April 15, 2008

Oh, Kingston, Kingston...

The following is a message received from a current student at Kingston University, which reveals the endemic culture of bullying, and which has extended to infect the lives of students. Names and other identifiers have been deleted at the request of the student, who fears retribution:

"I would like to remain anonymous until at least after I graduate but bullying within Kingston University is not just limited to academic staff. Students particularly postgraduate students are bullied if they raise any grievance about the way that the university is run, some are threatened with suspension from their course. A part time [DEPARTMENT DELETED] professor, [NAME DELETED] I think his name is, has made allegations to his students about the bullying of staff/postgraduate students including to the point that several of them left/dropped out.

The university would often use technicalities to suspend students, one student who had a grievance about the university was suspended for a week because he forgot to update a change in his term time address for example. There is an article in this issue of The River [student newspaper] that claims one student was bullied by her fellow students and when she made a formal complaint she was suspended from her course for a day, the reason being lack of attendance (she wasn't attending because she was getting bullied).

One way to test what I am saying is to make a FOI request for reasons why students have been suspended from the university and watch them either delay or not honour it. It is widespread.

The student union lacks enough independence from the university to deal with this issue. The [NAME OF CLUB DELETED] club was threatened with having its funding removed if it didn't remove one student from it. This often encourages the clubs and societies to take matters into their own hands and encourages student members of these clubs to intimidate members of the club into leaving. Bullying does not only occur among academic staff. It seems to be almost institutional."

1 comment:

Research Term Papers said...

Name should be mentioned because may this action hold their toung to be bully, I personally appreciated about this student who shared a good thought here to solve this kind of issues.very optimistic mind guy he is.