Everyone has now had his say about the American University project and Zonqor Point.

I must say from the outset that the ODZ argument is a very serious one and the events of the past days have shown it will not be swept under the carpet, nor minimized, nor countered by arguments such as the take-up of ODZ areas during the PN administration, or Church applications regarding ODZ land. The issue has created a veritable firestorm which has shaken the government, as witness its savage ripostes, as witness the presence of two government MPs at yesterday's event held in front of Parliament, as witness the entire Xarabank programme, not least the angry presence of farmers.

But there are other aspects of the issue that have not been examined properly, for some not clear reason. I am not saying this to minimize the ODZ angle, far from it, but because I feel these angles need looking into.

The first is what I propose to call the human eco-system angle.

This venture, if and when it comes to fruition, will plonk 4,000 young people mainly from the Gulf or Middle East right outside Marsascala.

It is important here to avoid being racist but inevitably such a massive presence will impact the surrounding areas.

It seems clear that the new university's students will be mainly from the Gulf or the Middle East. This has been mentioned in the media and it sort of makes sense for the promoters to site the university here. Dr Deguara, the lawyer for the developer, said some or many of the students will be housed in dormitories, while the others will rent in the vicinity.

The implication is that, coming from Gulf countries they will be rich and can thus afford high rents.

But so far no one has mentioned how public order will be enforced by this new university.

Perhaps people will reply that "we get thousands of students studying English all year round, so what's the big deal?"

First of all, the students of English are not concentrated in one building. Secondly, ask the residents of Swieqi and St Julian's the nuisance they have to put up with when the Spanish and the Italian students come.

Without trying to be racist, I also refer to what happened in a Cambridge village some months ago when Libyan soldiers had to be sent back to Libya after two attacked and raped a man and two others attacked women on the same night in a park last October. (See http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/15/two-libyan-soldiers-jailed-for-raping-man-in-cambridge)

Now up here, near our office, we have the Libyan school at Ta' Giorni and no such episode has ever been heard in its regard. The school gates are open and the students walk this way up and down freely.

To my mind, this shows the need for a strong policy as regards discipline.

Why the Xarabank programme heard concern, of all things, about the price of pasta, but not about the neighbouring presence of so many young people who perhaps will be experiencing life outside their country for the first time, beats me.

This leads me to another issue.

We have not heard any whisper, nor would it seem the government has insisted on the issue, what kind of teaching it will provide.

Here, as far as I can see, the information has been sketchy, and there is no American University template or set of principles. On the contrary, it seems an appellation that can be used by anyone without reference to an existing institution, an approval by some international supervisory body or so.

There are, as can be checked, two American Universities of note in the Middle East - the American University of Beirut with 8,000 students, long-established and with a history of excellence, and the newer American University of Sharjah, with 4,000 students.

On our part, we do have the government-appointed board for Higher Education (which has recently diluted the requirements for a higher education level), so the university will be monitored and supervised by a local body.

But what, I speculate, if this turns out to be not much better than a Madrassa? What are the guarantees of freedom of expression and respect for scientific teaching?

Again, here we are somewhat hampered because the application and the development are in the hands of Jordanian land speculators and developers who have yet to appoint the university as a teaching institution.

I ask if those who are so vociferously in favour of the project, including Minister Evarist Bartolo, have been given access to what has so far been denied to the rest of the country - the agreement signed over the past days, and whether this document says anything about the guiding principles of this new university.

In my mind, things have become even murkier by some ill-advised swipe at the University of Malta, which, thanks to the Marsascala mayor's unfortunate expression, makes Malta the only country with one university. (Malta also has one runway, so do we build two to encourage competition?)

When the first expressions of doubt on the University of Malta (UOM) surfaced in the media some days ago, people thought it was the media speculating. But when the Prime Minister made these doubts his own last Sunday, and suddenly things became much more ominous - is this a re-exhumation of the 1970s splitting of the Old University from the new one?

Now that, whatever then happened, would have been an intra-Maltese thing, whereas here we have a still unborn foreign institution.

Even in the 1970s, the old Royal University of Malta had enough life and vitality in it to beat off the new government- and envy-inspired new version. Today, the UOM has some 7,000 students with crowds of applicants that will be besieging its doors soon enough. Some (not all) courses have very tough entry requirements and yet people fight to get in.

There is space for more, and MCAST, while not being a university, has proved its worth. But this American University will not be connected to any Maltese teaching institution, so the comparison and the argument that we have 'only' one university in Malta was decidedly ill-advised, especially coming from people who should know better.

The overall impression one gets is of a passing remark made in the hearing of Dr Muscat with the prime minister grabbing the opportunity, which is not a bad thing at all. But it is and remains an opportunity, certainly far from a strategic choice, financed by Maltese, and in synch with the other teaching institutions.

After all, there are other teaching institutions here (which Minister Bartolo well knows), and maybe they could have been guided to grow and expand instead of this jumping on an unknown quantity as if it was a lifeline for the South.

We have not heard a peep out of these institutions which, in other times, were quite vociferous in their claims. There are also other universities represented in Malta and they also seem to be doing quite well for themselves. I ask: how will they cope with this new intruder?

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