University of Sussex fined £585,000 by Office for Students

You make some interesting points about trans people in your post
RedToothBrush · Today 11:06
which I think may get lost as the discussion returns to the main topic i.e. Sussex Uni.

Briefly - I acknowledge what you say about young people being vulnerable to the cult-like allure of transgenderism, and we often express sympathy here for people who have damaged their bodies and condemned themselves to a lifetime of medical interventions on the mistaken premise that they have changed sex.

We have been told we must #bekind, but there's nothing kind about NOT intervening and saying stop, you are being sold an illusion, you'll end up physically damaged and still the same biological sex you started out in, and you may well find that you have created more psychological and social problems for yourself than those you sought to solve by transitioning.

The expression 'cruel to be kind' comes to mind - it might seem cruel to say to a boy who proclaims he is really a girl, or vice versa - not you are not, you can't change sex, you are what you are, so how can we help you feel better about grow into the sex you were born into?

I agree with acknowledging the vulnerability of young trans people, and I think we're only doing half the job if we acknowledge it retrospectively - intervening when they are vulnerable to the trans cult but before they've taken any irreversible steps is the best way to #bekind. Or #cruel2bekind?

So acknowledging your thoughts, before I move back to Sussex😡

Just read the DM article. The hypocrisy is breath-taking, quote from 'Rio' who, tbf, did identify herself

'It's cloak and dagger, but that's not the way we want it. The masks, it's not meant to be threatening. It's just for the protection of people that want to be vocal.

And the dressing in black? Worried about stains I imagine but not on their consciences.

'No one wants to lose their place at university, but we don't want to sacrifice our right to defend ourselves with our words.'

Stock's place at University, her right to words?

The then VC, Tickell, is quoted saying they'd investigate anyone who could be identified. I know I'm cynical but I'm sure there was a 'wink, wink' in there. How about, at least, getting campus security to see them off?

Youre right, but then it was reported by the BBC only last December that they are trying to cut 300 jobs:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyv3jn92d4o

Also reported in October that they are actually losing money on UK students which is not being made up this year by fees from international students:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3e9g79xz29o

So I suspect the finances for this financial year will not be pretty reading.

MariedeGournay

Did you notice her use of the word 'equalities' rather than 'equality'? It's been noticed before that people who refer to the Equality Act as the 'Equalities Act' often re- or mis-interpreted what it says about women's rights, so everybody can have 'an Equality' that suits them.

The people who mostly pluralise it are the ones who read and take on propaganda from Stonewall, Mermaids and Co.

From the Reddit thread, posted by Eresh:

The alternative to free speech is letting the loudest or most violent or most influential group win by default because they stop other ideas being aired. Which some would say is fine as long as it is their ideas winning. Until it isn’t.

Is that DARVO, or just a stunning lack of self awareness?

There are two pages I haven’t read yet, so someone else might have commented, but I think the VC back then did publically state that they supported her AND she was promoted from Dr to Professor, so she did get some surface level support.

What they failed to do was to apply consequences against those who set out to bully her and thus allowed them to go on doing it, unhindered. Universities need to start using their powers to discipline students and staff who bully others. Students who consistently harass lecturers need to be told to stop, and if they don’t, they need to lose their university place.

That’s one of the reasons a lot of problems are occurring now. There are no negative consequences for poor behaviour. Students are paying customers instead of humble undergraduates who are glad to have been offered the opportunity. It’s not a healthy position.

But if she was tasked with sorting the mess out and given the power to sack wholesale if needed there would not be the type of PR pushback in the official statements.
It would be we fell short... this is a learing...

And how many students do a deep dive into the teaching staff involved in their courses? How many would not pick the Uni or leave mid course if staff were replaced by visiting or temp staff who were able to deliver the same materials/grading?

The problem would be that the Uni was not prepared to finance the short term cost needed to push a culture change. And by that I mean have a list of subsitutes ready start applying the bullying policy from the top down. And make it clear to students that protesting outside of the "safespace" zones would result in no Uni awards being issued. And bringing in a leader/team who are willing to push the changes through.
So the fine was a cheep option.

She / they chose to let the clock run off on the bullying and choose to still leave these staff in place.

And the Uni has a reputation risk as I would downgrade any student coming out as a future HR problem and lacking the mental flexability to use an opposing view to problem solve. So the real test will be benchmarking how many students are in quality jobs on leaving or 2-3 years out.

It’s laughable that they’re still claiming that Kathleen Stock was free to carry on with her work, conveniently ignoring the fact that she needed security protection in order to safely enter her workplace. Where are the ‘academic freedoms’ when an academic has to be protected from students and some staff?! For stating biological reality. Please someone make it make sense!

