OUR page one story yesterday about Grammar students campaigning for better housing licence treatment of their teachers caused rather a stir – but for all the wrong reasons.

Instead of the focus remaining on young people believing that the island’s restrictive housing laws are actively damaging their education, it switched to some comments by a number of pupils about the alleged demeanour of two ministers who had taken part in a discussion forum earlier in the week.

That led to the Housing minister demanding a page one apology from us, claiming that the material was defamatory and explaining that he and the chief minister will be asking the Bailiff for permission to make a statement in the House ‘showing that the Press got it badly wrong again’.

The fact remains that a number of students were unhappy with what they perceived to be the conduct of some of the deputies addressing them.

Whether they were reasonably entitled to reach those conclusions is a different matter and as we quoted him yesterday and as the head teacher has again reiterated, no one had been discourteous or appeared uninterested. He felt the students’ comments had been unfair.

They appear, however, to be sincerely held by those who expressed them and triggered by what they saw and heard – or thought they saw or heard.

What seems to be beyond doubt in this is that a fair number of students are unhappy with the impact of island housing laws, at least as it affects their teachers, and did not agree with at least some of the responses they received from the Housing minister.

A consequence of that is the launch of a campaign, Save Guernsey Teachers, Change Housing Laws, which now has more than 400 students signed up for it on the social networking internet site Facebook.

How that develops remains to be seen but, since Monday’s forum with the Grammar pupils was aimed at encouraging teenagers to become more politically aware, the deputies involved can claim a great deal of success.