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Alex Lo
SCMP Columnist
My Take
by Alex Lo
My Take
by Alex Lo

Students should stick to books not street barricades

Study and protest don't mix. That's why Dostoyevsky recommends in Crime and Punishment that young university students should focus on their school work before trying to change the world. 

Study and protest don't mix. That's why Dostoyevsky recommends in that young university students should focus on their school work before trying to change the world. Alas, young people are always in a hurry and so rarely listen to the Russian sage. Some end up joining movements or committing acts they regret later or which mark them for life.

This is perhaps one of the key differences between living in a free society and a repressed state. In the former, student protesters almost always have another chance.

So I read with interest that Yvonne Leung Lai-kwok, one of the University of Hong Kong student leaders of the Occupy protests from last year, has done terribly at school because of her activism.

She told the that for her double majors in law and governance, she had to drop two out of six courses from the previous semester and that she had only a 'D' in a governance and law course. A pity. Anyone who watched her debating universal suffrage on TV with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng-ngor and other top officials realised she would make an excellent lawyer.

Fortunately, she has now decided to scale back on her political commitments and start burning the midnight oil again. But this is not before she launches a judicial review, probably secretly filed for her by those troublesome lawyers from the Civic Party, against the government's endorsement of Beijing's edict on political reform. The brief also demands the government restart the whole political consultation process. I have no doubt Leung would make a formidable political advocate once she has completed her law training, far more so than what she is doing now. But it's worth observing one day she and her friends were fighting with police, then the next, they say forget it, and go back to school.

Throughout the Occupy protests, they had denounced the government as oppressive, and claimed they were fighting for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong. If you think a government must either be a democracy or a tyranny, you know nothing about politics. Almost all real-life governments are gradations leaning towards one or the other.

Yvonne and her comrades are now back in school, courtesy of taxpayers; so much for oppression.

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Students: stick to books, not barricades
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