Life at AC

But especially in a closed community like the one we have here, there are also problems that affect the whole community. One of these is stealing: for many people, their things being taken can be a very upsetting experience, and a person stealing things in a House can be very disruptive of the atmosphere, because of the suspicions it causes all around. How much someone is affected will of course vary from person to person, and may to some extent depend on where they come from, and how unsure they feel. (A person who habitually steals usually has a personal problem as well, of course.)

Fortunately, most of what goes on here is fairly small-scale, but it still contributes to a general lack of trust. Now, we do of course talk about this occasionally, at House meetings for instance, but one reason that it is so difficult to get rid of this kind of behaviour, even when it is talked about, is that everyone always thinks that what they are doing themselves is not the same as what others are doing: ''I am only taking a little bit,'' (but then the next person will also ''only take a little bit,'') or ''They would have given it to me if I had asked them,'' or ''I was just borrowing it,'' or ''Someone took my cheese yesterday, so now I take someone else's,'' or ''If it is not locked away it is alright to take it,'' or ''Things were worse at my previous school.''

Another kind of behaviour that can similarly poison the general atmosphere and can at the same time make life very unpleasant for some individuals are rumours. Atlantic College is, it seems to me, as great a place for rumours as it is for minor theft. I hardly need to give examples. It starts early on, the first-years are very soon told things that they 'need to know', (it is probably one of the many ways in which second-years can demonstrate their 'superiority',) and many second-years delight in the singing of ''Happy First-Year to You.'' Such rumours, about who your girlfriend was talking to late at night, or that someone is not getting along with their dormmates, can be very destructive of relationships, whatever they are, and hurtful. While that may not be the intention of those that spread rumours, there usually is a nasty side to it, and it is a consequence they should be aware of.

It appears to me that most rumours are not true – or if they are, they are none of your business: like who is going out with whom; unless of course you are a close friend of the person, in which case they could have told you themselves if they wanted to, (and there is no need for you to tell anyone else.) And everyone who passes something on wants to make it sound a little more exciting, a little more definite. There may of course be rumours that are other people's business, as when a group of students may be taking drugs. But in that case too, there are only two things to do: talk to the people directly, perhaps together with other people, to say that it is not cool; and/or take it up with someone like Colin. Speculating with others about who may or may not be involved is unhelpful and often, again, plain nasty.

There are a number of reasons, I think, that it is so difficult to get rid of rumours. One is that someone who spreads a rumour, when confronted, will usually deny that they said anything at all. Another is that when someone is told that something 'exciting' that they passed on to other people is in fact false, they usually won't go around to those people to tell them that what they said was wrong. And another is that, as in the case of stealing, what one is doing oneself does not seem the same as what others are doing: ''They are spreading rumours, I am just passing information,'' or ''I was just joking,'' or even ''I was trying to help,'' and so on. I fear that the general tone of much of what is printed in the SDWO contributes to making this kind of thing acceptable here, when I don't think it should be.

I have thought about writing something on this issue before, and now it has come back to my mind recently. Just today, for example, a CG-student asked me if it was true that only one person had passed the assessment last year – not a typical example, in that it does not 'get at' particular persons; (in fact, about half passed everything first time.) It is a problem, like stealing, that I think we need to face up to – I had thought of it also as a possible topic for a College Meeting –, and that perhaps we should try to think about before the first-years arrive.

[ I should add that, while I don't much care what people say about me, in view of the lies that were deliberately spread last year to 'get at' some individuals, this essay is rather restrained in tone.]

Instead, although that may be disappointing when one is a student, the UWC-project tries to make a difference, a larger difference, through the ex-students. The idea is to contribute to the students' education so that later in life, when they are in decision-taking positions – as voters or politicians, as employees or employers, as academics, as people with a substantial income, as parents, as members of their communities –, their decisions will be influenced by what they have learnt and experienced here. That is the reason that it is everyone's responsibility not only to do well for themselves, but also to make the best use of what is available apart from academics: becoming involved with people from a completely different background, taking part in a community service (and thinking about what that means,) living in dorms together and adjusting one's behaviour to others, attending Friday lectures and events at Global Concerns conferences, and so on.

