Glasgow Conservatoire accused of ableism and transphobia

On another point £73k in debt for a performing arts degree is insane, unless you are planning on having it paid off by your parents. Why did you think this made sense?

Students are equipped with multiple skills, not only in performance-making but also in facilitation and working in communities, to create powerful performances everywhere from hospices, prisons and schools to swimming pools, beaches and building sites.

How much are you aiming to earn creating powerful performances in swimming pools?

Hmm, this is one of those posts that crops up now and again which makes me think people see Mumsnet and think it’s their mum’s net.

Have you cast your eyes over the rest of the thread or any other MN threads? Do you notice how long your post is compared with other posts? You’re expecting rather a lot of effort from people to engage with your issues.

Have you read the thread? Are there any points of the thread you would specifically like to address?

I’ve struggled through your wall of text and offer a few thoughts.

• A teacher moving onto another class is not indicative of abuse. I remember as a child missing my teacher during the summer holidays. As an adult, I also remember missing my obstetrician when I didn’t need her any more. You learn to distinguish between professional and personal relationships.
• Incidents can be found to have occurred but a reasonable person would not think they are abuse.
• You’re happy to have ruined a woman’s livelihood. Please bear in mind these righteous feelings when you are out of work and struggling, which you will be as a grad of the Conservatoire. (Thank goodness for The Bank of Mummy and Daddy!)
• I wonder what life would have been like for me and my peers if they stood up for us - yes you would all be Alan Cummings if it wasn’t for your evil teachers. Hold on to that belief.
• I’ve no idea the context of your teacher’s exposition of her trauma from childhood rape by a family member but I’m disturbed at your thinking that that abuse in any way equates to what you consider to be your abuse by her. Can you relate her feelings to those of your friend who wanted to explore the emotions of her abortion through art?

Even though I’m not your mum, here’s a couple of tips for adult life I’ve given my own kids:

• If you don’t engage with people whose views don’t reflect your beliefs and values, you won’t change anyone’s mind.
• At 18 you are an adult, a young adult but not a child.
• If you want a person to treat you in a certain way because you are an adult, you have to treat them the same way. It’s childish to see yourself as a complex, nuanced individual but to see all adults as denatured parent figures.

children for a lot longer then they needed to be - you got something right.

And yes, I would say this to your face.

TL:DR Grow up.

Drama is a physical thing and you can’t teach or learn without an element of touch being involved. It’s in the moment, it’s about communication on numerous levels. It’s about movement and relationships.

If teachers have to double-think every little thing they say and do in their critiques of student work, they will not be able to respond in a way which best serves those students. Drama texts are full of triggering content - it is at the heart of the very nature of performance: conflict. You need to be robust and able to deal with it.

The ‘unpaid emotional labour’ of academic staff right now is off the scale. It is a minefield.

I can believe some of the things reportedly said from RCS staff. I won’t say how I know as it’s outing but I’ve heard very similarly dubious comments made to other students. That said in the context of art criticism, anything goes and sometimes the harsher the better. I balked at the abortion performance piece in terms of cliche and taste. The mispronouncing Cantonese complaint is scraping the barrel and if you look like a bloke and don’t give clues as to your identity Then you’re he until proven otherwise.

I actually thought it was one of the funniest articles I’ve read in a while. Properly highlights how off the wall students are becoming, particularly in the arts.

What on earth is wrong with being a white 'cis gender' heterosexual? Wouldn't the vast majority of people in this country fit that description?

Surely pointing this out in such a disparaging way is discriminatory?

This sort of thing does get messy, because everyone reading about it
is going to see their own prejudices either insulted or reinforced.
There probably are some spoilt, whiny attention seekers among the complainants.
There probably are some legitimate objections to some of the behaviour of lecturers/teachers (whenever someone complains of abusive behaviour from a person in authority who is 'charismatic' or a good teacher in many ways, there's always people popping up to say, well, I cried myself sick and had a nervous breakdown after said teacher told me I was a spoilt piece of shit with no talent but I learned and growed from it, honest...).

Some people from minority/disadvantaged groups might come across (or even be) oversensitive, touchy, self-obsessed shit-stirrers but this might have a fair bit to do with having spent most of their lives being patronized, excluded, talked over, insulted and told they lack a sense of humour, etc.

