Free-D

When the police come blundering in upon a mystery which Mr. Sherlock Holmes is investigating, they invariably jump to the conclusions to which any sane person would. A smug inspector declares that it’s an open and shut case, that the husband “did it” in a fit of jealous rage, and that the sleuth’s peculiar talents will not be needed this time. And without exception the detective wearily intones something like, “on the contrary my dear inspector, I have absolutely no doubt that this is the work of an unusually agile man, with some experience of the circus, a marked stutter and a terribly deformed elbow”.

Well, if in our detective fiction we like almost totally implausible twists, in “real” life we take the opposite tack: we like our answers easy to understand and digest. Never more so than if we’re looking at societal problems. There has been much criticism recently regarding the behaviour of students who, according to at least one local organ, are constantly “loaded” – either with drink or drugs. It’s easy to dislike students; they have all the advantages; youth, time, hormones and hair. Not only this but they flaunt it all so annoyingly.  However, the overt quality of student’s behaviour makes me suspect that the real problems lie elsewhere. I’m not sure that young academics’ deportment has changed all that much: heavens,  if this were the 18th century they’d all be duelling and whoring (and possibly even dabbling in alchemy given Salamanca’s record.) Looking at things in a more positive light, students are fairly guileless; they rarely hide their negative side, all the raucousness, ill discipline and selfishness of youth. But this is just the “obvious fingerprint”, the “open and shut” case of the yard inspector. It seems the same people always end up being the “patsy”, to borrow from another kind of detective fiction”. But drugs and drink themselves are a complex issue. Students often  romanticise these substances; it’s understandable when the arts and entertainment abound with such tempting if misleading examples (almost all artists of any kind perform better without the use of such substances). Personally I’m convinced that most of this experimentation, while inadvisable, doesn’t do half the harm as does the “background” hard drinking which goes on amongst many older Salmantinos. It may be true, let’s face it – it’s undeniable, that students take on average more drugs than most other sections of the community, but the qualities and problems of drugs just aren’t that simple, as Mr. Holmes would tell you.