As to what happened at Sussex in 2021/2022, you have to go back a lot longer. Much of the story can be pieced together from social media posts (some of which have now been deleted) and publications.

It all started in 2018, when reform of the GRA and self-ID was on the table in the UK. The Sussex LGBT staff network officially supported self-ID. Sussex introduced policies based on self-ID. Staff were encouraged, often by activist colleagues, to introduce pronoun rounds & pronouns in email signatures, all in the name of making trans people feel better about themselves. Stock decided to speak out publicly. She was then bullied by fellow academics and students.

This rumbled on throughout 2019, then covid arrived and made everything worse as it’s one thing to confront somebody in person but another thing to get at them online.

In autumn 2021, it all escalated as it was the first term when students properly returned to campus. For a flavour of the self-righteousness of some of these students, check out this article:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10098351/Anonymous-trans-mob-defend-cloak-dagger-crusade-against-feminist-professor.html

It really was a different time and while that doesn’t excuse anything, it explains a lot.

I’m sending her to the exclusion room indefinitely

It is fine by me that VCs criticise the investigation process. That is free speech at the end of the day.

But to not acknowledge that the university had an issue of any kind is beyond telling. They gave lip service at the time to free speech, yet did not do anything to stop breaches of it. Indeed their actions ie the permitted hounding of Prof Stock by staff and students emboldened by the types of documents highlighted in the investigation tell a very different story.

No acknowledgement of this deficit in that article. Just repeats of the quote someone in PR probably drafted for them.

They see this as an us and them issue and can see no wrong doing on their part. That is what concerns me most. Zero reflection.

Really good point!

The 'they-only-found-two-measly-little-historic-breaches' line doesn't work if as you say, thenoisiesttermagant, one of them was the very thing that prevented Stock from enjoying the academic freedom that Roseneil claims to uphold, and emboldened and protected her tormenters.

Her silence around what actually happened to Doc Stock is drowning out anything she says about respecting academic freedom.

Did you notice her use of the word 'equalities' rather than 'equality'? It's been noticed before that people who refer to the Equality Act as the 'Equalities Act' often re- or mis-interpreted what it says about women's rights, so everybody can have 'an Equality' that suits them.

Sussex are still failing to acknowledge the treatment of Stock. This is the problem.

They are pretending there isn't an issue with trans extremism. They are trying to legitimise the treatment of Stock even now.

It's not about free speech in the sense of reasoned debate for this reason.

This is about where you cross from making an argument into harassment and abuse. This isn't as difficult to make a distinction with as even many on this thread are trying to make out.

Stock did not make death threats.
Stock did not try and hound people out of their jobs.
Stock did not individually target someone.
Stock did not do targeted harassment.

Stock just spoke the truth and said 'actually I have a problem with thought terminating cliches and actually it's a big more complex and we must acknowledge the issues relating to sex not gender'.

Something that a report has just said.

And no this isn't just relevant to women either.

Safeguarding those who identify as trans also relies on us seeing sex. Again the above mentioned report states this.

We need to acknowledge that many trans identifying people are extremely vulnerable. That INCLUDES recognising they may be vulnerable to the ideology they follow themselves. Some may desist. Others will stick with it and harms themselves because of their failure to acknowledge sex. Women who identify as trans are therefore doubly at risk but it's not exclusive to transmen.

We see a huge amount of comorbidity going on in those who identify as trans - autism, being gay, trauma, sexual abuse are all massive over represented. We know this. The Cass Review mentions this. We do young people who identify as trans a massive disservice in not recognising this. One of the features of the movement is it behaves like a cult and once you are in it, it becomes difficult to leave because of this tribalism and because someone might feel ostracised if they don't continue. There are definitely elements of coercion. There's online communities that actively supress information or the idea that transition has massive side effects and actively encourage individuals to transition in an almost competitive way. There is this idea that if you aren't being persecuted enough then you aren't authentic. These are all factors which are HUGELY relevant to young people who have left home for the first time.

Safeguarding is about identifying self harm as much as harm to others.

Wow. The fine was originally going to be twice as much.

So many contradictions in that melt down piece by the VC. She seems to be saying OfS investigated too much and looked at too many documents which is a very bizarre thing for an academic to say. No evidence at all for her assertion the university supported Stock. She sprays accusations of partisanship and political bias all over the place.

TLDR : she's very pissed off the OfS wasn't kind to them.

I'm giving it a C minus.

