Sir – Elizabeth Mills urges me to “face the facts” and thinks I am wrong to think that “the residents of East Oxford are practising discrimination against students”.

If she reads with more care the letters to which she seems to be replying she will see that I have never made any statement about my fellow residents; rather I have expressed concern about the tone of the utterances which people like her make about this issue.

I am more than happy to face the facts, and indeed I will look at the ones I can find in her letter.

She notes that students are “transient” without defining the term in this context. It is true that the terms at Oxford University are short compared with many pre-92 counterparts, but Oxford Brookes has two long semesters.

If, as she states, there are “many” houses which are empty for “several” months in the year, she needs to do two things to make these “facts” more meaningful.

Firstly she needs to explain what she understands by the vague terms “many” and “several” in this context.

Secondly she needs to ask why this of state of affairs comes to pass. Oxford’s constant demand for housing, allows landlords to charge higher rents than in many parts of the UK — why then do they allow remunerative properties to remain empty for months?

If the answer is that while properties are empty, rent is still being paid by students who cannot find vacation work as easily as their forbears used to, then that suggests a more complicated story. But we cannot allow these assumptions to slide into becoming “facts”. We need more information.

Likewise the “transient” nature of students, the letter implies, is the root cause of less than satisfactory behaviour; a number of examples are listed. Again we need to have more information.

Of what percentage of student tenancies are these examples typical? Half? A third? Fewer than that? It may be that decent responsible student tenants are being grouped in with less responsible ones, but lacking such information we cannot at this point say that.

Bob Waugh, Oxford