‘If you’re a black artist you feel like “I’ve got to make something about blackness otherwise no-one’s going to care”’
Will technology kill my brain cells?
Mandem founder Elias Williams talks to Zoe Crowther about race, identity and his new platform Features pg. 8
Science pg. 14
epigram
Fortnightly 18th February 2019 Issue 335
est. 1988
The University of Bristol’s Independent Student Newspaper
Celebrating 30 years
Vet students banned from U2 because there are ‘too many’ vets • U2 introduced for Vet students, but too many users lead to Vet ban • Uni is giving free rides to locals to increase public use of U2
Ed Southgate
co-Editor-in-Chief
V
Black applicants 20 per cent less likely to get Bristol offer than white counterparts • Figures from UCAS show a 20 percentage point gap between white and black applicants to Bristol
Cameron Scheijde co-Editor-in-Chief
A
pplicants to the University of Bristol from black backgrounds are considerably less likely to get an offer from the University when applying at 18. The figures published by UCAS show a BME attainment gap, with considerably fewer black students receiving offers than white students. A 2017 Report by Bristol SU showed that BME students when at University felt isolated due
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to often being the only BME people in the room. They were also more likely to suffer mental health difficulties, direct racism or microaggressions. While Universities do not know the ethnicity of their applicants, there is a gap between black students and those of other ethnicities at school level, with black students less likely to achieve 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C. In the SU survey, one respondent said: ‘I have only seen one black lecturer and there are only 5 black people in my course. Sometimes, I feel a bit lost because I do not see people that look like me on very often …. but if I do see a fellow black student I feel happy for some reason’ Other large Russell Group Universities have
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similar gaps, with the worst percentage point difference found at Oxford and Cambridge. Eva Larkai (pictured above), chair of the Bristol SU BME Network, said: ‘these statistics don’t come as a huge surprise to me. The data shows that the number of applications to the University of Bristol being made by BME students is increasing each year, yet it’s difficult to see any real progress reflected in our student population. It is evident that the structural barriers that block these students from accessing elitist institutions like Bristol aren’t being challenged adequately and there needs to be more transparency around why BME, and specifically black students, are being disproportionately implicated in this process’. Continued on page 6
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eterinary students have been banned from taking the U2 bus to their Langford campus because there are ‘too many’ vets, despite the service being introduced specifically for them. In an email seen by Epigram, the Veterinary School’s Manager, Dr. Tom Podesta, complained to Vet students that the volume of them using the service is ‘causing problems for other users and the general public who are struggling to get a seat in the morning’. He demanded that students ‘must’ instead now only use Turners Coaches provided for by the School, which run less frequently than the hourly, low-emission U2. His email contradicts correspondence received by students from the Veterinary admin office in December, which told students in Years 1-3 they must either use Turners Coaches or the U2 as they are not permitted to drive. They also specifically urged Veterinary students who did have permission to drive to prioritise taking the U2 bus if they could. The service was introduced at the beginning of this academic year to connect the Clifton campus to Langford following feedback from students and staff within the Veterinary School, but has been available for all students as well as the general public. Having celebrated that it would ‘make a huge difference to our students and staff’ in the Veterinary School when it was launched, Dr Podesta added in his email that the Vets must now ‘act responsibly’ by avoiding the bus. Continued on page 5