I’m often told that the student media community at this university is up its collective arse. We are supposedly convinced we’re a class above the rest; the newspaper-making nobility reluctantly rubbing shoulders with the paperless peasants.

We tell ourselves that life on campus cannot possibly function if we’re not there, chasing quotes and scribbling out stories, when in fact life on campus might actually function a bit better without us parading around the place. We think that the survival of a thriving campus community depends on our dogged reporting and the consumption of our detailed work, in print and online, when, of course, most students couldn’t give a toss.

Naturally, this is not a good look. It would be awful for student journalists to treat others like second-class students. It would be terrible if we were like an exclusive clique of elite students, into which it is forever hard to gain access without adopting a condescending attitude towards your fellow man and a habit of so-called ‘grammar Nazism’.

Yes, it would be awful, terrible, truly. Not a good look.

But when half of the campus population are wailing and moaning over the demise of fucking Yorfess, no wonder we think that we share a campus with the great unwashed.

Honestly. You people come here to be enlightened; you come here to engage with the greatest ideas and theories of history. But all you want to do is eat hummus, share memes and moan, moan, moan. It’s clear that, in the years you people were born, maternity ward nurses up and down the country suffered slippery hands and the hospital cleaners enjoyed record revenues.

Reading some of your inane, insipid contributions to whatever anonymous embarrassment-generator is in fashion these days makes me consider emigrating. It will be a miracle if you can string together a few sentences without fudging your grammar or boring your partner in conversation to tears.

Yet, somehow, saying that you were ‘chief meme-sharer in MemeSoc’ is just as good a thing, if not better, to put on your CV than ‘I was Culture Editor of the student paper, I interviewed Rihanna and The Pet Shop Boys and wrote fifteen articles in five months.’ How do you work that one out?

Universal education has failed. I’d say, ‘bring back the workhouses,’ but you’ll somehow end up being the overlord and I’ll end up being the worker. And you’ll be the one who writes the workhouse newsletter and send it to all the staff and shareholders. And it will be appalling.

Now: read my latest article as soon as you can — I’ve shared it on Facebook and Twitter and I’ll send it to you in an email as well. Read it. Please. Leave a comment underneath it as well. Just read it.

Please.

— N. Ooz