Girl wins battle to skip college farming course ...because she is vegan
AN ANIMAL management student has won a battle to leave out a college farming study because it goes against her vegan lifestyle.
Fiji Willetts, 18, enrolled last July after the course was advertised as “great for people who love animals”.
But she was horrified when she found out she had to complete a farm husbandry section and possibly visit a slaughterhouse.
The vegan of four years claimed tutors at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College told her skipping the subject would be an automatic fail for the course.
Suffering from anxiety and fearful a fail would scupper her chances of going to university, Fiji approached vegan campaigners who helped her mount a case.
The Education and Skills
Funding Agency supported the Filton college, but she said tutors backed down after she went to the examining body claiming it was against equality law.
Fiji can study a business module instead of farm husbandry and has also secured a university place to study an animal-related course.
Ordeal
The teenager, from Downend, Bristol, said: “It is great that the stress has lifted. I couldn’t simply break my way of living purely to pass a course.
“I hope I can now be an example to other vegans so they don’t have to go through my ordeal.”
She added: “I really wanted to work in animal conservation, or helping to rehabilitate them after things like abuse or injury. This is the only course in Bristol which allows 16 to 18-year-olds to study to work in the sector.”
Jeanette Rowle, of The Vegan Society, said: “This was a really big win for Fiji and for the vegan movement.”
College principal Sara-Jane Watkins said Fiji was not told she must study the farming module, but was “encouraged to do so because of its usefulness to the local economy”.
She said Fiji would only have failed if she did not study an alternative to the farming section.
The college also said Fiji did not respond to “any of our formal correspondence or efforts to reach out”.