UKC Rocks

I was leaving Keynes Bar tonight and the LGBTsoc were abroad. That chap “Ducttape” was there: black dress, red pashmina and, I-think-but-don’t-quote-me, new silicone breasts. He was posing, face to the wall, bum out, as a girl took his picture with a tripod and SLR.

My first thought (apart from that Campus’s greatest character appeared to have gone “post-op”) was: Fantastic – THIS.IS.UKC.

I think the University of Kent is brilliant. It’s so small that everyone knows everyone: Besty, Budd, Ducttape… a petty soap opera that everyone can gossip about. (At Leeds, where I went straight after school for eight weeks before dropping out, there was no such thing as a campus celebrity: there were 22,000 students for goodness’ sake!).

Here’s full of characters. Not just Ducttape, but remember the guy in the moon and stars cape – “the Wizard”? Or the chap who lived in a tent in Blean Woods, what was his name? The Spanish guy who accumulated 55 parking tickets before he was confronted by a Campus Watchman, only to drive his jeep off with said Watchman flailing on his bonnet…

JL Cranfield might wish he was at Oxford with the likes of Antoine le Blanche but I’ve got news for him: people like that don’t go there any more – I’ve been up to check. It’s mainly tiresome four-As types preparing for Deutsche Bank or whatever. The fun is at places like this.

And Canterbury. It’s not enough to dismiss it as an inferior Durham/Lincoln/Oxford. Canterbury has Appeal, notable factors in which I reckon include: the buoyant homeless; the pubs (find me a nicer boozer than the Unicorn); the dearth of night-clubs; the Beano Café; St Dunstan’s…

How about the university? Well it’s friendly and small for starters. Academically, some departments are mediocre, but others have a national reputation: CS, Anthropology, Biosciences, Drama. And if you’re an undergraduate – for whom only teaching quality should matter – take comfort from the national teaching survey which puts us 28th: http://www.kent.ac.uk/studying/nss/.

I do get frustrated sometimes when no one wants to swap ideas or whatever; when the conversation lingers on TV shows. But fuck that – there’s always conversationamongtheruins. And when we graduate, if we want to go into politics (does JL?) and sort out the world we like to moan about, we’ll do so more sensitive to it for having gone to UKC.

By Jimothy

Copyright November 2005