Political activism. You're doing it wrong.

It's being reported that student anti-cuts protestors in Oxford occupied the Radcliffe Camera today.

The Camera is, of course, part of the Bodleian Library, and, in Full Term, is likely to be full of worried-looking finalists working on essays. I wasn't there, and did not witness today's events, but there are reports of protestors "dancing on tables" and "throwing students' work off desks". Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would venture to suggest that this, if true, probably isn't a terribly sensible way to win support for one's cause. (Nor, indeed, to demonstrate one's commitment to the social value of education.)

There are, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the government's proposals. The cuts to arts, humanities and social science research funding, in particular, risk permanent harm to the intellectual and cultural life of our country. And in a democratic society, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully, whatever the cause, is an immensely important one.

But this kind of puerile, destructive idiocy isn't really helping anyone. And these particular zealots are doing their own movement a serious disservice: because adolescents dancing on library tables will, with tomorrow morning's front pages and TV reports, quickly become the iconic image of today's protests. After the London demonstrations, the image that filled the public consciousness wasn't a picture of thousands of non-violent students assembling in the streets to express grievances. It was a scene of broken windows and projectile fire-extinguishers at Millbank. Shock sells newspapers: and in an age of visual media, such things tend to be indelible. It doesn't do the anti-cuts cause any favours. It simply gives ammunition to those who would prefer to depict all radical students (grossly unfairly) as out-of-control adolescent vandals.

I'm not denying that, on occasion, there are legitimate justifications for radical action and lawbreaking. But this is not one of them. And even if it were, it's rather hard to see why a university library would be deemed a suitable target. Whatever you think about government policy, the harried undergraduates trying to work in the Rad Cam are certainly not to blame for it, and they do not deserve to suffer.

(Postscript) For your daily dose of ridiculously inflated hyperbole: a lecturer in pharmacology proclaims grandly that the anti-cuts protestors "stand in the proud tradition of the suffragettes and the civil rights movement". Seriously.