The Crackpot Campus That Has Banned Sugar, Hats and Rugby Greg Hurst,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-crackpot-campus-thats-banned-sugar-hats-and-rugby-cx0lc3zj7
The leftist madness is not limited to US universities:
First they came for the bags of sugar, removing them from the campus shop. Then they blocked Six Nations
rugby matches from being screened in the student union bar.
After that coffee was targeted: Starbucks and Nestlé were subject to campus boycotts. Sombreros were next;
handing out the hats at a freshers’ fair was deemed cultural appropriation.
They even tried to ban Ukip after students said that inviting its candidate on to the campus would make them
feel less safe and secure.
So when the University of East Anglia stopped graduating students from tossing mortarboards in the air during
their official photograph, it came as little surprise. The university in Norwich, which last year became the
first in Britain to introduce day-time sleeping berths for hung-over students, is developing a reputation as
one of our most crackpot campuses.
It was the university authorities that generated headlines this week by declaring that tossing mortarboards
skywards posed an unacceptable risk because it could lead to injury.
An offer to have flying mortarboards added digitally to graduation photographs for an extra £8 did not
mollify students. Its justification was given short shrift by the Health and Safety Executive, which said
that the chance of being hurt by a flying mortarboard was incredibly small.
Yet it is UEA’s student union, housed in a brutalist concrete and glass building on the campus, that has
been most active with bans and boycotts. Tate & Lyle sugar and Starbucks coffee were barred from the campus
shop over their company’s tax affairs; Six Nations rugby because its sponsor, RBS, funded fossil fuel
extraction; Nestlé over claims that its baby milk powder discouraged women in poor countries from breast
feeding.
The hierarchical post of student union president was axed, with duties shared between five elected officers
(“a flat, collaborative structure”).
A university free speech table compiled by Spiked, an online magazine, gave UEA its worst rating because of
the union’s support for an academic boycott of Israel and a ban on jokes that feature stereotypes. “UEA
is fast becoming one of the daftest campuses in the country,” Tom Slater, the free speech rankings editor,
said.
Jac Goult, 23, a Master’s student, said: “Other students must look at UEA and think: ‘Oh God, I’m
glad I’m not there. It’s embarrassing.’”
So is it something in the Norfolk air? Has the university allowed a culture of illiberalism to creep on to
its campus? Or does it reflect the obsessions of inward-facing student unions? Yinbo Yu, the student
union’s activities officer, said that decisions on what to stock “are made in the open and
democratically. Any student can propose and then have debated a product or company, which is the opposite of
a clampdown on free speech – and almost everything the SU has chosen not to profit from is still available
elsewhere on campus.”
A spokesman for the university said: “UEA has not introduced a policy banning the throwing of mortarboards
– we have simply asked our photography supplier not to encourage it during the formal group sessions.
“We have taken this step because in each of the last two years graduating students have suffered facial
injuries. Last year a student needed treatment in A&E.
“If students want to throw their mortarboards on graduation day that’s their choice, they are perfectly
free to do so, but we don’t think doing it in the organised group photo is advisable.”
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