But it is not enough to participate in all that the College offers, and gain from all the special experiences that being here makes possible. Because if the UWC-project is to work, it is also necessary that the ex-students be people who are willing to speak up for what they believe, who take the right action even at some cost to themselves, who don't walk away when they see something that is wrong, and who don't just wait for someone else to sort things out. And this is an attitude that does not have to wait until one has become an ex-student; it is an attitude that is no less needed in our community here and now as it may be in any student's later life.

But what is actually happening in this place? A lot of students know who kicked in the door of the TV Room; but it seems no-one – not even any group of people – has been willing to stand up to that hooligan (presumably drunk at the time) amongst us and demand that he (she?) own up, or at least contribute œ 10, say, to the cost of the repair. As most people are aware, more and more students – carelessly or selfishly – behave in ways that their dormmates find both upsetting and very difficult to complain about; but it seems no-one is willing to risk their reputation or popularity by speaking up. There are plenty of other instances: excessive drinking, inconsiderate noisiness, stealing, dangerous use of the pool, and so on. Always it is expected that 'the staff' (?) or Colin should do something about it. What do the people who complain to Colin think he should, or can, do?

These are community problems, and it is, in my view, a community responsibility to deal with them. When something is wrong, it is not always enough to stay away and make sure that one is doing the right thing oneself; sometimes, at Atlantic College no less than later in the world outside, one has to be prepared to take a stand. (Of course we must try to avoid just imposing our own values on others, but quite often the situation is clear enough: kicking in a door and racial prejudice, though very different, are both clearly wrong.) The students who are waiting for 'the staff' or Colin to sort such things out avoid taking responsibility and behave like children at school.

Moreover, in many cases it would be so much better if students dealt with things themselves. For instance, suppose a second-year at College was smoking marihuana, even quite openly, giving the wrong kind of impression to first-years. The chances of being caught by a teacher are fairly small, but if the person was caught, the Principal would of course have to expel them. However, if other students who knew about it 'leaned on' the person to stop, perhaps threatening them with informing the Principal, and the person then stopped – wouldn't that be a much better outcome than either the person not being caught and continuing, or the person being caught and having to be expelled? (This, by the way, is a part of a true story.)

A concluding thought (– I can't help it ...): on the existentialist view, we are more free than most people are willing to face, for with every thing we do, we decide what kind of person we are.

If I can try to summarise his two points, as I understand them, and I am sure he would have corrected me by now if I had got them too far wrong, they are (a) that there should not be such a fuss made about students being intimate in the dorms, or Houses, or College facilities, which they share with other students, and teachers, and others, and (b) that strong action, or stronger action, should be taken, or have been taken, against someone who was recently suspended and who may not be allowed to return.

Now there are two ways in which I can understand the article. On the one hand, the writer may just be making statistical observations, about how people at College generally feel, and in that case he is certainly right that a significant number of students feel that certain rules/guidelines are unnecessarily restrictive (not only the one concerning sexual relations,) and that some people regularly disregard them; and also that many people don't want to try to deal with someone who clearly has problems and may not be very popular. If this is what he meant, then he may well be largely right – but then it would not a very interesting article, as well as a rather sad reflection on the place where we are.

On the other hand, I can take the article more seriously, as I am sure the student who wrote it would want his readers to do, and assume that he is discussing moral issues, and how they apply in our everyday lives. But reading the article in this way, the distinction he makes between the two cases seems to me to largely disappear. What he is talking about, in both cases, is behaviour on the part of some people that other people find objectionable and difficult to deal with, especially when it is happening in their own dorm, or it is their own things that have been taken. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is anything wrong with sexual relations in themselves, and I do think there is something very wrong with taking other people's things. But if we consider the morality of the two kinds of situations, we must ask further, whether someone is acting selfishly: and then it is clear that having sexual relations can in certain situations – not only when they are more or less in public, and not only at AC – be no less selfish, no less disruptive, no less distressing to other people, or to the other person, than stealing.

