Students hit out at St Andrews

Students at Black Lives Matters protests around the world have held a takeover of St Andrews University’s Instagram account.

Images were posted from protests in the USA and UK sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis amid demands for the Fife institution to admit more students from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

Posts claimed the university needed to do more to improve diversity.

They also said it should acknowledge its “dreadful history of white privilege” and claimed there had been a “lack of action” to remedy its “racial imbalances and outright racist occurrences, past and present”.

Meanwhile, a petition to principal Sally Mapstone demanded a significant rise in BAME students and lecturers, and an open letter called for an apology to black students for having “fallen short” of its commitment to diversity.

In April last year 8.7% of St Andrews students were BAME and in 2017-18 only 1.3% of entrants were black.

The university said the proportion of BAME staff was increasing.

In a message to students and staff last Thursday Prof Mapstone admitted the centuries-old institution’s part in “unwittingly” prolonging the legacy of discrimination. But she also said staff and student had the resources, choices, intellect and opportunity to lever change. “Let us condemn racism with our research, our ideas, our actions and sacrifices, and our willingness to be challenged and changed,” she said.

A university spokesman said: “Instagram takeovers give students space to share their views. We organise them as part of our commitment to supporting students to be challenging, to hold those in power to account and to engage in constructive activism.”

The university’s strategic plan contains a commitment to diversity and inclusion. It set up a race equality group last December, recruitment and promotion procedures have been revised and a curriculum audit is under way.

Let us condemn racism with our research, our ideas, our actions.

PROFESSOR SALLY MAPSTONE