spiked | Censoring students at Oxford?

That is so gay

Monday 19 February 2007

Censoring students at Oxford? That is so gay
Welcome to the Oxford college where students can use the word gay to refer to a homosexual
man but not to describe a rubbish pool shot.
Maria Grasso

In the quad at Merton College, Oxford, scruffily-clad students scurry to their lectures.
But behind this everyday student scene, there lurks a rather bizarre controversy.

The trendy college is renowned for its LGBT-friendly ethos (that’s LGBT as in ‘Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender’), yet it has become a rather unlikely setting for a university-wide
controversy over homophobic remarks. Recently, fourth-year Merton student Andrew Godfrey
complained about some of the language being used by his fellow students. This led to official action
by the executive of the Junior Common Room (JCR) warning the student body to refrain from
‘unacceptable and extremely offensive’ behaviour ‘even if you are not being intentionally
malicious’. Students were reprimanded for contributing to ‘an uncomfortable atmosphere in
college’.

What was the ‘unacceptable and extremely offensive’ behaviour? It consisted of limp-wristed
impressions and the use of phrases such as ‘Oh don’t be such a poof!’ and ‘You missed that shot,
you big gay!’ during a heated game of pool in Merton’s swanky Games Room.

In response to Godfrey’s complaint about this behaviour, the college’s JCR president, Laura Davies,
sent out the following email to students (drafted by Godfrey in collaboration with student welfare
and LGBT representatives): ‘JCR members have raised concerns after groups have been overheard
in the Games Room and other communal areas of college using terms like “gay” and “poof” as
joking insults. Please be aware that using language like this is unacceptable and extremely
offensive, even if you are not being intentionally malicious and think you are being ironic or witty in
some way. It creates an uncomfortable atmosphere in the college.’

Can students not take a joke anymore? Can they not handle the use of words such as ‘gay’ or
‘poof’ in a slang context, in a setting as informal as a Games Room? Both Davies and Godfrey
admit that the students probably were not expressing anti-gay prejudice when they made these
comments while making their wrists go all limp. As Godfrey himself says: ‘I never maintained that
this was deliberately malicious homophobia because I didn’t feel like I had been harassed;
otherwise I would have turned to the college authorities. They were basically acting the way guys
do.’

And yet guys ‘acting the way guys do’ has now been redefined as ‘unacceptable and extremely
offensive’ behaviour that apparently warrants a stern official warning. Davies tells me she had no
qualms about sending an official admonishment to the entire student body in response to behaviour
that she admits was not purposefully malicious or offensive. ‘One of the JCR members raised the
fact that he was quite unhappy with someone using the word “gay” and that he personally found
that very offensive’, she says. This is a world away from John Stuart Mill’s argument that opinions
ought only to ‘lose their immunity’ when ‘the circumstances in which they are expressed are such
as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act’ (1). His point,
made in On Liberty in 1859, was that only in instances where words and actions might directly lead
to violence could one make a case for curtailing freedom of speech. Fast forward 150 years and we
have the new Merton rule – where JCR officials recognise that students saying ‘gay’ to mean
rubbish and swinging their wrists around was not intended maliciously, much less was it likely to
lead to violence; and yet because these antics offended the sensibilities of a single student they
took it upon themselves to chastise all students in a hectoring missive about what is acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour.

This points to a worrying level of sensitivity among today’s students, and a lackadaisical attitude
towards words, arguments and freedom of speech. The JCR’s aim seemed to be, not to protect
students from harm, but to protect the college’s reputation for being caring and accepting from the
‘unmannered’ behaviour of some students playing a game of pool.

