has been starved of its oxygenating publicity. We great ignorant unknowing students still live in a world of taboos; we shake at the mere thought of expressing the terms ‘depression’, ‘mental health’ and ‘transvestite’. Anything that falls outside of our cocooned ‘normal’ existence is too controversial for us to even comprehend. This is why Taboo Week has become too much of a Taboo to be advertised.

This is why none of us can know about it; our small minds can just about comprehend a few small elephants being posted round South Cloisters, but an actual event? As in, something in a classroom or lecture theatre, at a predefined time, that actually debate these unmentionable issues? We’re clearly not advanced enough to cope with such questioning of social norms.

But hang on a second. Taboos are Taboos because nobody talks about them; to break free from their inhibiting tendencies people must scream from the rooftops, they must break down doors, scale walls and kill the stubborn unbelievers with their open-minded bayonets.

Taboo Week should not be a meek attempt to educate a few students who happen to stumble across an event dealing with mental health when they went to the wrong lecture theatre. It should be plastered across the UCLU website, it should be impossible for any student to avoid it’s existence and they should be punished for not participating. Harshly.

Taboo Week should be kicking up a fuss, it should be fighting to get publicity for the marginalized in society that it represents. Instead, it is left to us ignorant students who perpetuate these Taboos to try with all our might to find these events, to be educated about these issues and to understand why they affect more people than we could ever realise.

We are the ones with the weapons, we are the ones fighting wave upon wave of wave of UCLU’s shit calendars. The revolution has failed when the insurrection is being pleaded for from above.
 

The Buzz's crack team of insurgents have managed to make some grounds in the publicity war. If you're interested in Taboo Week here are a few events we've managed to uncover. If you're part of the ignorant mass, we suggest you go in disguise: 

Sexpression Day: http://www.facebook.com/events/230536910376609/?notif_t=event_invite

http://www.facebook.com/events/356156747757977/?notif_t=event_invite

Mental Health Awareness:

http://time-to-change.org.uk/your-organisation/events/ucl-taboo-week-mental-health-awareness-day