*The following document was presented to staff members and Heads of Schools in a meeting held on January 22nd 2021 Background -
The following list of demands was developed from a meeting of Diverse(ish) on 7th October 2020. Diverse(ish) is an anti-racist forum set up by the Students’ Union President and Vice President Communities in June in response to the Black Lives Matter movement to explore the experiences of students at Queen Mary around race and diversity and come up with ways to support them and enact positive change in our community. This event took place during Black History Month and was hosted by the Vice President Communities in collaboration with Decolonise Society. The theme of the event was ‘Resistance’ and students were encouraged to share their experiences as students of colour at Queen Mary so that we could come up with ideas for improvement to deliver to the university’s senior team. In attendance were students from all faculties, Students’ Union representatives and Academic staff. From the experiences shared, we came up with the following demands to improve the experiences of black and brown students at Queen Mary. The list also reflects anecdotal feedback received by the Executive Officers through conversations with students and student representatives. We believe that Queen Mary should be committed to decolonising itself at an institutional level. Due to the exploitative and capitalist nature of post-colonial British society, this manifests within the university setting and is embedded in Queen Mary’s history. Education that should be a fundamental right is capitalised, which means that not everyone has access. Those who do gain access are then met with a narrow understanding of education and teaching. Despite attempts to provide more funding and opportunities for people of colour to access higher education, the university is still operating under a neoliberal environment that does not necessarily deconstruct the very structures that inherently disadvantage its students. Decolonising should not be symbolic or just about the curriculum, but it is a multi-layered concept that we hope you can understand and appreciate. Through making active efforts to decolonise the university institution, Queen Mary will radically improve the experience of its students of colour while getting closer to becoming the most inclusive university of its kind. Demands 1. Better response to the Black Lives Matter Movement through contact with student groups Students noticed and appreciated that since the global acknowledgment of the BLM movement, the university has been the most proactive in responding to race inequality than ever in the past, however, more could be done. From a student perspective, they have not seen much action from the University regarding race, this needs to be made clearer and explicitly conveyed to students. For example, the set-up of the Race Equality Action Group is a good step towards tackling inequality, however students are unaware initiatives like these are taking place. In response to the BLM Movement student groups tried to get in touch with the Principal at the time, but emails were ignored. A better response would be:
2. Specific support and advice for students of colour going on their year abroad should be required Students particularly from SLLF noticed a lack of adequate preparation in regards to racism or islamophobia before going on their year abroad. This was contrasted with the clear advice given towards women and LGBT+ identifying students before travelling. To improve:
3. Commitment and plans to hire more Black and Brown staff Students are very aware that the ethnic diversity of the student body is not reflected in the academic staff, with many students never having been taught by somebody that represents them. This is important for students of colour firstly for them to be able to relate to their lecturers; and secondly would help inspire them to also go into academia. There is a leaky pipeline that prevents students of colour from pursuing academic careers which in term limits senior academic staff available. Feedback from PhD students suggest that the hiring process itself can disadvantage applicants of colour who may be affected by recruiters’ bias. If Queen Mary is genuinely committed to becoming the most inclusive university of its kind, they need to hire more staff from diverse backgrounds. They should:
4. Clear plans on decolonising and not just diversifying the curriculum and University Following on from the previous point, it was thought that Queen Mary must take a central approach to decolonising the curriculum if they are truly committed to being inclusive. Students noticed that some courses have made efforts to be diverse, but this is often in the form of an optional extra module that students who would most benefit from learning are least likely to opt into. Diversifying is a good first step but decolonising means reassessing the structures themselves and creating something new that is genuinely inclusive and embedded in the central structure of the courses and into compulsory modules. This applies not only to schools in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences but is vital to Science and Engineering and Medicine and Dentistry too. Decolonising should also feed into the structure of the University as a whole, and this will be covered in point 7. The university needs to:
5. Retrain staff and bring back unconscious bias training Staff present noted that unconscious bias training had been scrapped in favour of inclusivity training, which is good but does not cover all the same things and so there seems to be a gap. Inclusivity is one thing, but staff need more in-depth training as many students have had negative experiences with some lecturers or advisors being racially insensitive or ignorant which is very inappropriate especially in a university environment and also lowers their quality of education. When coming from an authority figure, it also makes it especially difficult to report and be confident that action will be taken. Training should be mandatory and cover:
6. Hiring Student Consultants or Interns Students are a valuable resource to input into anti-racist and decolonising work and appreciate being asked to consult but feel as though this is can be taken for granted. Students already have their academic commitments and volunteering work and felt that they should be remunerated for their input into certain initiatives. Hiring students as consultants would demonstrate the university’s commitment to tackling racism and becoming the most inclusive university of its kind and open the doors of opportunity to students who are passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion. It also would tie in with the University’s value on employability and be a great opportunity for students’ and for the University’s development. Therefore:
7. Transparency about Queen Mary History and current Influences As mentioned, British society’s history of the Empire means that universities have also been linked to colonial relationships. Queen Mary has had links to the Drapers Company who used to invest in the colonised lands of Ireland and Virginia. The profit, while only small, means that there was benefit when the Drapers gave money to this university and there continues to be funding and scholarships based on this relationship that promoted individual success within the privatisation of university. Many students feel uncomfortable attending classes in buildings which are funded from those who have ties to the slave trade such as The Drapers Company. We want the university to be transparent and changes like the following will help Queen Mary fulfil its value of being ethical in their 2030 strategy. The university should:
Finally, as part of a wider and bigger initiative, we want Queen Mary to make efforts to start plans and initiatives to reduce tuition fees, or at minimum make it easier for education to be accessible in a way that is not completely neoliberal. As a start, the university should:
Authors: Decolonise QMUL Society and Vice President Communities
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