The Responsibility of Students to the Community and Themselves

I have been asked to speak to you – a large number of people younger and therefore very likely more intelligent than myself – because intelligence depends as much as anything on seeing possibilities – and formally, the prospect of speaking for forty minutes about the responsibilities of students to the community and to themselves, does not fill me with confidence. Not because I have nothing to say about the topic; I have always got quite a lot to say on any topic; but because what I have to say will be determined first and foremost by my responsibility to myself and to you – to tell no lies, to say what I most deeply imagine to be true – and even the most inadequate truth is likely to sound off-beat, to be comic, or else to be offensive. I like to be liked by everyone; and when I try to speak the truth, of course some people will not like it, and possibly even dislike me for saying what I say. However, in the time since you first began to hear words spoken – by parents, by teachers, or by your own friends – you will very rarely have been presented with what somebody actually thought. So this talk will at best be novel; and it may even be useful to some of you.

At my elbow I can feel the invisible pressure of a number of institutions – the family, the university itself (to which you now belong), the Church (I am myself a Roman Catholic), and other less clearly defined institutions, ranging from the Cherry Farm mental hospital (which some of you are best to visit for treatment before your term at university is concluded), to the Government Tourist Bureau which found our country a real wilderness and turned it into an unreal commodity for sale to anyone who would buy it from them. These institutions, whatever their value – and in some cases they may be of almost infinite value – make me uncomfortable. They make me feel I should say things I don’t really regard as true. For example, I could say this – ‘The responsibility of students is to make the most of their opportunity to acquire knowledge useful to themselves and to the community which they hope to serve’ – or I could say – ‘The responsibility of students is most of all to set a high moral tone, to combine an exact and serious pursuit of truth, page 20 as they find it in the books they read or the lectures they listen to, with the acquisition of the best possible values the community has to offer’ – or I could say – ‘I G SNAL CLOG’. . . .

. . . I remember a few years ago attending a Students’ Congress at Curious Cove. It was pleasant weather. I swam in the sea alongside the wharf, and joined in various debates that left me with a dry mouth and noises in the head. And when I climbed into my bunk, the first night there, I was ready for sleep. But shortly a robust red-bearded student appeared in the hut, with his girlfriend, and both of them climbed into the top bunk. Either they didn’t notice I was there; or more likely they didn’t worry much about it. At any rate, I didn’t feel like getting out of bed and heading for another hut; and so I was an invisible observer at . . . an all-out session of the United Nations; because in this world there are really only two nations – not brown and yellow and white and black; not Russia and America and China; not even old and young; but, I think, men and women.

First there was a term of agreement, signified by gentle muffled remarks and heaving of the bedclothes. Then there was a term of disagreement. It seemed that the girl felt that the young man lacked something – it was hard to say what – honesty, integrity, some absolutely necessary nuance of moral feeling. He felt, on the other hand, that he had this quality. But they could not agree about it. A long and highly involved conversation developed, in which each of them felt that the other was deeply lacking in understanding. And gradually it became clear to me that nothing they were saying had anything to do with the central issue – which was, to put it bluntly, that the young man had slept with the young woman without putting a ring on her finger, or giving her even the guarantee of permanence At times there was an exhausted [silence]. And out of this silence came the voice of the young man, saying – ‘You know I really do love you, Sally.’ Apparently this was the confirmation she needed. For the rest of the evening, as long as I stayed there – which was not long, for I was also tired – there were gentle muffled sounds and a heaving of the bedclothes.

I am myself inclined to look for [simple] answers to complicated issues. It seems to me that either the answers are simple, or else, as is more often the case, there are no answers to be had.

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