Sir – Sietske Boeles (Letters, October 27) accuses me of an “offensive” attack on my fellow residents of East Oxford who are calling for a recount of undergraduate students living in the area.

By contrast she calls for “a rational debate how we can best decrease the surplus of students who live in shared houses whilst new sites are identified for much-needed purpose-built student accommodation”.

Look at that again. “We” will sit down and talk about “them”. “We” will decide how many of “them” are surplus to what “we” deem to be acceptable (by criteria that “we” will determine).

That “surplus” will then be relocated in accommodation in “their” zone, (whose location “we” will presumably decide). And it is “wrong” and “offensive” to call this “discriminatory”.

If it is the case, as it seems to be, that only undergraduate students are to be subject to such process, then that is discrimination in my book (which is a dictionary).

What is lost in all this is that behind the statistics which get thrown around in this and other similar discourses are real human beings.

These young people are, mostly, adults subject to the same laws as other members of the community. They are, mostly, our fellow citizens.

The “rational debate” suggested would have the effect of de-legitimising their rights to any sense of self-determination and would exclude them arbitrarily from the community of which they are a part.

I suggested that a discussion be opened up on how the relationship of this group with the wider community can be improved.

I can think of nothing more “unhelpful” to that than a climate of opinion dominated by call after call for recounting based on the assumption that there are too many of “them”.

None of this was addressed in the reply to my original letter. Perhaps others will take up this idea and the discussion can take a more constructive tone.

Bob Waugh, Oxford