It is common knowledge that every first year student when they arrive at university has in their heads, a list of things they want to achieve before the year is through. Most lists are positive but some are negative, either way, they all know that these achievements can be reached because it is varsity isn’t it? Liberalist views cover varsities in a manner similar to that of ants on a deserted crumb, or at least that’s what movies like Road Trip and Legally Blonde perpetuate. Homosexuals, hippies, partying and reinventing oneself will all be possible in this new place where your opinion and or appearance will go unchecked; as long as you do not offend anyone else’s of course.
Recently at Rhodes University, scandal swept the campus when this week, a controversial comment from Honors student Adrain Nel made it into one of three campus newspapers; ‘The Oppidan Press’. It read “This is Rhodes University, where leaders learn; learn to follow Viv!” This comment was triggered by the harsh punishment imposed on an Oppidan (student living outside of residence) who held a party and due to complaints by his/her neigbours about excessive noise levels was charged by the University as bringing the University into disrepute. Nel believes that the punishment symbolized a restriction on the freedom of students. The afore mentioned restriction is then not set in stone but stems from the fear of hosting a Digs party in case one may be charged with bringing disgrace to the name of the university.
The main point worth analyzing here is whether the University actually had jurisdiction in the digs matter. One of the most common reasons students become Oppidans in the first place is to escape the rules found within on-campus residences and to distance themselves from the interfering hand of the university. It is not enough that the university decides to what extent your opinions are similar to someone else’s in essays and tutorials (plagiarism), now their power reaches to your very door, even if your door is past the zebra crossings linking the University to the rest of Grahamstown.
The saddest part of this limited freedom debacle is that it is a result of what the founders of this University must have initially believed to be a great advantage; the distance of the university from the hustle and bustle of big cities. This advantage is the reason why it will be forever impossible for any Rhodes student to outrun University rooted laws as long as they reside in Grahamstown. The University is the life of Grahamstown, and many a student have used the phrase ‘it dies’ when describing Grahamstown after Students leave for vacations. Every interaction a student makes here is linked to the rest of the town, even if it is throwing a party. What the University should consider is that had the same situation occurred at in Cape Town, the police would have handled the matter and the students even if they were from the University of Cape Town may not have been identified as such because of the size of the city. Here in Grahamstown, due to the boarding school nature of the high schools, the proximity of digs to campus and the size of the town, it will always be easy to single out students as the debaucherous youth.
Surely the handling of the Oppidan student taints the liberalistic theme associated with universities and stunts the construction of what freedom truly is in the developing minds of students attending Rhodes, particularly first years. By punishing the student so harshly, the university inadvertently erased all the effort at attempting to instill ideas of free expression in the first year students during Orientation Week through the Obom! drama pieces for example. It now promotes the idea that students can be free, as long as their freedom is approved by the University and this is wrong.
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