The writer's recommendation, on the first of the issues, and again I can only summarise, is that people should just speak up, discuss things in dorms. There are two problems with that suggestion: speaking up, especially on certain issues (not just sexual matters,) is very difficult for many people, because of their background and/or, at the age when they are here, personal inhibitions. In fact, the writer's views – such as, apparently, that having sexual relations at College should be 'normal' – are more a matter of where he happens to come from, and other students do of course (I don't mean geographically,) than of what is right or wrong. The other problem is that he seems to be assuming, quite naively in my experience, that people would be willing to change their behaviour if they knew that other people found it distressing: in fact, people obviously do generally know, and they are not generally willing to change their behaviour, (just as someone who steals usually isn't,) they will just dismiss these others as 'narrow-minded' or worse – but can a murderer say in his defence that the rest of us should not be so squeamish about getting killed?

Let me mention another way in which the two kinds of happening that the article discusses are in fact related. When we decide how to act in certain situations, whether it be a student wanting to be intimate with someone else in a more or less public place (including the Dining Hall,) or the Principal possibly having to expel a student, what we are deciding to some extent is what kind of place we want this to be: whether a place where we try to look out for others, even if they do not or cannot speak up, (as in fact the majority of the disadvantaged people in the world do not and cannot speak up,) or when they have problems; or a place where we simply insist on our rights, as we see them, possibly even backed by a majority vote, and disregard how we affect the lives of others.

Like the student who wrote the article, I do feel that we need to discuss these matters, not only because they are quite essential for our living here together, but also because they are not far removed from issues like international understanding and the role of students in their future. So I would be happy to discuss this further; (by the way, I would then appreciate getting a definition of ''double standards'' [– this last is in response to a playful request in the essay for a definition of ''hypocrisy'' ...])

Second-years are therefore to be congratulated for losing no time in introducing the first-years also to some of the less pleasant aspects of College life, such as the pervasive gossiping and rumour-mongering. Gossiping, to my mind, just consists of talking about things concerning other people that are none of your business. And because they are none of your business, you often don't know whether they are true or not; nor is it even important whether they are true or not. The only thing that matters is how outrageous and unpleasant the story is about someone else. And that is what a lot of people engage in regularly, not only at AC of course; people, I suppose, whose own lives are too sad and uninteresting, so they need the gossip to 'spice' things up a bit.

That the truth is irrelevant to a rumour is obvious from the fact that if someone finds out that some gossip they have passed on is in fact false, they will never go back to the person who told them to let them know that the rumour is false. (However, that a rumour is not true does not prevent it from possibly being very hurtful to the person who it is about.) And that gossiping is not at all a noble activity is obvious from the fact that people generally deny it when they are accused of it, or confronted by the person they have been spreading rumours about.

What I am referring to in particular is the annual routine of singing ''Happy First-Year'' to some second-years early this term. The 'justifications' that are typically given for this Dining Hall behaviour, (if someone stops to think about it at all,) are that

1. it is only 'for fun,'
2. it is a tradition, and
3. it 'protects' first-years by exposing second-years who are suspected of 'misbehaving.'

Doing something for fun cannot, on its own, be a justification – it is how British louts [– see below –] talk of their Saturday night when they have concluded their drinking with some 'Paki bashing' (– this, for those who don't know, is a kind of racially motivated attack on immigrants whose skin is of a darker colour than yours; there are variations of this, like 'gay-bashing.') If someone then said that this singing in the Dining Hall is harmless fun, I would have to contradict them: I know of various situations where that kind of thing has been very hurtful and destructive, although the supposed friends who instigated the singing never found out what effect they had had.

Nor is the fact that something is a tradition, on its own, any justification for it. Many of the world's evils have been and are being justified by appeals to tradition, like that one group of people has always, traditionally, been the enemies of another; or that female genital mutilation is a tradition necessary for the functioning of some society.

And if everyone's concern was to respect other people, to make good friends and to establish close personal relationships with a few people here, (which might some time become intimate, even at Atlantic College,) rather than, as often seems to be the case, to use other people (such as first-years?) for one's own ends, to 'score,' then there would be no need to protect anyone from anyone else. Moreover, there are other ways of telling someone if you think that what they are doing is not right: but those other ways would require courage and honesty.

