Homophobia is Taken Too Casually
Too often today homophobia is treated as a prejudice of yesterday – a bygone issue that’s as dead as the dodo. Sadly nothing could be further than the truth. Besides the sadly evident amalgamation of ‘gay’ as an 
insult, homophobia is swatted away as an irrelevance and something that shouldn’t concern anyone. Though there have been great legal strides, de facto discrimination continues and it’s deeply saddening that as a group of people students can still be treated horrifically on the basis of something as arbitrary as whom they choose to snog. It’s depressing as well that homophobia is dismissed so easily in comparison to other prejudices. ‘Gay’ can be bandied about as an insult and people can be slurred at, but were this a case of racism and the word ‘gay’ substituted for a racial slur the fact is the matter would be taken extremely significantly. The colloquial approach to homophobia has to end now.
The Vice-Chancellor Salary is a Joke
Vice Chancellor expenses are truly ridiculous. At a time when tuition fees are astronomical and lecturers’ pay is being cut left, right and centre it’s dubious in the extreme. The Vice Chancellor’s salary should not be the priority for funds, but it should instead by teaching. Countless students already struggle with puny contact hours and there are a million and one better things for money to be spent on than financing the Vice Chancellor’s social life. The excuse that it’s less than what other Vice Chancellors earn on average is no defence for the enormous amount of money earned. It’s still galling at a time of recession that prominent figures feel absolutely no remorse and worse still that the best response to be found for the ridiculous salary is that it’s less than the average Vice Chancellor salary.
Changes to the DSA are Out of Order
Cuts crop up so often in the media today that it’s difficult to remember a time when the government wasn’t slashing and burning everything in the site in the name of economic prudence. It seems as though the government have somehow conceived of disabled student support as an extravagance rather than an obligation that quite literally changes quality of life for students. The University’s Minister might try and hide the cuts behind words like ‘rebalancing’, but clearing the mist thrown up around the cuts reveals a huge swathe of funding that will vanish overnight. Only students in need of ‘most specialist equipment’ will receive the help and support they need once the changes come into effect. Misleading wording like that disguises the fact that a million and one loopholes will enable the government to rob students of support that is necessary for their studies.