ISIS AND THE ISIS
SIR,—Shame on Strix for being a complacent old man with smug views that are less prevalent in our universities than in his time! How appalling that he can turn up the 1929 files of The Isis and feel pleased• with his six pages of sports articles (how characteristic that he finds them 'rather well done, on the whole') and parish-pump pieces of journalism. Does it not enter his head that undergraduates today for the most part do not delude themselves that under- graduate news is important. and that their interest in opinions as opposed to parochial news is possibly indicative of greater maturity and wider intelligence?
Strix may have fought very bravely in the Second World War, but if he and others in his and my generation had not been fiddling about in blinkers we might, ten years later, have avoided part of the mess we got ourselves into in 1939. While ht was making his courageous stand against the Oxford Group and the proctors, I wonder if he gave much thought to life outside?
What those who are in touch with undergraduates today like about them is their realisation that en- lightenment and amusement are found outside and not just within the crusted walls of Oxford. They may not match Strix in irresponsible cheerfulness, but to suggest that Mr. Potter's concern with the world and politics is irresponsible gloom is to miss the point of the present university generation: of course they are gloomy about nuclear weapons and the anomalies and uncertainties of our society. But, then, only inveterate old fiddlers-around like Strix are not. This concern does not mean they are gloomy, though. Gloom and depression result in inactivity. You have only to use your ears and eyes to know that never in our time have students been so hard- working, and so enterprising in the way of holidays
and holiday jobs—unlike old Strix many of them have to earn money during the vacations.
And, of course, your aged columnist has missed the main point of all in the his controversy : the right of the editor to run his paper. Strix may find Isis gloomy now, but would even he prefer an under- graduate paper run under the control of a firm of printers that is probably as middle-aged as himself —although, since I like printers, I hope not as smug as he is?—Yours faithfully,
JAMES MACGIBBON 30 St. Ann's Terrace, N W8
Previous page
