What Happens When Students Speak Out?

The wider media response to students at the University of Oxford calling on Lord Patten to apologise for remarks that were taken as racist.

Who should we be defending? Lord Patten or powerless students?

Around a fortnight ago now Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, commented in an interview with The Telegraph that it wouldn't be possible for univeristies to allow more BME students to be admitted without "eroding standards"

Understandably this comment angered many students at the University of Oxford. So much so that there was an open letter put together and co-signed by 74 student representatives from across the university to demand an apology from the Chancellor.

What happened next however was perhaps surprising, perhaps not so surprising.

People began to empathise with Lord Patten. People felt bad for him. People felt HE was the victim here. Bad reporting from the Telegraph had harmed his reputation and that's what people cared about.

Nobody seemed bothered that his comments completely disregarded the achievements of BME members of the university. People were very happy to completely overlook this and instead make excuses for Lord Patten.

When picking up the story, press outlets outside of the university failed to do any real investigation into the issue. If they had, they would have discovered that this was not an isolated event. Lord Patten has said a number of very concerning things which have contributed to increasing the feeling that minority students are unwelcome at the university.

Notably he stated in January this year during a Radio 4 interview, that students who supported the Rhode's Must Fall campaign "should think about being educated elsewhere"

There is a huge problem within our university.

A recent report published by Oxford University's Student Union revealed that 20% of BAME undergraduate students reported feeling unwelcome in their College, PPH, or department at least once.

However when these issues are raised the response is to completely ignore them and instead to ridicule those raising concerns.

Details of the comments been made can be found at @JamesCain1997

But in summary, the majority of them fail to make any argument other than "SJWs" are really annoying. Well you know what? So are ignorant bigots.

Comments like "Diversity is being shoved down our throats as if its an inevitable future we need to have. It will destroy western civilization" courtesy of a poster with the user-name 'Right-wing Realist, Nationalist' are perhaps among the most extreme- discounting all the highly personal abuse received by email of course.

The irony is that the very media outlets claiming Lord Patten, ex-Chair of the BBC, had suffered bad reporting, are making a complete mess of reporting this story themselves. Without a single mention of the history of this issue, focusing on this one isolated example to mock student activists seems incredibly biased. It just reveals how desperate society is to cling on to its established institutions even when they're becoming indefensible.

Engaging in mockery rather than argument is a clear sign that the media really has no actual defence to offer.