And some white, straight, comfortably-off people really lose their shit at the merest hint that they might be treating members of a minority group unfairly.

There are some legitimate complaints within that letter. True. They need dealing with properly. That Times article where Stonewall Scotland have offered to meet with them is laughable. They can see an opportunity to offer one of their training packages can’t they - KERRCHING £££!

these students idea of

institutional violence
structural racism
systemic abuse
structural oppression

does not meet any definition of these serious issues

I would agree with this and would further add given what furrytoebean has told us about the specifics of the course that these students do not seem very willing to adjust their thinking away from pat soundbites even when specifically shown the realities of the particular environment they find themselves in.

So, no I'm not willing to defend monstrous behaviour but I am unconvinced that what we have here is monstrous behaviour.

This.

I don't automatically believe anyone's claims of mistreatment. I believe you have a right to be heard, however, and I'm willing to listen.

Also this.

joyfullittlehippo I’m sorry but has anyone actually read the article, or just having a knee-jerk reaction to the red flag to a bull word that is “transphobia.”

Have you RTFT? There's been nuanced discussion here looking at the letter the students wrote and their precise complaints, no one has defended the grabbing a student incident, criticism is part of the course and context is everything in judging the other incidents.

The place is fully immersed in identity politics after all, so claiming that the accused tutor is transphobic for addressing a male presenting in a stereotypically male way as a man is ridiculous. Anyone can claim to be anything but we're under no obligation to manifest a belief we don't share. That doesn't mean we're phobic.

Thank you furrytoebean for your insightful comments shedding light on the course as a former student. Much of what you are saying rings true for me from other courses involving creative endeavours as DuMondeB also pointed out in her area of study. Certainly as a writer, the experience was similarly painful at times and not just for me but the others, too. It hurts when you pour your heart into your art and your tutor finds your work wanting. I am a better writer for it though.

Having read the letter and the articles, I got the impression that the complainants had no problem being disrespectful to others, including fellow students (objecting to being told that they should not walk out of a fellow student's performance for instance - given the many many things these students have complained about as intolerable that seems eminently sensible).

Looking at the whole thing, they sent in 100+ pages of complaint and yet the investigation resulted in a mere six instances of the staff member not coming up to standard (bearing in mind that this standard may well be far higher than or much different from what is normal elsewhere judging from what furrytoebean has shared).

So, no I'm not willing to defend monstrous behaviour but I am unconvinced that what we have here is monstrous behaviour. Furthermore, having followed this debate, knowing what goes on from university staff and students and having watched the documentaries about that college in the US, these students idea of

institutional violence
structural racism
systemic abuse
structural oppression

does not meet any definition of these serious issues. FYI, their proposed solutions include some that contributed to the collapse of the college in the States.

I don't automatically believe anyone's claims of mistreatment. I believe you have a right to be heard, however, and I'm willing to listen.

The Conservatoire seems to have done just that and come to a position of upholding some complaints but not others. The claims of a lack of communication during the complaints procedure should be looked at, but it seems to me that nothing less than complete surrender and abasement will satisfy. So no I'm never going to look at a story like that and believe every claim made.

And I think the "it's just gone a bit mad" aspect arises largely from it finally being discussed by people (eg middle-class university students) who until very recently haven't needed to contemplate their own identity at all, and who have grown up largely surrounded by people exactly like themselves, and who don't really have any experience or understanding on how to do this.

Totally agree with this

(And just to add, to be clear: having discussions about race within the family doesn't mean we don't get it horribly wrong outside the family, but at least we've all got a bit of practice in.)

I think questioning the layers of what makes up our identity and where it comes from is actually really important, it's just gone a bit mad.

And I think the "it's just gone a bit mad" aspect arises largely from it finally being discussed by people (eg middle-class university students) who until very recently haven't needed to contemplate their own identity at all, and who have grown up largely surrounded by people exactly like themselves, and who don't really have any experience or understanding on how to do this.

