PRINT IS DEAD

Student drinking is an undeniable cornerstone of the British university experience. 

Whether it’s in halls, pubs, clubs, classrooms on campus or outside the offy, it’s a quintessentially British activity which we all love and partake in.

Given this debatably worrying obsession with sipping on pints and splashing out on tequila shots. I can’t help but wonder why there isn’t a place for just us, students, the youth, to get pissed for a reasonable ransom.

You could argue that there is. On every uni campus if you look hard enough you may find a quiet pub type thing shyly labelled student union bar. There may be the odd event discreetly advertised on the wall with a few students knocking about drinking cheap(er) pints. 

Believe it or not student union bars haven’t always had a backbench role in student drinking. When students didn’t have whatsapp groups and e-tickets at their disposal, unbeknownst of what’s on and where, they flocked to the union bar. Where they were welcomed with a pint at the reduced price of 95p, and an abundance of activity stinking of life.

The walls plastered with posters, advertising everything for students to stick their heads into. Live music was inescapable, the union bars proved to be a haven for newly formed bands with audacious names to take the stage, many of which went on to find glory and fame. In fact I can guarantee you that every Jim, Tom and Mary who went to uni at this time, when asked, is sure to tell you about the time they saw Culture Club or Talking Heads at their local union just before they went big.

The question I’m asking is, what happened? Why can I only remember having a pint or two at the union bar? Where’s my chance to trade a pint of blood for a free pint of guinness? The idea of a student space to drink, dance and chat shit until the sun comes up is an absolute no brainer, so why does it seem to have disappeared?

I want a union bar where there’s student held events every week. Where I can hear students screaming into a microphone and shredding on a stratocaster. Where I can walk in and see everyone pissing their pants listening to a geezer on stage ripping into Rishi Sunak or lamenting over their 50 year-old self still paying off their student loan.

From where I’m looking there’s no reason why the union bars of today cannot be reverted into the empires of student expression and hedonism they once were. The reality is that they haven’t disappeared, they’re still here and so are we.

There’s no shortage of students craving a cheap pint of lager or a sticky floor to dance on. In spite of the glueing of our eyes to screens and fingers to phones, there remains no shortage of talent and brilliance amongst us. Talent and Brilliance which either goes unseen or is maybe premiered on instagram, the sort of talent and brilliance which yearns for a stage, a platform to show off and maybe even inspire on.

The union bar should be the epicentre for all which our young, naive and capital brains splatter out.

Call me Frank (or Max), but I just don’t see a reason why not, 

Bring. It. Back.