There should be a special name for this sort of weasely, misrepresentative writing. You see rather a lot of it in the work of some academics, where they strongly imply something, but when you read it carefully they're not quite saying it, so they haven't actually been dishonest.

And while this fine isn't a fortune when measured against Sussex's total budget, firstly the budget is tight, and secondly punishment doesn't have to be harsh to really smart.

@SidewaysOtter. I don’t know what the appeal mechanism is. However cannot imagine lawyers would not be involved. I do think if institutions allow this sort of thing to happen, they should be fined. There’s no other way of holding them to account. Maybe some courses should be dropped when they make their redundancies?

Good!

They behaved shamefully.

She’s got nowhere else to go, has she? If she puts up her hands and says “Yup, we allowed bullying and the hounding out of staff by activists, and we run policies that give special treatment to one group over another” then she makes UoS look awful (who’d want their kids spending £9.5k a year there?) plus she’ll incur the wrath of the TRA/TRSOH crowd when they turn on her.

However, I suspect someone who is a Professor of Gender Studies hasn’t so much drunk the Kool-Aid as downed several bottles and doused herself with it before finding a large vat of it to dive into accessorised with armbands and a flowery swim hat. So we are reading the epic tantrum of someone whose fundamental beliefs are being challenged, like a toddler told they can’t have any more Haribo.

Really embarrassing

Also this bit.... Eventually, the OfS has found two historic breaches. One relates to a two-page statement intended to protect the welfare of transgender staff and students, and the second to the University’s way of approving a small number of documents.

So if a University has a policy that says 2+2=5 and anyone not going along with this belief should be cast out that's ok because it's the number of breaches that matters? What utter rot!

Did the 'trans welfare' policy force compelled speech and compelled belief in gender religion on staff and students? Lead to a total loss of single sex spaces, and removal of the right to recognize biological reality from staff and students, perchance? Did it cast women wanting single sex spaces as heretics and bigots and give a free pass to anyone threatening, bullying and harassing women who had sex realist views ? One policy can do a lot of harm.

I don't know if I'd call it a 'meltdown' - if it is true that the uni were not given a chance to respond directly to OfS, Roseneil might have a point.

But although she re-asserts Doc Stock's right to academic freedom, she also glosses over the level of harassment directed at Doc Stock - it wasn't just a few meetings and a placard or two, it was a long campaign of intimidation and harassment which ultimately caused her to leave Sussex.

So the issue may not be Roseneil's attitude to the theory of academic freedom, it's her silence regarding the outrageous way in which Doc Stock's academic freedom was thwarted in practical ways by a cross-section of the university body.

A supportive and thoughtful regulator might collaborate to identify and understand shared challenges and develop good practice on academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional culture in relation to equalities issues. Sussex stands ready to help deliver that support, drawing on our experience over recent years.

Sussex, in the person of its VC, would have to show a lot more self-awareness and self-criticism to be able to 'help' do anything of the sort.

indeed - In the financial year ending 31 July 2024, Sussex had a total income of £379.6 million (2022/23 – £380.1 million) and total expenditure of £291.3 million (2022/23 – £345.1 million).

Key sources of income included £224.6 million from tuition fees and education contracts (2022/23 – £222.2 million), £37.3 million from funding body grants (2022/23 – £39.9 million), £39.9 million from research grants and contracts (2022/23 – £42 million), £7.8 million from investment income (2022/23 – £7.4 million) and £4 million from donations and endowments (2022/23 – £5.3 million).

At year end, Sussex had endowments of £21.1 million (2022/23 – £16.4 million) and total net assets of £505.5 million (2022/23 – £414.7 million).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Sussex#:~:text=In%20the%20financial%20year%20ending,23%20%E2%80%93%20%C2%A3345.1%20million).

A University allowed staff and students to hound out a woman for expressing perfectly normal, well argued and legal viewpoints. There is ZERO reflection on this in that article and no sense of remorse. I would have no confidence in the leadership if I was GC at Sussex today.

That article is all over the place (expect better from a VC) but seems to boil down to 'they're bad and we're good'. I can't make sense of what she's trying to say at all. Beyond Tickell's statement, what did they do to protect Stock and ensure the University was a space where biological reality could be spoken out loud? Surely if there's a long list of even handed actions she could have listed them?

Also I'm not sure using the term 'kafkaesque' is wise if you believe any old bloke, including the likes of Dolatiwski or Bryson, is literally a woman as soon as he says the magic words and that women should lose their job / be horrendously bullied for still perceiving their male bodies as male.

That seems unwise of her