the written word

So what do these students, potential leaders of our nation, write as they ponder the great questions of the universe? Well, it is not Gary loves Kirsty. The men's lavatories I visited can only be described as walls of hate. The walls tell us that male students hate gays, the English, Catholics, Protestants, Pakistanis and Huns. I thought this last term curious. Apparently it meant Rangers supporters.

Student politicians and psychologists in one of the older established educational institution lead the way. Someone has ''f***ed and killed a poof''. Pakistanis are ''brown rent cheque scrounging bastards''. The English are ''c***s'' and are told to go home in language rather more colourful than that. ''Jockoland'', apparently, is ''ours''. Men who have Catholic girlfriends are ''dirty Fenian f***ers''.

Elsewhere, students of Astronomy appear, from their lavatory walls, to be dedicated ''Hun'' haters. Preoccupation with the starry world does not, apparently, lead to tolerance in this one. These astronomers are the proud possessors of what must qualify as one of the world's worst jokes. It goes: ''What is the difference between Billy Wright and a Belfast taxi?'' ''A taxi can take five in the back.'' Even if you think, as some other wordsmith tells us on the same wall, that Billy Wright was ''the world's number one w***er'', the only place you could laugh at this joke is in the privacy of the Gents'.

The students of Medicine in another location have left a message for the cleaner. It reads: ''Message to cleaner. Clean these walls, bitch.'' Clearly some student is practising his interpersonal skills ready, perhaps, for a career as a family doctor. The most revolting sight I came across was an imitation of the dirty protest with appropriate legend attached.

Witty graffiti is very much part of institutional life, but most of the stuff I have seen lacks wit. It is simply a restatement of historical bigotry. ''They don't seem to learn much here,'' observed a resigned-looking cleaner. ''I've been cleaning the same stuff off for years.''

After slinking in and out of the Gents in various parts of this erstwhile City of Culture, I turned with relief to the Ladies. Theirs are not walls of hate. They are walls of desperation. ''I love men and fancy them but I love women as well,'' sighs one girl. Another sobs: ''How do you get a bloke to notice you?'' Advice is dispensed.

''What do you do if you can't get your boyfriend to touch you right?'' asks someone. ''Get a new boyfriend,'' is the tart reply. Some of the women's graffiti is worthy. ''I'm a single mum back at Uni,'' writes somebody. ''My daughter has added immensely to my life, not f***ed it up.'' This was clearly inspired by the correspondence on ''should I/shouldn't I have an abortion'' which also appears in many Ladies' facilities around the city. I am intrigued by the notion of posing a question, then going back for the answer - a sort of poor woman's equivalent of realtime chat on the Net.

Some men would be flattered to see what was written about them. Some men would feel inadequate. Long-term boyfriends might be surprised to discover what their girlfriends really thought about their love-making. Others would discover that their skills were not the only ones their apparently faithful girlfriends were experiencing. Girls feel a desire to be honest in the lavatory which reveals how dishonest they often are in real life. For women as well as men, the cubicle appears to be a safe place to voice your darkest concerns.

Nowhere is the gender divide more marked than in graffiti. It is not just the words and sentiments, the hate versus desperation, it is how the graffiti is physically written. Men gouge their hate into the walls, sometimes with sharp instruments. The hatred is evident in every letter. It must take some time to do and require some concentration. From where it is positioned, it is evident that much of it is executed standing up. So this is not just doodling whilst you wait, as it were. This is a positive decision to take a pen or a knife and articulate what you are feeling.

The women's loos show less intent and more whimsy. Their contributions are, it would seem, usually written whilst sitting. Their writing is usually neat. There are fewer personal statements and more reactions to other writings. Often a central question or assertion is added to by other women who, in a very practical way, connect their pearl of wisdom to what it refers to with a line. This makes it easy for the reader. By my goodness, is it dull.

Yet in its dullness (the funniest piece I could find asked: ''Who is using the family brain cell today?'') there is a sense of companionship in the Ladies. Men are described quite tenderly. The word ''love'' appears often. Sometimes ''all men are bastards'' is written, but more in hurt than hate. The Gents have no feeling of friendliness, unless you count invitations to ''Gay sex, here, Sunday'' as friendly. The thing is, you could not be certain it had not been written by the same man who wrote ''Kill All Poofs''. If you turned up on Sunday, you would not know quite what you were in for. No-one declares they love anyone in the Gents. This sort of graffiti is far from the artform which is studied by hip departments of art. Perhaps some of it will eventually be studied by the student psychologists presently contributing to it. Each year educational institutions spend thousands of pounds painting

or scrubbing it out. Each year it reappears in almost exactly the same form - anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti- women for the men; fear of rejection, fear of fat, fear of spots, fear of pregnancy, fear of failure for women. No-one ever admits to having contributed, and all the students I spoke to told me how ''shocking'' they found it. One man told me that he had prevented his mother going to the loo anywhere on his campus for fear that her sorry image of it as a place of highminded intellectual debate might be shattered. ''It is worse than our local bus station,'' he said.

If I had been under any illusions that the genders were moving closer together, my trip to the lavatories of our education institutions dispelled it. In the privacy of their own cubicles, men and women reveal their innermost selves. In the case of the men, they are not selves which bear much revelation. In the case of women they show a preoccupation with men which would make any feminist despair. And these are the intellectual cream of our society. Makes you wonder.