I am afraid that concerning this area, the ''Congratulations!'' of the title was sarcastic. Fortunately, I know that concerning many other aspects of College life, Induction is going well, and that second-years most of the time are positive and constructive.

While the example was not randomly chosen, it was not intended to offend. And I am afraid I don't quite know what precisely caused the offence.

A form of argument is not valid if there are cases of the same form of argument in which we can see that it leads to the wrong conclusions. In this case: that the apparent justification is not valid. So there are two counter-examples in the essay, to two different 'justifications' of the ''Happy First-Year''-singing. One about 'Paki-bashing', which I associated with this country, (though I know of course that the same kind of thing exists elsewhere,) the other about female genital mutilation, which is a tradition in some parts of Africa, (and possibly elsewhere that I don't know about.)

If you took my use of the British example to mean or imply that ''All, or most, British people are louts,'' then that would be a misunderstanding of what I wrote. And if you believe that that kind of thing does not happen in this country, then that belief seems to me to be wrong. It is sufficiently clear, I think, in the essay that this is an example. And I trust that not every critical mention of this country will be considered offensive.

So the offence may have been caused by my singling out that particular case. Three reasons for that:

1. while there are racially motivated attacks, often even more nasty, in other parts of the world, such as hostels for immigrants and asylum seekers in Germany being burnt down, it seems to me that this behaviour serving as 'fun,' for the 'louts,' perhaps after a night of drinking, does apply here more than there, or elsewhere; (cf. the greater incidence, as it appears to me, of hooliganism in this country, which does not mean that people individually are more evil.)
2. the only person I know who has been attacked in this way was an ex-student, at university in this country, and that is something that is on my mind, even after many years.
3. too many people do not face up to the fact that this kind of thing does happen in the civilised society that they live in, that, similarly, soccer violence (anywhere!) may not be that far removed from the tribal violence we prefer to associate only with certain distant parts of the world – and as we happen to be in this particular civilised society, that was the natural one to take the example from.

I should start by saying that I have not made up my mind whether I am in favour of or against a ban on smoking at AC. And that I think we should have a discussion of the issue, quite possibly through the pages of the SDWO; at least that would clarify matters for both 'sides;' and it may help me to make up my mind.

Unfortunately, P.'s article was not the start of or even a contribution to such a debate. – The one point in his article in last week's SDWO, which I want to pick up on here, is that smoking should not be banned, because such a ban will be widely disobeyed; his points on other issues, such as sexual relations, (which, by the way, are not banned,) look similar to me. However, I do think he is guilty of a fallacy here. For the fact that a ban will be disobeyed does not mean that it would be wrong to introduce it. Consider the ban on murder that all societies have, as far as I know.

Why do we have laws against murder? For these laws have clearly not been effective in preventing all murders. On P.'s argument, there should be no such law, because the result has just been to drive murder underground – like smoking will continue at College secretly, he says. So, why then do we have laws against murder? There are two main reasons, it seems to me.

One, because the laws, or the punishments threatened by them, act as a deterrent: some people at least, who might otherwise have committed a murder, will be scared off by the possible consequences, such as life-imprisonment; and so there are fewer murders, which clearly is a good thing, even though some murders are still committed, secretly.

The other, because those laws formalise certain expectations in our societies: we don't have more murders, partly because all of us have grown up in societies where murder is not only illegal, but is loathed, considered morally low; (consequently murder is much more common, despite the threat of punishments, in those parts of societies where it is considered heroic, or even just admissible as a means of 'business' or 'politics.')

There are of course excellent moral reasons that one should not commit murder: however, while these moral reasons do underlie the laws we have against murder, I don't think people generally take their own moral decisions when they don't commit murders: they follow the law, or just consider murder as unacceptable.

On a personal note, I would like to conclude by saying that not only do I not dislike P., I am in fact disappointed that he has not wanted to take part in proper debates on the issues he has raised, when he could be an excellent representative of certain students' views; and by pointing out that I have at least done him the honour of taking him seriously, something which I think he has not always been doing when he has written about others.

One aspect of the discussion concerns purely practical issues, arising because smokers are not always well-behaved. Thus, many people, even some smokers themselves, find the smoke annoying, or object to the cigarette butts left lying around. If these were the only kinds of problems, then banning smoking altogether would be a rather extreme policy; instead we should find practical ways of dealing with such practical problems. (In fact, this has of course been an on-going process, and things are often alright, but most of the time not good enough.)

