Metropol

This is a bit of an old story but it's big news round here in Sheffield.
The basics are that a student from Hallam Uni went on a bar crawl, got paralytically drunk and was photographed pissing on a war memorial (Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sout ... 309955.stm)

Fast forward a few days when everybody's favourite newspaper picks up the story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... crawl.html

And today it turns out that he could be jailed for it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lamed.html

I'm not defending his actions, I was on the same bar crawl (i'm at the other uni) and I managed to have a good time AND get back home without doing what he did, but does this really justify the amount of attention that the media have whipped up to the point where he could be jailed and thrown off his uni course?? Surely this trial by media is embarrassing enough for the lad without the added punishment of being locked up just because he had a lapse of judgement?

It all seems a bit out of proportion for me.

No he deserves everything coming to him.

I'm more amused by the fact that once again the Daily Mail is so DISGUSTED by this incident that they feel the need to keep reshowing the same picture of the act that is so DISGUSTING. And look, here are more people acting in a completely morally bankrupt way. It's wrong. Look at them. Look at them some more. Good god, we can't stand it. Look at them.

Christ almighty.

When I was finishing my A-Levels in Nottingham a couple of years ago, I'd regularly go out with my friends and yes, I'm guilty of having drunk far too much on a number of occasions. Back then, Trent students used to get right on my nerves, but I rationalised that was probably due to jealousy on my part. I have since realised that this was not the case.

Carnage is an awful, awful event. It epitomises everything that is wrong with "student culture". I can see how having a pint or two too many is a laugh, I can see how going out for a night out is fun - but why on earth do students feel the need to switch in to idiot mode as this sort of event demands, using the cover of 'student' as some kind of excuse. University is supposed to be a place for people who think; I don't buy into the "I was drunk" excuse, yes it skews your judgement somewhat, but I don't think it stops you from thinking about what you're doing.

I started at Sheffield Hallam in September 2008 and quickly found that there is a good amount of people who enrol at university not because of any real interest in a degree, but as a good excuse to contribute nothing, get "wrecked" and get supported for the privilege. Working in a branch of Sainsbury's Local embedded in to a large student development serving principally Sheffield Hallam students has, over time, caused me to harvest more and more derision for my contemporaries than I'd ever have imagined.

I hate to sound like an elitist tory, but the system as is promotes all this by giving those from less wealthy households more "support". Frankly, I don't understand why the system is not designed to give out a fixed amount or just "enough" as I would put it; the cost of me being a student and my house-mate being a student is the same regardless of the fact his mother is unemployed. I fail to see how my parent's income is significant to me, I get little more than my train-fare home given to me on the odd occasion I make the £11/return trip.

Don't get me wrong, I love university, and I love SHU. I just think there is a very significant number of students at Hallam and other universities (though it has to be said, mainly former Polytechnics) who are wasting their time and everybody else's money by pissing about (pun sort of intended).

Controversial massive generalisation: he's a Sports Science student, which means he's almost guaranteed to be completely unbearable.

Isonstine wrote:I'm more amused by the fact that once again the Daily Mail is so DISGUSTED by this incident that they feel the need to keep reshowing the same picture of the act that is so DISGUSTING.

Of course they do, it was their reporter who took the photo. The question of why he didn't stop the student has been carefully avoided in all of their reports, along with why he woke up outside Spar, and then chose to urinate 100m away in the middle of a square, when down the side of Spar, against the doors of Yates' or Llyods, down the side of Llyods or John Lewis, or against any of the fountains are far closer and more discrete places to go.