TOXIC AND UN DEMOCRATIC
. . . the damning findings of an official report into the ultra-woke students’ union that has pulled the plug on one of Britain’s most respected university newspapers – where the BBC’s Jeremy Vine and George Alagiah and legendary editor Sir Harold Evans cut their teeth
A LEFT-WING students’ union which axed funding for an award- winning university newspaper is ‘undemocratic’ and gripped by a ‘ toxic culture’, according to a damning report.
Durham Students’ Union is viewed with ‘hatred’ and ‘mistrust’ by students following bitter infighting and an election scandal earlier this year, the report unearthed by The Mail on Sunday reveals.
Last week we revealed how the union – which is run by a politically correct cabal of radical students – has pulled the plug on the print edition of Palatinate, the university’s respected student newspaper.
Palatinate, which is handed out for free, was once edited by Fleet Street legend Sir Harold Evans, who died last week, and was a training ground for BBC broadcasters Jeremy Vine and George Alagiah.
Union chiefs blamed funding pressures and the Covid-19 crisis, but many students believe the decision was politically motivated and claim freedom of speech is being stifled.
The move, which will save just £4,000 this term, is the latest in a string of controversies that has seen the union increasingly pitted against students.
The union is led by five student officers who are elected each year, but an election in February was rocked by a revolt, with more than 2,000 students – 58 per cent of those who voted – refusing to back any candidates and instead voting to ‘reopen nominations’.
Their ballot papers were disqualified by the union, a decision that provoked fury, with the university’s Labour club saying it was ‘nothing less than election rigging’.
Weeks after the fiasco, the union quietly published a damning report into how it makes decisions. MiraGold, a higher education consultancy firm, was paid £2,000 to interview a dozen people working for or linked to the union about its democratic processes.
‘It’s the culture around it, it’s actually quite toxic,’ one of the anonymous respondents said.
‘The level of hatred towards us in the student body has been a slow burn but [issues] have created this mistrust and irreparable reputation damage,’ said another. ‘So much toxicity has already been brought into our procedures, it’s baked into the cake,’ said a third.
The report prompted the union to commission a ‘full-scale democracy review’, which will cost up to £7,000 – £3,000 more than the cost of funding Palatinate for a term.
The decision to halt publication of the newspaper was taken at a board
‘It’s like a private club with a cancel culture’
meeting of the union’s trustees in July, without the two joint editors of the newspaper being present.
That same month, Palatinate revealed that just 29 per cent of Durham students who responded to a national survey said the union effectively represented their academic interests – the lowest score across all 137 UK universities.
The union said there were ‘ no political influences’ on the decision to ‘temporarily’ halt the print production of Palatinate, which was established in 1948.
Among the complaints of those who protested in the February election is that the union’s assembly – where clapping is banned because some students may be sensitive to noise – passes ‘politically divisive’ motions and fails to engage with the ‘real issues’ facing students.
Motions passed over the past year include calling for a boycott of Barclays bank because of its holdings in fossil fuel companies and declaring the university ‘institutionally disablist’ – suggesting it discriminates against disabled people.
And recently the union’s Women’s Association renamed itself Durham’s Womxn’s Association. Woke organisations claim that ‘womxn’ is more inclusive of trans and nonbinary women.
Suen Twins, the president of the union, has hailed Jeremy Corbyn ‘the white king’ and has committed the union to ‘unravelling the unfair power dynamics which permeate into a culture of privilege’. One student, who asked not to be named, claimed the union’s chief executive Gareth Hughes, a former Labour student activist who describes himself as a socialist on social media, is the ‘driving force’ at the union and that the student officers are ‘in thrall’ to him. ‘He’s the person setting the agenda and calling the shots,’ the source said.
James Parton-Hughes, a former member of the Durham University Conservative Association, said: ‘The union is like a private club with a cancel culture and political correctness. I don’t think there is a single student who would say it should suspend printing of the newspaper. The union should be open to being held to account.’
The union said it could not comment on the MiraGold findings because it was too busy preparing for freshers’ week and dealing with the impact of Covid-19.