Another, quite different aspect of the discussion concerns moral issues. On the one hand, since this is a school and many students are quite young, we – the College, the Principal – cannot avoid certain responsibilities: that is why we have rules about climbing, why there have to be three swimmers in the pool, and why students have to attend lessons. The justification for all these rules is the well-being of students, in areas where some, perhaps only a few, of them might not always be acting in their own long-term interest. On the other hand, one wants to avoid restricting people's freedom, and we expect students – or try to – to act as responsible adults, who can take decisions for themselves, even the decision to engage in an activity like smoking. (In this matter, of College responsibility and student freedom I have, as I have written before, not yet made up my mind: I can see both sides.)

The third aspect is one that people usually don't bother talking about: it concerns what is wrong with smoking, and on this everyone seems to just assume that what is wrong with it is that it greatly increases the risk of dying at a much younger age of lung cancer, heart attack and so on. However, my own objection to smoking is of quite a different nature, it is a moral one. Even if many smokers deny it, smoking is addictive, and any addiction limits your freedom: this is why I believe it is wrong. In fact, the same smokers who are objecting that a ban on smoking at the College would restrict them in their personal freedom, are engaging in something that may well take away their freedom in future in a much more serious way. To give an extreme example, my mother, herself a smoker, has told me of cases of parents after the war exchanging some of their own and their children's food rations for a few cigarettes, even at the cost of the family going hungry.

This moral objection to smoking has a personal side. For myself, I assume the people I relate to, and certainly my friends, to be free individuals, willing and able to take responsibility for their actions. So I find it very difficult when someone, especially someone I like and think highly of and care about, (freely?!) makes themselves unfree – in a much more serious way than the minor 'unfreedoms' imposed by College rules: "minor" in the sense that they only concern your actions –, or puts themselves in a state where they are incapable of taking responsibility for what they do.

A question someone might ask is whether this argument does not apply equally to drinking at the College. I have just mentioned people getting drunk; but on the whole the people who drink at College are not in danger, because of what they are doing here, of becoming alcoholics, although some may; whereas many of the people who smoke here, or even start smoking while at the College, are or will become smokers. So that is the difference.

There is more to discuss, such as what, if smoking is banned, the kind of students who now are or become smokers will do instead while they hang out (– this question was raised by an ex-student friend of mine.) And what psychological significance smoking must be taking on for at least some smokers, so that a cigarette can calm them, (despite the fact that physiologically the effect is the opposite,) and some otherwise considerate people extinguish their cigarettes on walls and leave their butts lying around. – But enough.

Though it is slightly unfair to New Yorkers, here is a joke about them: "Question: How many New Yorkers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: 100. One to actually do it, and 99 to walk by saying that it is none of their business." (There are many such light bulb jokes.) It often seems to me that the majority of students at AC are rather like the New Yorkers in that joke. But whereas a New Yorker might be afraid for his life if he tried to interfere with a mugging on the subway, those AC students in the majority are just afraid of losing their popularity with their fellow-students. And so when they see something that is wrong, they just walk by, saying that it is none of their business. (The same obsession with popularity seems to me to underlie the gossiping that goes on: instead of getting involved directly when they should, many people 'get involved' behind other people's back when it is none of their business.)

This affects every aspect of College life, and leads to many of the unpleasant or plain nasty things that happen. Hardly anyone, when they see a person in the dayroom take someone else's cheese, even cheese belonging to their close friend, would challenge that person and ask whether they have really asked the person whose cheese it is. Hardly anyone, when they see someone who does not belong to the College walk around, would ask that person, politely, what business they had. Hardly anyone bothers to close windows and turn off lights when they leave a room – but nearly everyone says they are concerned about the environment. Hardly anyone would challenge a fellow-student who has a "For Reference Only" book or magazine in their carrel unit for two weeks.

