Sir : Mr Bown has now turned to that last,
favourite resort of vanquished correspondents —the plea that I misrepresented his argument. Yet he still clings blindly and obdurately to the assumptions which I challenged and, incident- ally, did not misrepresent.
He assumes firstly that the moral standard of 'the vast majority of people' is by definition right (and a brief glance at Plato's Republic, Book 6, should dispel any such illusions) and that it should therefore be imposed, where pos- sible, on those minorities whom they subsidise. Secondly, he argues, the introduction of co- educational colleges at Cambridge would en-
courage immorality among students, and is therefore wrong.
I personally share Mr Bown's views about sexual morality, but I dispute that he, or the taxpayer, has the right to enforce his own stan- dards on the private lives of undergraduates. Because the Government holds the purse strings, it will, of course, have some say in the way that its money is spent on higher education; but if university autonomy is to mean anything, then it cannot be expected to intervene in purely internal matters against the wishes of the majority of students and dons. As for his second point, I do not believe that promiscuity among students would be greatly increased by coeducational colleges (since the travelling time involved is hardly a decisive factor in the con- siderations of the potential promisceant). There is also a positive side to the plan—namely that it would create a more normal environment for students.
When Mr Bown claims that 'the moral values of our whole society are at stake,' he is delud- ing himself and deceiving your readers.
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