Sweet girl graduates
Sir: Mr Rupert Jackson (Letters, II April), in best debating style, attributes to me an argument which I have never supported, draws it to its 'logical' conclusion, and then proceeds, with masterly irrelevance, to demolish the edifice which his own imagination has erected.
Of course, the British taxpayer has neither the knowledge nor the time to worry about academic syllabuses and college gate hours. Nor does he wish to enforce, in the minutest detail, his own standards of moral behaviour on individual undergraduates. But to say all this is not to deny that the taxpayer, who (I must stress the point) does pay for the student's opportunity to enjoy the cloistered courts and Fellows' lawns that make up 'Oxbridge; has a very proper right to prevent university authori- ties from bringing about conditions which would actually encourage what is generally and rightly regarded as immoral behaviour. Forni- cation is so regarded by the vast majority of people, and I believe it would be encouraged by the introduction of coeducational colleges and mixed staircases at Cambridge.
Thus, I am happy to agree with Mr Jackson that 'there are some areas of university administration where college authorities arc more qualified to make decisions than even the taxpayer'—but cases where the moral values of our whole society are at stake are outside those areas.
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