Stick to the issue

By Helena Horton

Rohan Banerjee recently published a heated response to the campaign I currently lead that aims to stop the sale of The Sun in YourShop. A group of students are trying to get the motion ‘The Sun should not be sold in YourShop’ through to referendum as we believe the publication to be blatantly misogynistic and xenophobic. In this article, it is asserted that this campaign is driven by one ‘hysterical’, ‘ridiculous woman’ trying to ‘force her views on everyone else’ and act as ‘the moral arbiter of campus media’. I think that this article has missed the point of the campaign and consequently, is harming the reputation of the opposition.

Firstly, ad hominem attacks devalue the point that the opposition is trying to make. I know myself that there are valid arguments against the campaign as a whole, and this article could have sparked constructive debate had it focused on the campaign, and not whether a Philosophy first year is ‘hysterical’. I am not the only person involved in the campaign. I am not offended or even mildly annoyed by the personal attacks; I found the criticisms and the hilarious title- “Helena Horton and the Liberal Orthodoxy” to be quite amusing. I am confused as to what the actual aim of the article was, however, and calling me ‘hysterical’ in an article which is bursting with personal attacks seems counter-intuitive.

I do not see what is ‘hysterical’ or ‘pious’ about asking the Union shop to stock, or not stock, material which the students, who own the Union, ask for. I do not see how asking for a University-wide democratic vote on the issue is ‘fascist’. If people don’t agree with the campaign, they have a perfect right to vote against it. In fact, I and others involved in the campaign urge them to exercise their democratic right. After all, the campaign centres on what the majority of students want stocked in the Shop which purports to represent them.

In addition, this not just a ‘liberal’ issue, this is a University-wide issue. I am not fighting for the shop to stop stocking prejudiced and harmful publications because I am left-wing. We are fighting for it because we believe that, as members of the Union, we have a right to decide which publications our Shop supports.

We have tried to open up the campaign to the entire campus, publicise the cause by holding events such as a debate with the notoriously libertarian Tory Society and plugging the issue to campus media and the Huffington Post. We have also held open meetings and widely advertised them. We don’t want a few liberal people’s views to control the campus, we want the whole University to engage in the debate! If the referendum fails because a large number of University students disagree with the campaign, then fair enough, democracy has spoken.

Simply it must be understood that personal attacks against someone to whom you have barely spoken devalues valid arguments against the ‘The Sun should not be sold in YourShop’ motion. Keep up the fight against the notorious “liberal conspiracy” sweeping the University but, please, leave character attacks at the door.

17 thoughts on “Stick to the issue”

  1. I really want the motion to go to vote so it gets absolutely destroyed, less than 1% of the population of this university are currently campaigning for this motion.

  2. I normally enjoy the Vision. But I would very much like to know why the editorial team is giving a platform to this nutcase allowing her to directly attack a fellow Student Journalist under there Masthead. He may write for Nouse but there has to be a certain something in the way of solidarity. Absolutely disgraceful and on very shaky ground.

  3. “I do not see how asking for a University-wide democratic vote on the issue is ‘fascist’.”

    Then you clearly do not understand the word fascist. ‘Fasces’ is a bound bundle of sticks, the connotation that is supplied by this symbol to the subsequent ideology fascism is a bound group, held together and stronger together. It attacks that which is outside itself by reinforcing its view on those within it. Hence this is the reason that fascism is so dangerous, that it purports to be democratic and representative of the people and yet constricting their access to information, to alternative viewpoints and dictating the parameters of their worldview…

    Your campaign is fascistic precisely because it determines already what is correct and moral whilst attempting to control the terms of debate by using the words ‘mysognistic and xenophobic’. In terms of you saying that you ‘don’t want a few liberal people’s views to control the campus’ – well your campaigns literature speaks for itself and frankly the use of the word liberal is laughable…

  4. It amuses me that you take yourself so seriously Miss Horton. Why not stop, have a brew, perhaps think that what you’re attempting to do is utterly ridiculous, and continue to not buy and/or read The Sun (it is pretty evident that you’ve only “read” it once). Return to your delightful habituation of moral perfection, perhaps purchase a copy of The Guardian or Socialist Worker, have a glass of fair-trade wheatgrass juice and leave us normal students to purchase whatever newspaper we damn well please.

  7. Will we be voting on the chocolate bars too? And what about the pens and pencils? Personally, I find Bounty bars to be abhorrent and am considering campaigning for their removal

  8. How is Rohan supposed to achieve Zen when people write dreck like this?
    You’re making my job even harder, obv.

  9. I’ve never seen so much of a fuss regarding something so irrelevant. It’s simply a paper that sits in YourShop. Whether you enjoy reading it or absolutely hate it, guess what happens as a result of that? Absolutely nothing. You don’t change anything by removing it from YourShop and you’re certainly not changing people’s fundamental views on it either. Can’t wait to see this motion get denied and then we can all go back to trying to find ourselves on Spotted…

  10. The impression I get from this whole ridiculous saga is that the people involved absolutely love and crave attention. Banerjee shouldn’t have even given this campaign any publicity. If we don’t talk about this time-waasting issue, then it will eventually go away.

  11. I think YourShop should only sell the Mirror.
    This article by Horton is so crap it could be published in the Sun!!!

  13. Has anyone noticed that Horton seems not to have read Rohan’s original article? I quote:

    “The very idea of banning of something just because it doesn’t fit in with your way of thinking is incredibly authoritarian.”

    Rohan’s saying that Horton’s campaign is not liberal, it is authoritarian – and obnoxiously so. That’s the problem that this response article should, obviously, be addressing. But no. Helena reckons it’s “ad hominem.” It sounds to me like she read Rohan’s title, skimmed the rest, and now she’s just crying “look, look, guys and girls, look, he named me! Terrible!”

    If you haven’t already, read the original article in the Huffington Post. Here you go:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rohan-banerjee/helena-horton-and-the-liberal-orthodoxy_b_2746992.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-universities-education

  14. What next?! Are they going to ban scrabble because the letters may arrange themselves in a sexist/misogynistic way?! What is the world coming to?! They better not ban my hat collection…

  16. I am really so bored of this topic and the endless stories on it.

  17. Whilst I, as a proponent of the free market and libertarianism, agree that The Sun and its ilk should be sold — why would anyone of any intelligence protest their removal? Good riddance to lowlife trash, I say.

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