Freshers week no longer a blur

It is the booze-fuelled haven where Britpop band Blur formed and where Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren once propped up the bar.

But in these sober days of tuition fees and binge drinking concerns, University of London's Goldsmiths Students' Union has called time on the "alcohol-centred, cheesy disco culture associated with students".

It has closed one of its two student bars and transformed the space into a " nonalcoholic" art gallery and performance space.

It is thought to be the first time that a student union has tackled the drinking culture for which undergraduates have long been famous.

It says it is responding to demand, citing a growing number of students who are teetotal for religious reasons and mature students with families.

Student union president Hannah Bullivant said: "The bar on the lower floor has been losing money for the last three years because people are less interested in drinking.

"Goldsmiths is an artsbased institution and we have a lot of creative talent but for a long time people have asked, 'Why isn't there a gallery on campus?'" Ms Bullivant said the move would help make the university more welcoming for Muslim and other religious students. "Our Islamic society is one of the most active societies, yet it hasn't traditionally got involved in the student union," she said.

"One of the officers on the [student union's] executive is Hindu and has spoken of the need to provide a space that isn't about alcohol."

Such clean-living developments might dismay previous generations who attended the New Cross institution. Aside from Blur, Goldsmiths also nurtured musicians such as John Cale, who won a scholarship from there to study in New York in the Sixties, where he teamed up with Lou Reed to form The Velvet Underground.

Ms Bullivant insisted the carefree student days recalled by those who did not have to pay £3,000-a-year tuition fees or loans had gone. "Students are less frivolous because of the demands placed upon them," she said.