It looks like Steerpike’s favourite students are it again. Six months after the furore about Rod Liddle’s speech at South College, members of Durham University’s student body have published a fabulously self-lacerating screed about their seat of learning. For on Friday, Durham’s Students’ Union (SU) released a 48-page ‘Culture Commission’ which seeks to ‘articulate what “Durhamness” really means.’ And it transpires that it, er, doesn’t mean much good, given the university’s ‘deep-rooted classism, racism and misogyny’ in the words of its authors.
The report was headed by departing SU president Seun Twins because – in her words – ‘I was tired of being shipped out at every agenda item or panel to talk Durham culture,’ sighing that she has ‘the unique privilege of being an informed yet exhausted token.’ Durham has, as many readers will know, something of a popular reputation for being a popular choice for those unfortunate enough to be denied a place at Oxford and Cambridge.
And it is that reputation which Twins and her fellow commissioners take aim at in chapter one on ‘reputation, stereotypes and student expectations’ which begins with this classic quote: ‘I am not an Oxbridge reject.’ It goes on to moan about ‘the misnomer of the “Oxbridge reject”’ since ‘most students are not in fact unsuccessful candidates of Oxford or Cambridge.’ No bitterness here. Rather than being a tongue-in-cheek joke, ‘the comparison to other universities fosters a false and at times naive sense of competition amongst Durham students’ for which traditions like college formal dinners merely serve ‘to signal their proximity to this trope.’
It also includes this eye-popping quote as a header: ‘Sexual violence is so prevalent because the first time students have heard the word “No” was from Oxford and Cambridge.’ Gosh. According to the authors while ‘many of the problematic behaviours associated with student communities are not unique to Durham, there is something to be said about how these particularly toxic behaviours are linked to the “posh public-school boy” character.’
Despite professing that ‘we cannot assume that toxic, problematic, and antisocial behaviours of Durham students are inherently linked to this singular gendered class identity of the core demographics’ the authors nevertheless insist that ‘we would be remiss to ignore the sense of self-importance and superiority that is instantly recognisable to both current students and the wider public.’ Unsurprisingly, they then profess to want ‘a diverse generation of students’ who don’t arrive wanting to ‘fit into a caricature from a bygone era.’
Indeed, those poor posh public-school boy types receive rather a pasting from the right-on types at Durham SU. The authors complain that ‘the Durham bubble’ is ‘disproportionately’ comprised of ‘southern middle and upper-class students.’ They write of an ‘overrepresentation of “home” undergraduate students’ which, when combined with ‘the concentration of drinking spaces, a culture of elite sports, the reliance on volunteerism, and a reputation of elitist entitlement’ puts outsiders off Durham. Too many student bars? Whatever next!
The disdain for Durham’s institutions is a constant theme throughout, even when the authors accept that many overseas students enjoy going to a quintessentially ‘British’ institution:
For international students in particular, many tokens of British culture, including excessive drinking, shared mealtimes and college dining traditions, the nightlife, formals, etc., are barriers to an internationalised experience, though many admitted they were and still are attracted to the feel of the University as a uniquely ‘British’ institution.
It’s not just the students raising eyebrows with their scribblings. An introduction by former Bristol SU chief Sam Budd effectively links the EU referendum vote to mental health problems. She writes:
The impacts of Brexit and the pandemic are known to have had a disproportionately negative impact on students and young people in general, manifesting in unprecedented wellbeing and mental ill health challenges.
This report comes off the back of the university’s ‘respect commission’ in 2020 which, according to Twins and her co-authors, ‘confirmed what was already known by the many students who have experienced the toxic side of Durham’s culture: deep-rooted classism, racism and misogyny.’ Unsurprisingly, the authors find that ‘hierarchies of class are mirrored by hierarchies of race and other forms of discrimination including misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia that manifest into explicit acts of violence.’ One for the university prospectus perhaps?
Given that ‘elitism is the allure of Durham and is why student culture has remained unchanged’, one of their solutions is, quelle surprise, ‘decolonising the curriculum’ to prove ‘a means for students to engage in the co-production of knowledge, in self-discovery and reflection, and it is addressing the legacies of imperialism on British higher education.’
What fun for future students to read about and enjoy!
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