08/05/2008

Aberdeen-based freelance journalist, Hamish Mackay, has been doing battle on Aberdeen University’s campus this week as one of  three candidates in an election for the post of rector. He is up against Martin Ford, the Aberdeenshire councillor who derailed US tycoon, Donald Trump’s £1 billion golf resort plan for Aberdeenshire, and Stephen Robertson, a member of the Scotland the What? comedy trio. He reports on a somewhat serious week on the stump.

Since one of my opponents, Stephen Robertson, is a professional comedian, I was hoping that this election campaign would be, at times, a bit of a laugh. However, the majority of students whom I speak with are very serious folk - and I am forensically quizzed on aspects of my manifesto.

As, I am, by nature, I believe, reasonably open, honest and averse to the Machiavellian art of spin, I get by...just,  but there are many genuinely intellectually challenging discourses.

Aberdeen University has a huge number of overseas students, and I meet people from all over the world - including Afghanistan, Iranian, Somalian, Chinese, Japanese, American, Mexican, and Nepalese. 

One of my election pledges is ...”to build on the already excellent multi-ethnic ethos of the University of Aberdeen”. It sounds impressive and cool, but interrogated on the pros and cons of a much vaunted multi-cultural Britain, I am on delicate and challenging ground.

However, save for a lady from Bangladesh, with an US accent, the students are
exceptionally polite, and I am very  impressed by their courtesy. The lady from Bangladesh and I get off to a bad start when she asks me, 'Are you the comedian?' Perhaps it is the sun beating relentlessly on my bald pate, but I become uncharacteristically testy with her, and it becomes a bit of a slanging match, and I try to be too clever by half.

She is haranguing and basically bullying me, and, severely discomfited, I respond ungraciously and ungentlemanly. Later, I am ashamed of myself, and my guilt lingers, and ultimately depresses me. I resolve to be less self-righteous and less pompous.

Although a number of newspapers, including The Herald and The Scotsman are available on the university campus at excellent discount rates, I do not encounter even ONE student carrying a newspaper. However, at least 80 per cent have an earpiece with trailing wires which have to be disentangled before we can converse, and I can appreciate the daunting task facing
circulation executives.

The only serious media discourse involves the editorial ethos of The Guardian, but there are questions galore on how to get into journalism, and I answer manfully.

It does help that, back in 1966, I studied at the University of Westminster in London (then Regent Street Polytechnic) on the UK’s first full-time school-leaver and postgraduate courses in journalism. Writer and dramatist, Ray Connolly, was one of my fellow students.

However, I am not entirely convinced I should encourage these bright young things into a trade which is becomingly increasingly precarious and pays relatively badly. My conscience is giving me gyp. So I prevaricate, and, again feel guilty.

I have a great craic with a lanky Dutch student on the merits of total football, and a Nigerian quartet who are worried about their country’s soccer future.

This is safer ground, and when a lad from Burnley asks me if I can arrange a meet with Sir Alex Ferguson, I am on safer ground. As Fergie owes me a favour or two from the glories of Gothenburg era, I think I can at last do something useful. I repair to the students' main focal point on campus, The Hub, and nervously dish out my manifesto.

Angela, the president of the Aberdeen University Students’ Association, bears down on me and points out that this is prohibited.

Passive canvassing is permissible - for example, t-shirts, but no paper election material must be distributed on university premises. It is verboten. She should have me disqualified, she rails, but I eventually escape with a 'yellow card', and the horrible memories of being a chastened
schoolboy, standing in the corner with the ‘D’ cap, return with a vengeance. It reminds me of the standard punishment line at my secondary school, Dornoch Academy - ‘Improper Behaviour Necessitates Appropriate Chastisement’. I must do better.

I end up in a hall of residence at 1.30am where an anguished Nigerian student is being pacified by staff about the racket emanating from the room of one of his fellow students.

The poor man is very stressed as he has life-changing exams imminent and desperately needs peace and quiet. For some of the overseas students, to return home without a good degree, will  bring disgrace on their families and perhaps the wrath of their government and a problematic future.

So, of course, many of them are very stressed and strung-out. The stakes are horribly high. Should I be elected rector, I think my counselling skills could be put to good use. It has been an arduous 18-hour stint, and I trudge home with my mind in a turmoil.

I sleep fitfully for an hour, and then begin writing this piece, bolstered by copious cups of coffee and cigarettes. My life is again in diversionary mode and there are many serious issues to think about. The learning curve never ends, and at 61, I am having many of my precepts rigorously
examined.

The resigned look on the face of the Somalian student to whom I spoke at length, is firmly etched on my mind. I asked him how things are back home. “Very bad, very bad”, he replies. My heart goes out to him. So far from home in a foreign land and living in constant anxiety about his loved ones and his country. Life is deadly serious  for this endearing young lad. I am
encountering all the capriciousness of a troubled and uncertain world in this campaign.

The sun is rising, gloriously, over the North Sea. It is another day, another dawn. I am reminded of William Wordsworth's line ..."Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!". I am glad to be alive to enjoy another day.

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