Because of this I feel very ambivalent about many of the undoubtedly good things that are done by students, like the involvement in the People and Planet organisation, or the reflections at last week's College Meeting. It is easy to speak up at a distant conference about distant events, and people do that very well, or to argue for the students' points at the Staff-Student Council, or to say how we should be more involved. But seeing the way most people here act in their everyday life, what I am wondering is how many of them will speak up for their values in future, when it will not be for fun, when it might again put their popularity at risk, or even hurt their income.

About closing the Social Centre, many people have complained that it is unfair to punish a large group – of course, many students are not affected at all – for something that a few people have done. But for me the reason for closing the Social Centre is not at all to punish the particular smokers. It is to make the point that certain matters are a communal responsibility that should concern everyone. Whether someone agrees with the ban on smoking on campus or not is irrelevant: even a smoker could tell another whom they see smoking in the Social Centre that they shouldn't smoke there, because of the consequences it might have for everyone, like the place being closed again.

When students don't take a stand themselves, what often happens is that instead they appeal to authority, they come to the Principal and say: "Do something." Whereas many problems could be dealt with much better at a student level. Whether it be students taking drugs, or someone not cleaning up after throwing up on a Saturday, or a Social Centre committee making financial losses: if those who know about it (there always are others who know) 'leaned on' those students and made it clear that certain things are not acceptable here, there would often be no need for staff to be involved. While I know that up to a point this is happening we could do with much more of that kind of engagement, both in our community here and outside, in the future.

What this is about is learning to act on one's values, about having personal courage: without doing this, what chance do we have of making a difference?

In view of the continued abuse of the pool table in the Social Centre, as a result of which too few games that have been played have actually been paid for, we will have to cancel our contract with the company from which it is leased, and they will come to take the table away. To avoid a financial loss would have required half the games that have been played to be paid for; the actual number was much less than half.

So this communal facility will have been destroyed by the selfish behaviour of some people, in this case apparently the majority of players, (perhaps including some who have espoused and have acted on, or have at least appeared to have acted on, strong moral convictions for the last two years.) The problem – and at this point many people will stop reading, sadly – is that we, human beings, find it hard to act morally towards a community larger than our family or immediate associates.

So we make excuses for ourselves, like: everyone is doing it, so I would be stupid if I didn't. Or: it is the company's fault, they should have built the table so that one cannot cheat. Or: I have only done it a few times, others have done it much more often. Or: I don't have any money, so it is alright to cheat; and so on. Such excuses may make us feel better, but they don't make right what we have done wrong, not even a bit.

There will be many more pool tables in everyone's lives, and some will be much bigger and heavier than the one that has been abused in the Social Centre. Many of you will be in positions where you will take decisions, and often your interests and those of the community will not be the same. They will be decisions about how much pollution the company you are working for will be causing to cut costs, how much suffering people in other countries will go through so that your country continues to get richer, which laws you will break to increase your advantage. The above excuses will again be very useful.

You might of course say now that when it comes to important things, like the environment or risking people's lives, you'll always do the right thing – but that probably is just another one of those useful excuses. So, what will you do when you next come across a pool table in your life?

To put it briefly, students are allowed to take a short-term, limited view of their situation here and of the College, to see what they can get out of it for themselves; whereas teachers and Malcolm have a very different kind of responsibility for the well-being of the students and the institution. To put it even more briefly, students are – and are expected to be – mostly self-interested, whereas teachers and Malcolm, have to look at the bigger picture. (This does not mean that there aren't students who have a better understanding, nor that teachers or Malcolm are not also self-interested: but the starting points differ.)

Let me give some examples. I am sure, especially now that I know some of those involved, that the pranks at the very end of last term were not malicious. But what they did show, it seems to me, is that the students responsible (or not so responsible ...) disregarded the effect their actions might have on other people at the College, other people who are not students or teachers. In much of what students do, often just small things like taking cups out of the Dining Hall and leaving them around, they seem to disregard, to simply not see, the maintenance and cleaning and kitchen staff who have to pick up after us. And sometimes they seem to not even see how their Houseparents may be affected.

