Editorial
It is an issue that has hit the national headlines time and time again. It has become something of a full-time resident in the news sections of the Oxford student press. In many ways, students could be forgiven for getting a little tired of it.
But people do not pack out St. Giles in vocal protest for no reason. The annoyance that the persistent whining of the animal rights campaign causes in Oxford should not be seen as a reason to stop them expressing their views. However, as a general rule, the protests are falling on deaf ears. The activists have done nothing to help themselves in this respect. Shrieking down a loudspeaker on Clarendon steps in the centre of the University's library district is not going to win over the views of those stressed students frantically trying to read.
Neither are the intimidatory tactics that some science students, researchers and staff have been subjected to. Just as we have to accept the protestors' right to express their views, they too must accept people's rights to study and work in an unthreatening environment. The fact that this has had to be enforced so stringently - both through the injunction that restricted the areas in which protest was legitimate and the government's efforts to bring in prison sentences of up to five years for those who target research centres - proves that it is the protesters who are not keeping their side of the bargain.
It is not a crime to hold the opinion that there are more pressing problems in our current world than that of scientific animal testing, especially when no realistic alternative is ever offered by the vocal campaigners. To prioritise one's political energy to those issues that lie within the human sphere does not make one a 'murderer', nor does a lack of opposition to the research lab within Oxford University render it home to an 'academic mafia'. The right to protest is one thing; the right to infringe upon the daily lives of the individual members of this University is quite another.
The absence of a student radio station singles out Oxford University from the majority of major higher education institutions in this country. There are two detrimental consequences of this. First, there are currently no openings available for those students who have an interest in broadcast media - something of a travesty given, say, the number of broadcast journalists to have emanated from this University. Second, though Altered Radio's listener figures were admittedly tiny before it ceased broadcasting last year, this newspaper believes that a quality university-wide radio station could only serve to enhance an inclusive sense of community cohesion that transcends collegiate barriers - something arguably only attempted at present by the student press.
In light of this, The Oxford Student welcomes the decision of the Altered Radio committee to focus its efforts on ensuring that the station returns to the airwaves within the next few weeks.
It is our firm belief that any station, regardless of its ownership structure, is infinitely preferable to no active station at all. Questions of bureaucracy and ownership are time-consuming distractions, but the committee should not lose sight of what remains its most crucial objective: to ensure that the resurrected station attracts listeners. This will not be easy. For any student station to compete with the output of the BBC and other commercial broadcasters requires ingenuity, originality and a well-targeted marketing campaign.
The first crucial step seems to have been made towards Altered Radio's recovery; many more vital ones must now follow.
3rd Feb 2005