BALLS ON CAMPUS

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Buckie Balls Speaks ............

In the past, sweet, furry little animals have reported life on campus ... including that lounge lizard, Prinny (ugh! all that corseting) ... These days are over; those soft-hearted liberals have been replaced by hard-nosed science in the shape of the famous, the Nobel-prize-winning, the most renowned molecule on campus, Buckie Balls. That's Sir Buckminsterfullerine to you, by the way.

Time was when a molecule (or, for that matter, any of these furry little animals, squirrels, rabbits, travellers' dogs, peasants, students) could stroll along the North-South Road without a care in the world. Now the new traffic routing offers every chance to reduce the University's debt. Flatten a Professor and save the Uni. thousands; flatten a lecturer and open the way for promoting graduate students cheaply; flatten a student and reduce student loans; flatten a member of the ground staff and save the Management embarrassment. Word on the Periodic Table is that the Management is preparing a bid to loan the route out as a practice track for Brands Hatch.

I recently eavesdropped on an Estates meeting and was worried to hear plans to tarmac all the grassy areas on campus. In some ways, this may not be a bad thing, though, remembering a recent occasion when I lost my way in the long grass of the managed meadow and found myself in Chichester Building listening to a seminar on "High resolution electronic spectroscopy of polyacetylene cations by frequency modulation absorption spectroscopy" - the mere mention of it gives me the shudders - a load of old (buckie) balls.

I shall be running a new feature on "Campus Anomalies"; like why is it harder to get into the Travel Agents than it is to occupy the Finance Office in the Building Known only as Sussex House? And is the Arts-Science Programme a contradiction in terms?

Well, the first signs of dawn ... the aroma of curry from the Refectory; students returning home from the Falmer Bar; the sheep returning to their pasture alongside Mantell Building after a night of rampaging around the campus - throwing plastic bags into ponds, snapping off branches of trees ... mean it's time for wandering balls to make their way home, past the Hive of Activity which is the Building Known Only as Sussex House and to my little plaquette above the Chichester Lecture Theatre (the Building Formerly Known as MOLS).