WHATEVER HAPPENED TO STUDENT BASHING?

27-09-2006

As freshers arrive in the West Midlands for the new university term, The Stirrer celebrates the demise of an ancient tradition.

You realise you're getting old, not when the coppers start looking young but when the students do.

“Shouldn't they still be at school” you hear yourself asking, as a group of excited newbies enters the local supermarket, self-consciously buying their own food for the first time.

When I went to uni 20 years ago, it wasn't only groceries that concerned me, mind - there was also the well-founded fear that some of the locals might identify me as target practice for the time-honoured sport of student bashing.

This game wasn't exclusive to Birmingham and surrounding areas; wherever braying undergraduates gathered to compare college scarves, local working-class youths lurked to kick seven shades of excrement out of them.

As a Brummie attending my hometown university, I had a degree (ha!) of protection; my accent made me a relatively safe bet to head for the bar especially in the rougher parts of town.

It may be hard to believe now, but Selly Oak was one of them. Although these days it has developed as a fully-fledged Studentville, not too long ago it was regarded as a tough working-class area, full of British Leyland car workers and boozy Irish immigrants, with a string of (now demolished) pubs to match.

You did not enter The Dog and Partridge, The Plough or The Chapel without the sense that you were taking your life into your hands.

As a working class kid myself I cold understand the loathing these “stoodies” inspired. Here were a bunch of middle-class tossers, drinking and shagging their way through three years of self-indulgence which they flaunted in the faces of the poor sods sweating in a factory to pay for it.

If I hadn't been a student myself, I would have wanted to beat them up.

On one occasion it even happened; three mates and me were set upon by local youths out to prove their prowess, and they did. One of our number did a runner at the first sign of trouble, I had to be extricated from a hedge I'd been hurled into after trying to defend a mate from a kicking, and our token “hard lad”became a punchbag for an even harder lad. Ouch!

These days, I just don't detect the same animosity to students. For one thing, they aren't spongers anymore - not in the world of tuition and top-up fees. You look at a student, think of the 15K millstone they'll have around their neck when they graduate, and you're more likely to feel pity than envy.

We've moved on socially too; in a world where even working class kids do office jobs, the division between white-collar and blue-collar has eroded. And anyway, the social mobility of the 60's and 70's has ensured that many more families will have - or know - someone with a degree amongst them.

There are also squillions more students than there used to be, as part of the drive to “improve our education standards” - or at least keep youth unemployment down.

Don't get me wrong, I know that some locals still get a kick out of kicking the college kids - there were reports of several nasty incidents at the Gun Barrels last year.

But overall going to uni and getting a degree has simply become normal everyday activity, accessible - at a price - to pretty much anyone with the brain and desire.