As part of my job, I ask students why they and their organisations never discuss topics which, to my mind, should interest and bother them. Such issues include the price of property, the cost of living, inadequate wages for people in the lowest echelons of society, glass ceilings for women and other categories, poverty, the state of public healthcare, the reasonableness of privatisation or subcontracting and the inconsistency of a democratic system where both major political parties sing basically the same tune.

A good number of those who answer me, with some noteworthy exceptions, justify their lack of concern by claiming these are not students’ issues. They claim that their political organisations and councils are concerned only (I would say self-interestedly) with topics that concern their life at Junior College or the University.

So students discuss censorship (after all, the latest major incident concerning censorship occurred on campus) and civil unions (gay and lesbian students exist), but none of the issues above. Those who in our society are being sidelined can expect very little from our major educational fora.

Then comes the hunting referendum and, even though I never saw any hunters at Tal-Qroqq, not only a number of debates are organised but KSU takes an official stand on the issue. This fact testifies to the conservative nature of the educational and academic environment in Malta, if any proof were ever needed. Not because KSU and other student bodies took a stance on this issue but because most of them fail to take a stand on the others subjects I mentioned. But, then, I am probably being too hard on students.

The rebellious generations of yesteryear and of today are apparently happy with this situation

What can one expect from a society where a writer is ‘anointed’ as the land’s critical academic by the Head of State? (No disrespect to the person who occupies the office but the office itself is, by its very nature, conservative.)

Where a member of the self-declared ‘rebellious’ generation of poets of yesteryear airs his views on a medium that is supportive of the government of the day, coincidentally switching newspapers almost concomitantly with the change in the country’s administration?

Or where only two academics from Tal-Qroqq – Colin Calleja and Peter Mayo – signed an open letter to the Prime Minister denouncing the neoliberal ethos that has infected the government’s modus operandi and asking for a fundamental shift from the policies and values of the previous administration. (I name the above two so that they would get the credit they rightly deserve.) Others, although sharing the thoughts and concerns of the letter, had their valid or not so valid reasons for not signing.

Back to the referendum, the reader should not deduce from what I have written above that I disagree with the stand KSU has taken. In fact, I do not.

Though the middle-class prejudices of many in the No camp sicken me (including those of a number of champagne leftists whose attitudes towards the concrete and non-idealised members of the lower classes and their actual culture is apartheid-like) and the presence of certain individuals in the anti-spring hunting campaign makes things even worse, I still cannot see myself voting for a hobby where one derives enjoyment from killing another animal.

But, then, the object of the article is not the referendum itself but the fact that there seem to be very definite limits as to what topics students in higher institutions may or may not discuss.

Students may discuss matters that relate to ‘their future’ (meaning careers, the perks of which will elude nine out of 10 of them), morals or the existence or non-existence of God but not poverty, the economy or whether society is structurally failing people. These topics are apparently out of bounds for them.

Obviously, failing to discuss these issues entails failure to consider (and question) the power structures and relations that exist in our society and to ponder upon the fact that the survival, if not the actual consolidation, of these power structures may, every now and then, require a change in morals and in culture, including in the manner in which people entertain themselves. As Tomasi di Lampedusa famously wrote, it may be the case that “everything must change in order for everything to remain as it is”.

The rebellious generations of both yesteryear and of today are apparently happy with this situation.

Most progressive academics are too bent to deconstruct the self, organise art exhibitions or literary events where they read to themselves their own poetry to take note of the hegemonic practices that are concretely at work.

Even most of those who churn out radical gibberish are apparently unperturbed. Or they prudently confine their rants and outbursts to their closets.

Come what may, on April 11 those who really wield power will continue wielding it while the poor will still be with us.