Students at the University of Oxford have been given free colouring pencils to relieve stress. This follows the news that the Oxford Union will make ‘welfare resources’ available when Kathleen Stock is due to give a talk at the Union later this month for those students who feel traumatised by the presence of the UnHerd columnist. Ewan Somerville in the Telegraph has more.
The exercise has been rolled out in the Bodleian Social Science Library and elsewhere on university sites.
Bundles of coloured pencils are provided on a table to undergraduates, along with a sign to “try out some mindful colouring”, a picture posted online shows.
The notice says: “Give your mind a break. Help yourselves to some pencils and colouring sheets. Please return pencils to this table after use.”
But it has been mocked for “infantilising” students at the world’s top-ranked university.
Prof Lawrence Goldman, a lecturer in modern history at Oxford and the former editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, told the Telegraph: “The architecture of the Social Science Library led to it being called the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984 when it was built. Perhaps it should now be renamed the kindergarten.”
Another Oxford lecturer, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Telegraph that the colouring scheme was widespread across college libraries, along with some mindfulness jigsaws.
The lecturer said: “Colouring pencils are totally ubiquitous here – they are presumably everywhere except the School of Art.”
Prof Kathleen Stock, a leading philosophy expert who quit the University of Sussex last year in a gender row, wrote on Twitter:
Worth reading in full.
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Well I really hope we get to see a video of Kathleen’s talk at the University now because I hadn’t even heard of her but it seems she’s getting quite the big build-up so my expectations are high as a result! lol But what I don’t understand about the article above is that nobody’s being forced to attend her talk, presumably, so why would there be all this fuss anyway? And I do think that if you can’t sit through a learned academic’s lecture in such a setting without making a complete song and dance about it then you clearly don’t even possess the life skills and emotional maturity to have even left home in the first place. You are not ready to fly the nest as you evidently do not have the necessary tools to navigate life’s totally normal ups and downs yet. Stay with your parents mollycoddling you until you’re in your 30s then, because you seem the sort of people who can’t even boil an egg without feeling traumatised! Either don’t attend the talk or sit through it and give Kathleen the respect that you seem incredibly vocal in demanding everybody else shows you.
Here’s an 11min segment of a recent interview with Freddie Sayers and Kathleen Stock, and she seems like a perfectly interesting, reasonable and pleasant person to me;
https://unherd.com/thepost/kathleen-stock-i-feel-sorry-for-the-students-trying-to-ban-me/
A segment from Kathleen’s book, ”Material Girls”. Can anybody point out the controversy to me because I can’t find my magnifying glass..
”In this book I’ve rejected gender identity theory. Since current trans activism enthusiastically embraces gender identity theory, it follows that I don’t believe ordinary trans people are well served by current trans activism. Trans people are trans people. We should get over it. They deserve to be safe, to be visible throughout society without shame or stigma, and have exactly the life opportunities non-trans people do. Their transness makes no difference to any of this. What trans people don’t deserve, however, is to be publicly misrepresented in philosophical terms that make no sense; nor to have their every day struggles instrumentalised in the name of political initiatives most didn’t ask for and which alienate other groups by rigidly encroaching on *their* hard-won rights. Nor do trans people deserve to be terrified by activist propaganda into thinking themselves more vulnerable to violence than they actually are.”
Nobody has a right to other people’s involuntary attention (visibility). Assuming otherwise is just passive-aggressive behaviour. What so-called consenting adults do privately to each other is their business. But it’s really their business and certainly not mine. I insist that I have the absolute right not to be molested with it.
When I was at Uni we made use of other means of relieving stress. And that’s why I need glasses these days.
I do hope they don’t eat them. Can you imagine how many germs are on those things? I’ll bet nobody sanitises the crayons or their hands before use, nor, for that matter, the table and chair. Oh, God! They’ll all die horribly! (With luck)
How long before a university education on your CV makes you unemployable in the real world (but probably ideal for the civil ‘get nothing done’ service)
FGS. Yes, give them their non-toxic crayons, alongside some little pretend kitchen / oven / kettles; pretend lawnmowers; safety scissors; little pretend irons and ironing boards; pretend drills and little swirly mobiles over their
cotschairs. Not forgetting the socket covers to keep prying little fingers out of electrical sockets. Wouldn’t want the little loves come to any harm.I hope they’re wax crayons so the little darlings can’t self harm with those sharp points…