In my family, we've talked about race our whole lives, mainly because it was inescapable - we are all different colours from one other (including white) across three generations, and how each of us has been perceived in the wider community has depended to a great deal on context. Discussions on race within the family are detailed, relaxed and we can be deadly serious and we can take the piss out of each other. We have similar conversations about class, and how the generations are different and also the same, and so on. And I am sure we get it wrong with one another a lot of the time, but nobody walks on eggshells. (It took much longer to talk about sexuality, and in some parts of the family being a bit bent is still very much The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, but even that is slowly changing.)

Glaswegians are aggressive and scary you see,

I definitely got told to stop being so aggressive a few times and I got pulled up for 'shouting' even though I am probably one of the least aggressive people in the world. My accent is just very gluteral and harsh and where I'm from people talk really passionately.
I got a real complex about it.

Celebrate probably isn't the best word thinking about it. I just hate the weird idea that some accents are 'wrong' or 'common' and that people who speak perfectly clearly are often discriminated against and pressured to change.

I went to an English university and had the wonderful experience of having people physically take a step back from me, on numerous occasions, when they heard my accent despite ditching all the Scots words and putting on my best posh voice. Glaswegians are aggressive and scary you see, even when we're not actually Glaswegian and weigh all of 8 stone. All that telling me to 'speak properly' was for nothing

When your making art or theatre with your body anything that can be seen by the audience will affect how the audience reads the piece.
So a female body will be seen differently to a male body and a body with a visable disability or marking will be read through that lens, you can't change that. We aren't making art in a vacuum we bring our biases and our culture with us.
It's important to acknowledge this but where it's gone wrong is that people now think that's all there is. That it's not possible to move past it or be anything other than that. That those things are enough in themselves.
They're not.

I very much doubt this. People have accents and dialects and entire languages which should be celebrated not sneered at.

Yes absolutely, and I wasn't even aware that I did have an accent until I left my place of home, which is the way it works. I just spoke with my voice, but suddenly I was being asked to make work about my accent and actually I thought it was a really uninteresting thing because that's just my voice and everyone I know at home speaks the same. They don't want to watch work about the accent because it's not a thing, it's only a thing once you move out of your home context.

They did want to celebrate it, I never felt sneered at but I just felt it was a bit patronising, I didn't want to make work about being working class with an accent.

BUT it really did make me question about identity in general and I learnt so much about myself and how I see other people.
I think questioning the layers of what makes up our identity and where it comes from is actually really important, it's just gone a bit mad.

If they ditch the 'cis-gender' bit, yes. I don't know any 'cis-gender' people.

I love that they claim that their tutors are mostly “white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual”
So, er, just like the majority of the population of Scotland then.

I also, incidentally, reject the idea that rejecting gender ideology and all the associated nonsense that comes with it is "anti-trans", because it isn't.

joyfullittlehippo I do understand your point here, and anyone who harms anyone else - and especially if they are in a position of power - should be held to account. Nobody is entitled to touch anyone else, and certainly not grab them by the neck, without their consent.

But this is the problem with the whole situation, isn't it? We are all really, really jaded by accusations from students (most - not all - coming from a fairly privileged position) of terrible, terrible acts of oppression, because we've seen that so often they aren't true at all. Almost all of us have been accused of "literal violence" and "killing trans people", etc etc. Most of us now don't take seriously accusations of transphobia, because it's been wholly overused, and can be set off by anything. (Once I'd read an article by a trans "comedian", complaining about the terrible, terrible transphobia of the women who had engaged in enthusiastic sex with them, but who didn't want PIV, well, that was it, really. Transphobia as a term is useless to describe any kind of oppression, because it's being wielded by people who are merely complaining that all their unreasonable demands aren't met.)

It's the baby/bathwater situation I talked about above. We do have to be really careful that we don't collectively or individually have a kneejerk response to accusations of bad behaviour of any sort, just because we've been so jaded in the past. But I understand how we've got here.

I spoke funny

I very much doubt this. People have accents and dialects and entire languages which should be celebrated not sneered at. I, and quite possibly you, am old enough to have gone through school at a time when speaking Scots was frowned upon and resulted in being told to 'speak properly'.

I now work with Scots as a literacy tool and spend part of my time helping adults understand that their language is not wrong but rich and varied something to be proud of. That it is others ignorance that is the problem not their speech.