"The Fighting Cocks" is in the student center of Durham, a small university town north-east of England. From the outside appears to be the most typical of the pubs, the kind that really like English students: lights dim almost to the point of being painful, thick carpet, wooden tables and a large bouquet of beer.
Yet on Saturday night, unconscious and free of any injury, I have happened to us "Fighting Cocks". And there I found not a single student. Besides being a really nice little pub by the name "The Fighting Cocks" is also a sad symbol of the rift that exists in the relations between students and locals, people born and raised in Durham.
Attended only by them, the students of Durham see it as synonymous with violence and squalor. At the same time, others talk about it with amused suspicion and even with a strange admiration, like the one you are trying to be an outlaw children fascinating. The locals are the object of contempt is that of respect, often tacit and sometimes even shameful.
Students on the other hand are seen as braggarts privileged, arrogant and spoiled kids. The antagonism between students and locals is not a source of violent events that require the intervention of police. Typically these are small to address reports of bullying from school and sometimes, particularly in late-night, small fights.
Only last week, however, two students, returning from a night at the club, were assaulted by local boys. Things that can happen even in Italy, of course, where in most cases are not the expression of social conflict and economic relations between students and locals. Nearly two years studying in Durham and I have not come across a student's native place, a fact that in an equivalent in Italy, as can be, or Pavia Pisa, it would be a real anomaly.
Of course there are other factors, such as the English habit to leave their hometown to pursue his studies elsewhere, which may serve as explanation. The absence, or near, the local students remains a singular fact, and unfortunately not isolated. As a student you live next to the premises without sharing anything except a mutual distrust.
There seems therefore acceptable, or at least normal, which is not recommended for students attending a pub a stone's throw from home, at the height of the student center? There seems rather far from an England London multi-and hyper-modern culture that we all admire? Saviors of Richard, a graduate student in history at the University of Durham 
Yet on Saturday night, unconscious and free of any injury, I have happened to us "Fighting Cocks". And there I found not a single student. Besides being a really nice little pub by the name "The Fighting Cocks" is also a sad symbol of the rift that exists in the relations between students and locals, people born and raised in Durham.
Attended only by them, the students of Durham see it as synonymous with violence and squalor. At the same time, others talk about it with amused suspicion and even with a strange admiration, like the one you are trying to be an outlaw children fascinating. The locals are the object of contempt is that of respect, often tacit and sometimes even shameful.
Students on the other hand are seen as braggarts privileged, arrogant and spoiled kids. The antagonism between students and locals is not a source of violent events that require the intervention of police. Typically these are small to address reports of bullying from school and sometimes, particularly in late-night, small fights.
Only last week, however, two students, returning from a night at the club, were assaulted by local boys. Things that can happen even in Italy, of course, where in most cases are not the expression of social conflict and economic relations between students and locals. Nearly two years studying in Durham and I have not come across a student's native place, a fact that in an equivalent in Italy, as can be, or Pavia Pisa, it would be a real anomaly.
Of course there are other factors, such as the English habit to leave their hometown to pursue his studies elsewhere, which may serve as explanation. The absence, or near, the local students remains a singular fact, and unfortunately not isolated. As a student you live next to the premises without sharing anything except a mutual distrust.
There seems therefore acceptable, or at least normal, which is not recommended for students attending a pub a stone's throw from home, at the height of the student center? There seems rather far from an England London multi-and hyper-modern culture that we all admire? Saviors of Richard, a graduate student in history at the University of Durham
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