ISIS AND THE ISIS SIR,--Alas, in taking Strix to task
for his remarks on his, Mr. James MacGibbon gets very wide of the mark when generalising about undergraduates today. First, he would have you believe that students here regard undergraduate 'parochial' news as un- important; and, secondly, that if this were true it would be 'indicative of greater maturity and wider intelligence.'
This image of serious-students-shouldering-the- responsibilities-of-our-age-as-they-march-to-mature- citizenship is very touching, but let me acquaint Mr. MacGibbOn with one or two aspects of contemporary Oxford. First, during this last term at the very time when the Isis controversy was beginning, a new magazine was successfully launched dealing almost entirely in the gossip and scandals surrounding university personalities and their pretensions; the very reason why kis has got so far out of touch with students here is precisely that we resent Mr. Potter and his friends telling us we must all be Angry. As for the second point, I should have thought that a willingness to join in Righteous Indignation Campaigns against H-bombs, the Monarchy, the BBC, Freemasonry (arc these what Mr. MacGibbon means by 'the anomalies and uncertainties of our society'?), and anything else which Mr. Potter and his friends are able to think of, would be first-class evidence of student immaturity.
1 am sorry to break the news to Mr. MacGibbon. but students here have become sceptical abou, protest campaigns, petitions and the Anger Cult Instead, we have come to recognise the contplexit of political issues and to get our own role if, he political process into perspective. And so, whit( we are here, why shouldn't we exchange 'parish pump' scandal and delight in the corruption ot student politics? At least allow us the maturity tc• laugh at ourselves.
Finally, 'the main point of all the Isis con- troversy' is not 'the right of the editor to run his paper.' (I'm sorry, Mr. MaeGibbon, but we really must not jump to conclusions so quickly, must we?) The main point is the right of the owners to appoint next term's staff to their paper when that paper it• losing contact with university life and is boring its readers, and when that paper has come to be written and edited not by amateur journalists but by a clique of aspiring professional political protesters. —Yours faithfully,
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