by Maddy Fry

“The prospectus was all lies
And you’ve forgotten to revise,
But at least you didn’t go to UCL.”

Amateur Transplants, ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.’

It seems more than a little curious that a newspaper with the amount of investment and choice of material to cover as UCL’s Pi should choose to do what it describes as “a sequence of reports” on SOAS. It’s no secret that there is more than a minor sense of antagonism between the two universities at times, but even when one leaves that aside, to devote an entire series of columns on the internal workings of the (considerably smaller) university around the corner comes across as more than a little petty. An article entitled ‘Politics Gone Hazy at SOAS’ is just one of these, in which reporter Chris Blanchard takes several pot-shots at the political culture of SOAS.
Speaking as a self-described SOAS moderate, I’d be the first to admit that much of these are well-deserved, and despite the baffling nature of its origin the article at the very least is eloquent and non-polemical. Yet Blanchard also makes a few rather ill-informed accusations, which we on the SNEWS team felt compelled to address.
The piece firstly makes the claim that the Student Union recently passed a motion officially recognising and condemning the Armenian genocide. Blanchard rightly makes the point that the issue in question is “highly sensitive,” but then goes on to state that the motion was passed by the Union “in a carefree manner.” Anyone who was there can confirm that such a claim is false; the issue was hotly contested and debated at the Union General Meeting in which it was raised, with students on both sides of the debate giving voice to their opinions for a considerable length of time before the matter was finally put to a vote.
Whether or not it was the place of the Union to make a statement on such a topic is another matter, but its duty is to voice the concerns of as many of the students at SOAS as possible. Therefore, being as this was an issue on which feelings ran high enough for it to be raised, the Union felt it was its duty to bring it to a vote. Either way, someone was going to get offended, but alas, that remains the price of democracy.
What’s more, Blanchard seems to have overlooked the fact that the opinion of the Union either way has little bearing on the world beyond the doors of SOAS, so it is slightly overblown to make the claim, which he does, that the outcome of the decision would be to infuriate “an entire nation (Turkey) currently in religious and democratic turmoil.”
Similarly, he claims that the intention of another SOAS motion was to make “SOAS lecturers publicly acknowledge Taiwan’s special political status when referring to any map of East Asia.” Again, this is untrue. SOAS lecturers would not have been coerced into making any such statement; merely that if the particular issue of Taiwan’s relationship with China was to come up, lecturers would be recommended to draw attention to the sensitivity surrounding it.
This isn’t to deny that Blanchard’s analysis of the Sodexho fiasco, as well as the botched nature of the motion which sought to extend immunity to those students that miss work commitments due to their campaigning efforts is astute. However, the debate over scientology is a more complex one than he makes out. Whilst I wish to avoid taking sides in the debate, the decision to bring about an on-campus ban of the group was influenced largely by the fact that a student who was an anti-scientology activist had been threatened by some of that religious group’s members, and the school felt it had a duty to protect its students.
As someone who is decidedly not a member of the smug militant socialist elite that makes up the more vocal elements of the SOAS Union, I will admit that much of SOAS political life is frustrating – in particular that fact that if anyone expresses anything from ambivalence to opposition over issues such as the Iraq War or tuition fees, they are often instantly branded a ‘fascist’ in public.
It is also true that many of us are fed up with what Blanchard describes as “the bad press and the negative stereotypes that come along with the widespread political activism.” His tone is conciliatory and the article mostly avoids generalisations; hardly a bad thing, given the need for less antagonism and more dialogue between SOAS and UCL. (This is in stark opposition to the view taken by one UCL blogger, who recently expressed a charming desire to see the SOAS campus bull-dozed).
Yet Blanchard is wrong to claim that the 2007 SOAS Rugby ‘English Party’ incident points to a large amount of people at SOAS who seek a more “traditional campus life.” I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but I know of many alongside myself who seek exactly the opposite. The vast majority of SOAS students simply happen to give a damn about more than just degrees and careers, seeing university as an opportunity to express dissatisfaction at the prevailing mentality within much academic life in Britain, being as it is one that seeks largely to ignore the significance of the culture and politics of the non-Western world.
The irritation brought about by the kind of lunatic extremist groups this inevitably attracts is often intense. But many of us would still choose to endure that rather than the apathy Blanchard admits afflicts his own university.