School for scandal
Sir: I wonder if you will allow a first-year LSE student to reply to Professor Brogan's article (24 March).
Firstly, let me assure your readers that though we would all like nicer buildings to spend our lives in (who wouldn't, of course?), the professor's real-estate meanderings which occupy so much valuable space are quite wide of the mark. The (literally) fatal occasion when the troubles at LSE came to a head was caused not by the lack of a room to hold a meeting which the students con- sidered vital, but by the refusal of the adminis- tration to permit us to use the one that was avail- able. We were offered the use of the bar instead.
As Professor Brogan taught at isE he pre- sumably knows that an audience of more than one hundred would turn the bar into a Black Hole of Calcutta.
In any case, what point of principle could have been involved in permitting us to talk our per- nicious doctrines in a small room but not in a large one? Presumably Professor Brogan knows all about this aspect. If not, he shouldn't write articles. If he does, why does he mislead your readers?
Not a word in the whole article about the stark moral choice which confronted us when we decided to sit-in: should we abandon to their fate the two students who, at our behest, had stuck their necks out, and simply get on with our own careers? Or should we play the game (Mr Howell, alleged Ministor of Sport, please note)? We have, per- haps, achieved a little by adopting the second alternative. We would have achieved only ignominy had we adopted the first.
In view of Professor Brogan's obsession with the nationality of the students, permit me to con- clude by assuring him that though my great- grandfather came over from Austria instead of Normandy, I am, for better or worse, as British as he is.
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