Tuition fees, Vietnam, the Parisian strike of 1229, Harvard’s gloriously named Great Butter Rebellion of 1766… we students have an impressive pedigree for general rebellion. Lent term’s efforts on Bridge Street revealed a persistent fondness for sticking it to the man, as did the hoo-ha with the Cambridge Students for Life at Trinity College earlier this month. But the Summer of Love has passed, punk has died and cynicism now reigns. It begs the question: have we lost our revolutionary clout?  

…So we need to up the ante a bit, there being a genuine need for public acts of moral intervention, for international as well as domestic issues. But how does the aspirant sexy radical do anti-establishment these days? 

1.  Make your parents do the John Lewis run at the beginning of term. No need to besmirch your own hands, scoff throughout. All further décor your furnished room requires is stolen dinner candles artfully thrust into empty bottles of wine. Now you can sit back reading David Hare on your iPad and drinking artisanal gin from unconventional drinking receptacles until they’re back to load up the into the ‘Rover at the end of term.

2. “Oh my god, that reminds me of this time on my gap year…”

While noisily contemptuous of all others’ excursions and gap yaahs, be sure to recognise your own as truly meaningful. You really did feel moved by the majesty of nature and realised that some people are poor and that that’s really, really sad.        

3. Spend none of your own money. This one is easier. YOU HAVE NONE. YOU ARE A STUDENT. It is borrowed, or your parents’. Make sure you get extremely angry about having to pay it back at some point.

4. Cultivate an intolerance, allergy or unusual dietary restriction. Fish, dairy, Roundtrees fruit pastels, anything trisyllabic… doesn’t matter what. As long as you make it matter, like a lot. Avoid peanut allergies, if possible. Too mainstream. 

5. Get ill. But catch something good. Preferably something that leaves you skinny and pale with the romantic morbidity of a waifish consumptive. Something that would indicate that you spend nights shivering because you are a penniless sitar player. Or you are lovesick, driven helpless by the charms of a penniless sitar player. Bonus points for something tropical.

6. Cultivate a contemptuous disgust of corporate pharmaceuticals.  But anything your friends offer on Koh Phantan is fair game. Wildean decadence please. And caring is sharing. 

8. Protest debates. We can’t be letting intellectual discourse upset our tolerant, liberal sympathies. (Obscenity-strewn banners and poor standards of personal grooming are, as we all know, far more effective.) Definitely do not engage in actual discussion. Only the new liberals and feminists can be tolerant, or reasonable, obvs.