Whining about a good thing
What if, instead of walking from town after an exhausting night at Kuda, all you had to do was walk home from say, Hendrix Hall?
If you stick around for the rest of the year, you may get to experience just that. For Blackbox will be turning the squash courts in Derwent to a nightclub, with all the disco ball glory.
By now you must be pretty excited, but not everyone is. Unsurprisingly, YUSU is not a big fan of the idea of someone else running nightlife on campus.
Being the owners of several on-campus bars, and the recipients of the profits they make, they are not happy with the prospective heightened competition. They may have other concerns as well, with regards to other issues the presence of a club on University grounds raises. But they must certainly be worried about the impact on nights like Coup d’Etat.
This, despite all of the positive impact on students. The walk home from town is not only cold, but dangerous. It is not hard to think of extremely unfortunate incidents that made the front page of newspapers across York that were brought about by this situation. Students truly enjoy this type of entertainment and they often put themselves in harm’s way without thinking it through.
Giving students an alternative that does not require taking such risks is definitely a good thing.
Who is to say that if YUSU was to find the funds to carry out such a project itself it wouldn’t do it?
Couch activism
The University of York is the proud home of one of England’s ugliest buildings; Central Hall. So ugly, that we have decided to honour it by making it the venue for the year’s most important ceremony; graduation. Despaired by this cruel joke of fate, students have decided to petition online for the change of this fact. We want to graduate in the Minster.
As amazing as this sounds, a second thought may change your mind. YSJ hosts many events at the Minster, and that is because they have old ties with it. Beyond this the cathedral does not operate as an event venue for private use. Long story short, it is doubtful that we will throw our graduation hats underneath the dome.
What is more interesting, though, is the way in which this demand is approached. Change.org is a website where all sorts of petitions are filed. Some of them are against global hunger, minimun wage legislation or saving whales. Does our graduation fit into this assortment? The answer is, it doesn’t.
Internet activism has created platforms for change. Yet their purpose is often lost. We could very well be going straight to administration. But we prefer the click. It’s easier, and doesn’t take much time. This is not to say that clicktivism doesn’t have its merits. It manages to bring protesters from around the world together, and it spreads the word very quickly.
But maybe it is worth questioning, exactly how much positive changes those “81 million people affecting change” (as the website puts it) are creating. Maybe clicktivism is not, at the end of the day, so active.