Sordid Campus
Sir: Congratulations are due to Paul Johnson (10 December) for his perceptive appraisal of student media, their characteristics and relation to the 'adult' press. There were, however, two points with which I feel obliged to take issue.
Why was there no mention of Mancu- nian? This, the Manchester University Students Union paper (circulation 15,000 per week), won the Guardian award for the best student newspaper of the last academic year. It was thus vitally relevant to Mr Johnson's article, regardless of his personal opinion of its merits.
My second point concerns Campus, the anti-NUS publication. I do not speak as a typical exhibitor of the left-wing in- tolerance' — an attitude which the article was correct in saying abounds in univer- sities today. However, I would say that there is a direct correlation between those criticised in York University's Nouse where the 'political report' wrote of 'fatalism' and `little loyalty to, or respect for, the Union', and those, of whom Mr Johnson writes, on the subject of Campus, 'Ordinary students seem to like it'. Such people show no ap- preciation for the efforts made by sab- batical officers in unions on their behalf. They are lazy, apathetic and negative in their approach to student problems and do nothing but act in a boorish, uncultivated manner at parties. Campus, with its em- phasis on 'sex, drink and gossip', caters adequately for their tastes.
The periodical is destructive and depress- ingly unintellectual in content. It is in- capable of making positive remarks about student organisations and lacks even the saving grace of humour. Would that Cam- pus confined itself to 'sex, drink and gossip'. Despite encouraging universities to disaffiliate from the NUS, the editor had the audacity to Send a reporter to the an- nual conference in Blackpool, who, until requested not to, distributed copies of the publication. I was distressed and embar- rassed to have to comfort women members of my delegation who left the conference floor in tears when shown a grotesque, tasteless caricature of a cruise missile box- ing with a Tampax outside the Greenham Common perimeter fence. I refuse to repeat, before Spectator readers, the words of the caption.
If Campus is representative of ordinary students' feelings it is hardly surprising that British society is becoming such a cruel grey Worthless institution. How strange that the Spectator, the publication I read every week as a tonic to my battered political senses, should encourage the 'great advances of semi-literacy' cited by Mr Waugh ('Damn- ed lies', 17 December). Campus, the non- left purveyor of this insidious threat to ex- cellence, is given intellectual credibility by advertising itself in your pages! Patrick Handley
Liberal Society, Manchester University Students Union
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