Warwick is one of the worst unis for free speech – and it’s embarrassing

Spiked’s Free Speech University Rankings were published the other day and – surprise, surprise – Warwick University was placed in the red zone because it “mandates explicit restrictions on speech, including, but not limited to, bans on specific ideologies, political affiliations, beliefs, books, speakers or words”.

Some among us have taken it upon themselves to police and hide the ideas you’re exposed to on campus. But doesn’t that really defeat the point of education?

Remember the Maryam Namazie debacle? Yup – that happened because the nannies on campus reserve the right to ban the speakers you invite to your societies. Newspapers too can be banned. In fact, the bureaucracy is gearing up to renew its pitiful ban on the Sun newspaper, continuing a long, fascistic, puerile tradition of censorship of the press.

But most tellingly about all of this isn’t that it’s the university that’s taking it upon itself to spoon feed you with what it deems correct. Instead, it’s the Students’ Union – you know, that thing you barely hear about that’s supposed to represent you – that’s decided to censor and coddle you into a dull infancy. It’s our fellow students who on the most part want to turn Warwick into a “safe space” – a nursery for overgrown infants that hide and not engage with and examine the plethora of ideas the human mind is so beautifully capable of generating.

The worst thing is that these people don’t even represent us. How many of you voted in last year’s sabbatical election? How many of you vote in the ASMs? How many of you voted in the Union Exec elections? Look deeper into the waste of time that is the SU and you’ll find that the “Student Council” isn’t even elected, as if they can no longer be bothered to even pretend to be democratic.

Student politics is reserved for the ideological, the idealistic and the idiotic. How do I know this? Well, I hang out with them. I’m a failed student politician myself so I know exactly how most of them loathe the idea of free expression and how most of them believe they know what’s best for you. The censorious atmosphere on campus isn’t there because students want it to be there, it’s there because the ideologues and egomaniacs in the Students’ Union want it to be there.

Those in the Union who were complicit in the building of an environment of censorship and intolerance on campus should hang their heads in shame. They have stifled proper open and fair debate and reduced Warwick to little more than an echo chamber. I’m embarrassed for them.