Another example. In itself, smoking shisha is not such a bad thing; however, it does bring with it an increased risk of damage – the use of shishas was first forbidden after an official College event at which people were smoking and the floor in the Glass Room was damaged. And of course an increased risk of fire. To students (and to me, I can say,) this risk seems negligible; but to those in charge of institutions, not only this one, fire is a very serious concern – so much so that the governors of the College, who under the law are personally liable, felt it necessary some years back to require us to spend a very large sum of money on a fire alarm system in the Castle, instead of a few scholarships.

Amongst the other people who come into the big picture, to whom the College has a responsibility, are the students' own parents. There was a very sensible student about ten years ago who was sure that her mother did not mind all the things she told her were going on at the College, about drinking, and people being out late, and so on. But the two teachers who got to talk to the mother when we met her on a choir tour know that she was extremely concerned but had not wanted to tell her daughter how she really felt. The mother was very idealistic about the UWCs and involved in their national committee; and we have not had any scholarship students from there since.

And just as many students may not be fully aware, though they tend to think they are, of how their parents really feel about certain things, (or would feel if they knew,) they also are often not aware of how other students feel about certain things that go on. It would be nice to be able to say that at least when someone indicates how they feel, other people will always show respect; but we all know that even then that is not the case: we all, when we want something very much, manage to close our eyes very effectively to anything to the contrary. So any student's fellow-students are for the teachers, especially the Houseparents, part of the big picture that the student him- or herself may be missing.

Another part of the big picture that many students fail to take into account is their own future self. As an educational institution we cannot just say what many students say, and would want us to say: that if someone is not getting enough sleep, or keeps missing classes, or continues to smoke, or to drink too much, then it is just their own business. Knowing the consequences, and having the responsibility we do up to a point have, we feel we have to insist on or forbid certain things. – Having said that, one does want students to be able to make their own choices, to learn how to take responsibility, and in most areas most students can and do this. The College wants those areas to be as wide as possible. But the boundary is difficult to 'negotiate'; especially since many students can only see part of the big picture.

I can explain where the title of this piece comes from. Two years ago when I was at Waterford, the UWC in Swaziland, the Theatre Arts students – mostly Europeans – put on a play they had written themselves, in which they were very critical, in quite a negative way, about the school and the Principal. He had suggested we go to the performance, since he had been especially invited by them; his reaction afterwards was nothing like the anger that the students had apparently expected. What he said to me was: "It is always sad how much they still miss of the big picture."

It had, to put it into context, been about two weeks since the bomb attacks in Madrid, after which the Spanish students had read an account from a survivor of one of the blasts, emphasising not the horror but the randomness of the attack and the ordinariness of the victims, and asked the College to observe a minute's silence.

I walked out of Assembly yesterday morning, at the end of the reading. The reason is that it seemed to me that we were not being invited to mourn the violent deaths of those who were killed, which is something we might all have shared in; but that under the pretext of mourning, a student had preached, and perhaps even preached violence, which I think is not appropriate in an Atlantic College Assembly.

When we were asked to stand up in the Bradenstoke Hall, it was not after the description of the carnage – a similar description could have been read after the bombs in Madrid –, but after a militant Islamic declaration. If I had stood up, I would have been misunderstood as supporting all that he had said; if I had remained seated, I would have been misunderstood as supporting the killings. So I had to walk out.

What that student was doing, I think, was to try to polarise us, to force us to come down on one side or the other – just as George Bush did, when he said something like: "Those who are not for us are against us." They both are thereby contributing to the continuation of violence, rather than contributing to a solution. The resolution of the conflict, when it comes, will come through people being able to see both sides.

There are groups of people on both sides of that conflict, perhaps of any conflict, who benefit from the situation and they manage to spread certain convictions, for which others are prepared to die and to kill. Some Jews accuse anyone critical of the policies of the Israeli government of being anti-Semitic, and wanting the country of Israel to be demolished. If I reject acts of terrorism by Palestinians, am I therefore anti-Islam?

In any conflict, demagogues on both sides tend to use religion and appeals to nationalism. So we must all avoid, especially if we are outsiders, being drawn into that polarisation. The proper response for us may not be to get into heated arguments with that student, but to accept that both sides may be largely wrong in what they do and a bit right in what they want, to learn more about the situation, and to suffer with the victims on both sides.

And to be firmly opposed to violence, in whatever form.