Angry Geek is back

Hello? Is this thing on? It’s been a while, you see. In fact, by my count less than half of the undergraduates were around the last time I wrote for Felix. I’d do a formal introduction and all, but the concept boils down to a pretty simple “I vehemently hate more things before breakfast than you’ve managed to mildly dislike in your entire life” schtick. I’ve just been a little preoccupied lately to write in Felix. I’ve kept busy, of course, thanks for asking. I’ve taken to just whispering swear words to people on the tube on the commute home. Similar audience size, but admittedly less anonymous.

Originally, you see, I used to joke about hilariously large-scale things, in an attempt to be so offensive that people would be cajoled into writing into the Comment section. My first year writing included pieces which – and it’s hard to list these sarcastically, but bear with me – endorsed the abuse of South

I vehemently hate more things before breakfast than you’ve managed to mildly dislike in your entire life

American economies, suggested we take the vote away from women and recommended demolishing the entire of the College as a statement about Green Week. You’d be surprised how few people wrote in. At one point I offered fifty quid of my own money and even that only convinced a half-dozen people to pen a comment piece.

As with all gimmicks, though, eventually they take on a life of their own, and before I knew it I was writing about real things that were going on at Imperial, real irritations and obscene regularities of Imperial life.

This is not an institution run by grown-up men and women who know better than you: you are paying to be educated and the way this university operates every day reflects on you

Things like an increasingly smug attitude towards the poor being demonstrated by a worrying number of students. Things like the scary, dystopian obsession with some of the world’s best science and engineering graduates being funnelled into whoever offered the biggest pay packet. Things like a tacit acceptance of sexism and xenophobia that permeates many of the student subcultures here.

These things still hang in the air at Imperial years later, like particularly adhesive farts from the arse of a bigoted and unlikeable dung beetle. It’s not that I somehow figured I had so much influence that merely by mentioning them the Rector would take action against them. They’d been going on for many years before I arrived here, and they’ll continue many years after I’ve left. It’s more that I see just as few people seem to care about them as they did six years ago when I started writing this column for the first time.

That matters.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to pop in much this year, but I’d like to. In case I don’t, let me try a different tack this time in getting people to debate and talk in this great section of Felix: Imperial needs people to

These things still hang in the air at Imperial years later, like particularly adhesive farts from the arse of a bigoted and unlikeable dung beetle

speak up and talk about its problems. It needs people who are unhappy about the way one of the greatest universities in the world conducts itself to stand up and make their opinion clear. Every single person reading Felix is an adult, a citizen of voting age who can go and get a mortgage, get married and go and die in the army tomorrow should they so wish. This is not an institution run by grown-up men and women who know better than you: you are paying to be educated and the way this university operates every day reflects on you. There is no better place to make your views clearer than Felix, so write in now and speak your mind.

Though obviously, if you’re wrong I’ll write in swiftly the week after and bite your fucking head off. It’s good to be back.