MORTARBOARDS have joined ‘ideas’ and ‘the past’ on a list of things that students should be afraid of.
The NUS has confirmed that graduates’ traditional square caps are potentially as harmful to students’ wellbeing as 19th-century statues and speeches by Peter Tatchell, and will be no longer be permitted on campus.
NUS officer Emma Bradford said: “What good is it to protect students from Germaine Greer’s views on gender identity if we can’t protect them from being hit on the head by pointy bits of card?
“At least if you’re the wrong kind of feminist I can shout at you on Twitter. But you can’t publicly shame a mortarboard.”
The NUS will provide counselling for any student struck by a mortarboard, or who has read about someone else being struck by a mortarboard and felt upset on their behalf.
It has also passed a motion condemning mortarboards as tools of Zionist oppression, and is calling on all universities to provide anti-mortarboard safe spaces in rooms with low ceilings.
Student activist Nathan Muir said: “Mortarboards were introduced in the sixteenth century to protect students from bird droppings and the punishing heat of the sun. But you know what else was introduced in the sixteenth century? Colonialism.”
Bradford replied: “I can’t believe Nathan went and said the word ‘mortarboard’ without a trigger warning. That’s a microaggression.”
