Professor,
I would like you to imagine a steak in front of you (no, no, I'm being serious). There are commonly two regions on a well prepared steak, differentiated by colour. The main body of the steak will be dark brown in colour, while the outer region will be a thin white/cloudy layer of meat. This outer layer is what we steak-connoisseurs call ‘the fat'. If you're watching your weight or you're suffering from Type II Diabetes (or you're my father, who happens to be all three - watching his weight, a type II diabetic and ‘The Fat' itself), it is customary to cut off the thin fat layer. Even if you do decide to eat it, it doesn't really make a difference to your overall dining experience. The reason for this is because the fat layer, being lesser in substance, is really quite an ancillary aspect to one's steak.
It would be anathema to the International Fine Steak Tasting Society to criticise the quality of a steak based predominantly off of the fat layer, as the fat layer isn't really the point. What the connoisseur is truly concerned with is the meat of, well, the meat. I do feel Professor, that if my article were a steak, your response to it would warrant expulsion from the International Fine Steak Tasting Society, as you're too hung up about the thin fatty layer. The overarching point, the dark brown portion of the collection of wordy thingies that some people call an article, is thus: student activism, in general, is useless.
I consider them, as they are currently done, to be pointless exercises in righteousness, and students who think otherwise are, as I so bluntly put it, delusional and arrogant. Unless, the issue in question is taking place in the same country as the university and thus student activism will have the issue continuously banging its head against the country's front door. THAT is the meat of my article. The main purpose, the main idea I was pushing, however, corresponds only to the ‘thin fat' of your response. Unfortunate that you seem so focused on such a minor part of the article, but here we go: let's trim your fat:
You say that I "believe [I am] immune to the charge of arrogance for thinking that [my] debut column is going to make a difference". Quick point of clarification here Professor: I have never, at any point - either in my life or my piece - proclaimed my humility (or was it my humanity? No, no, it was humility...). I wouldn't dream of it. I suffer many of the characteristics of adolescence, and arrogance, for the time being, is one of them. I even said: "Though I suspect all teenagers/twenty somethings have always been of such a mindset (I am too, in certain ways. Just not monumentally stupid ways)." Look, I'm even quoting myself, who the hell does that?
I do not consider it hypocritical to criticise various other activist students at UCT for their arrogance however, because unlike them, I am fully aware that what I - an insignificant first year undergraduate - say or do makes little appreciable difference to anything. I never said, nor think, that what I write on Politicsweb, or in Varsity, or in Sax Appeal, or on the underside of a vegan muffin makes a shred of difference. The article, due to the fact that it is essentially a little slice of student activism, illustrates precisely that point.