The self-censoring attitude of Merton’s JCR reflects a broader Why does gay mean
view taken by many today: that free speech is something that ‘rubbish’?, asks Rob Lyons

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 spiked | Censoring students at Oxford? That is so gay

can be easily sacrificed in the name of protecting people from

utterances they might find offensive. The idea that students Apparently the term ‘gay’ is
should behave according to some predetermined college ethos now in common usage among
stands in stark contrast to the old idea of universities as places young people to mean ‘lame’ or
where young people should be free to experiment, to think, to ‘rubbish’. This has caused some
argue, to learn, to say what they please in a student common controversy, especially among
room…. Enforcing an official dogma about words, phrases and gay rights groups who don’t like
actions betrays an elitist view of what sort of behaviour is the idea that being called ‘gay’
appropriate, and what is not. is now seen as something
negative. Last year Radio 1
Worse, it treats students as children who either must be
presenter Chris Moyles was the
reprimanded for saying naughty words or who must be
subject of an internal BBC
protected from the jokey words of big ‘bully boys’ by student
inquiry after he described a
officials posing as social workers. This infantilises students –
ringtone on air as ‘gay’. Leaving
which is hardly conducive to creating an atmosphere where
aside the question of why there
students can grow, both educationally and personally.
has to be an inquiry every time
Some students have reacted against the JCR’s illiberal a broadcaster says something
telling-off. Merton student Ben Holroyd created an online un-PC, it is reasonable to ask:
group called The Gay Appreciation Society, which argued that: where could young people have
‘The word “gay” has several definitions, only one of which is got the idea that ‘gay =
“homosexual”. Others include merry, licentious and wanton. rubbish’?
When I miss a pot at the pool table, I sometimes refer to said
shot as “gay”. Obviously, I do not consider the shot in question How about from another term,
to be homosexual. Having said that, I rarely miss, so I seldom very closely associated with gay
offend the minority of pedantic, over-sensitive fools at culture: ‘camp’. ‘Camp’, as
Merton.’ Stephen Bayley argued in his
scratch-their-eyes-out book on
Perhaps the most pernicious thing about the Merton ruling on New Labour, Labour Camp, is
when it’s okay to say gay is that it represents almost an just a synonym for rubbish. Or,
attempt at thought control. According to the JCR officials, it is as Susan Sontag observed in
okay to say ‘gay’ to refer to a homosexual man but not to Notes on Camp, first published
describe a ‘rubbish’ pool shot. What is being monitored here is in 1964, ‘The ultimate Camp
not just the use of language, but thought itself, the meaning statement [is] it’s good because
behind one’s use of the word gay. We are presented with a it’s awful...’ Sontag noted that
two-tiered attitude to the word gay, where it’s okay to use it Camp culture tends to
responsibly to mean homosexual but not irresponsibly to mean emphasise ‘texture, sensuous
rubbish. It seems the JCR wants to get into Merton students’ surface, and style at the
minds to see what is really going on when they speak. expense of content’; and that
‘homosexuals, by and large,
Even if some students had been expressing anti-gay prejudice constitute the vanguard - and
in their use of words such as ‘gay’ and ‘poof’, then censure the most articulate audience -
would be no solution. The idea that monitoring student of Camp’.
language can have an impact on certain people’s prejudicial
views, or on discrimination in the real world, is ridiculous. It It doesn’t take a huge leap of
merely brushes issues under the carpet, seeking to silence the imagination to re-work
certain arguments rather than challenging them. Prejudice – ‘camp’ as ‘gay’, especially when
which is a more serious matter than banter around a pool so many gay celebrities tend to
table – can only be effectively challenged in open debate, wallow in kitsch. If you, like
through reasoned argument. many people both straight and
gay, think Graham Norton and
University should be a place where we are free to experiment
Will and Grace and Queer Eye
and to express ourselves in whatever way we deem fit.
for the Straight Guy (now
Disagreements can and should be settled between students
there’s a show that emphasises
themselves. Official sanctions telling us how we should behave
‘style at the expense of
only thwart the advance of genuine tolerance, which is based,
content’) are pretty dreadful,
not on intolerant censorship of uncomfortable views, but rather
then surely no one could blame
on establishing through open discussion which ideas are good,
you for associating ‘gay’, at
valuable and useful, and which are not.
least in its cultural sense, with
The campus thought-police have no right to tell us how to ‘rubbish’.
think, speak or behave, and certainly not when we are just
hanging out with friends and playing pool. They should bugger off and stop being so gay.

Maria Grasso is researching a DPhil on the decline of political activism in Western Europe, at
Nuffield College, Oxford.

(1) On Liberty, JS Mill, p114

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