PALATINATE The UK and Ireland’s Best Student Publication, 2021
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Thursday 16th June 2022 | No. 851
Sport rounds up the season for Durham Women
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Politics Predicts returns
Racism, elitism and intimidation Students claim ‘abysmal’ culture in Team Durham club • Players felt unable to raise complaints • Club execs say welfare support insufficient Elizabeth McBride, George Simms and Poppy Askham Students have described a culture of bullying, bigotry and elitism within a Team Durham club. Players and student exec members claim that an institutional lack of accountability and transparency within both the club and the wider Team Durham structure has facilitated harmful practices. Current and former members of the club told Palatinate that they felt they had “no avenue for complaint” regarding incidents of discriminatory behaviours and potential misconduct involving senior members of staff. One student claimed they experienced sustained racist abuse whilst playing for the club, including a coach describing their behaviour during a training session as “so Asian.” Another team member repeatedly shouted “coronavirus” at them during training with no intervention from coaches or other players. The student went on to write their final year dissertation on their experiences of bigotry whilst at the club, but says no member of staff contacted them to investigate the allegations raised in the coursework after it was submitted to Durham University. The student is also currently creating an art installation based on their experience of exclusion within Team Durham. They explained that they felt
they were “not in a position of power so it was super difficult to make a formal complaint” and that they feared being “severely bullied” if they spoke out following experiences of exclusion in their first year at the club. Jeremy Cook, Pro-ViceChancellor (Colleges and Student Experience) told Palatinate, “We have clear policies and procedures by which students can make complaints, and in this case we encourage the students concerned to report them via these routes, so that we can investigate properly and, where appropriate, take swift and decisive action.” “We have a range of support and help for students wishing to make a complaint, including through colleges, departments and the Counselling Service.” However, students told Palatinate they were put off from raising complaints due to intimidatory behaviours or that they were not aware of the appropriate routes through which to do so. Multiple students stated that they felt unable to raise concerns relating to claims in the sporting community of sexual misconduct carried out by a member of staff prior to their employment by Durham University. Current and former student exec members explained to Palatinate that some of Team Durham’s staff members “felt like a gang of cronies” and that they are “very
tight at the top”. One former player said they felt threatened after contacting the team’s social media account to express concerns about a coach’s inappropriate behaviour and students’ treatment within the club. “That instantaneous reaction was not very friendly. It was so confrontational, it was ‘meet with me in private’ [...] it wasn’t a ‘oh, we really want to investigate find out what’s going on’. It wasn’t, ‘do you know something that we don’t?’” Palatinate has seen emails in which, after refusing to meet privately with senior Team Durham staff to discuss the comments made, the student was threatened with referral to the University Student Misconduct Office. They were later blocked from staff and club social media accounts, and took the decision to leave the club entirely. Other concerns about this coach’s conduct became redundant as complainees “didn’t necessarily know who to talk with.” One former Team Durham exec member had worries about the lack of a straightforward complaints procedure: “You have to essentially take a chance, depending on how in the know you are, on what member of staff to email within Team Durham. Explicitly there is no welfare structure.” Continued on page 3
Durham Polling survey. The survey recorded 12 instances of mould, 6 of pests, 12 of water discolouration, 23 of broken appliances, and 15 of unclean facilities across different colleges. University College and Trevelyan College received the largest number of complaints, with seven members of each college experiencing at least one problem.
102 students from eleven colleges participated in the selfselecting survey, which members of all colleges were invited to participate in. 36 respondents said that they had experienced at least one problem with their college accomodation. Students from University College, St Mary’s College, and St Cuthbert’s Society have recounted
Post-exam entertainment returns: the Compass Charity Fashion Show raised money in aid of St Cuthbert’s Hospice. (Lizzie Crowther)
Unsanitary living conditions in college accommodation Laetitia Eichinger News Editor Palatinate has obtained accounts from students who have experienced problems with mould, pests and water discolouration whilst living in college accommodation, with over a third of students experiencing at least one problem according to a
their experiences with mould and damp in college rooms in conversation with Palatinate. A student who lived in University College’s Moatside Court accommodation last academic year (2020/2021) experienced a “horrific amount of mould” that infested their entire accommodation block. “I genuinely feel unwell remembering the severity of it. The
heating was turned down when spring came into bloom, along with the mould in the accommodation. I began coughing constantly and felt very unwell despite being Covid-19 negative. A pattern began to emerge: the more time I spent outside of my accommodation, the less frequently I had sickness bouts.” Continued on page 4
