To think top universities should do better encouraging respectful debate?

I’ve had another look and the stickers aren’t actually stopping the information on the posters being accessed. Unlike trans activists, who interfere with freedom of speech by stopping others from being heard, this isn’t stopping anyone from reading that poster.

For stickering alone? Yes, it would be inappropriate.

For continuing to engage in a behaviour when your manager/head of department has told you to stop, and not engaging with them to discuss a way in which you can express your views without vandalising university notice boards? Maybe it is appropriate.

As I said, people have a right to express opinions. They don't have a right to deface workplace notices.

Are you in favour of expulsion for all such stickering? Because I think you would find that there would be people sent down from all sides of the political spectrum, if it was consistently applied. Personally I think that would be draconian and disproportionate.

I cannot imagine being this sad and pathetic.

Why deface somebody else’s sign because you have an issue with it. Just make your own posters. Good Lord!

Defacing a university noticeboard is not free speech. It's vandalism.

If the poster wants to put their own notices up separately explaining their views, that's fine. They don't have the right to cover up notices placed by others, especially official university communications.

Also these emails are from a year ago! That investigation is probably concluded. Why is a "journalist" digging it up now?

Of course there is, but they don’t tend to communicate via George Orwell quotes.

The alphabet soup isn’t a sacred cow. Their “initiatives” can be challenged.

Someone who sees "challenging" notes attached to LGBTQ+ posters and instantly assumes that they can only refer to trans people is someone who is so obsessed with a single issue that they cannot possibly believe that other people may have different agendas.

Are you not aware that there's a whole bunch of people out there who think that you can be indoctrinated into being lesbian/gay/bisexual, just as many people on mumsnet think that you can be indoctrinated into being trans?

You’d have to really stretch to decide a quote on a Pride progress flag with an explanation label about how it came to replace the original rainbow, was a challenge to the original rainbow meaning rather than the progress aspect. Anyone suggesting that is disingenuous imo.

Besides, even if it had been, quotes which are challenging but not in themselves homophobic in any way whatsoever should not be grounds for expulsion in an organisation that believes in free speech.

Those notes were being placed on posters for LGBTQ+ initiatives. What is it that makes you think the notes were solely a "challenge" to the T part of LGBTQ+?

YANBU. The real shocker is what happened to one of the young women who later set up the Cambridge University society for women when she was seen buying gender critical books.
The universities should be ashamed to have allowed an environment to develop in which such bullying is acceptable, and should regard it as a crisis requiring immediate action.