This is in relation to Edinburgh University sending out a notice to students to not be 'snobs' towards Scottish and working class background students, and admitting that class-related prejudice was an issue on campus.
by backupJM
This is in relation to Edinburgh University sending out a notice to students to not be 'snobs' towards Scottish and working class background students, and admitting that class-related prejudice was an issue on campus.
by backupJM
30 comments
I was exploring the comments of that video, and i have just seen that a Scottish student has claimed that the BBC cut out all the responses from Scottish students, and the examples they gave of the snobbery they faced. You can view her video talking about it here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGdFGxkDs/
I don’t know if it may be worth a separate post, but i thought it was worth sharing!
**Edit: if the video doesn’t work for you, or you don’t want to access TikTok, here’s a transcript of her (Holly’s) video:**
>They have cut out all of the Scottish people that they interviewed yesterday to put out that video, and I know that because I was one of them. I’m gonna run through every question that they asked me and my response to those questions, because, of course, the BBC has a bigger platform than me, but I have figured out that 5 people hearing it is better than no people hearing it.
>So here I am, and here’s my attempt to make a difference in society. The first question that they asked me was do you believe that there is a culture of snobbery? -[in inverted commas]
>Have you experienced this culture? Have you got any examples that you can think of? To which I said, yes, I do.
>And the examples are as follows. I’ve been told that my country is too economically insignificant for me to have political opinion. I’ve been told that I’ll never get a job in the arts because you have to be cultured to do that. I’ve also been told I’ll never get a job in the arts because I’ll never be able to afford to live in London. I’ve been scoffed out from refusing to live in London before for saying that I don’t need to live in London to have a job in the arts or have a creative job.
>I have experienced somebody going round a group of people asking why everybody chose Edinburgh in the first place until he got to me. At which point he said, we know why you chose Edinburgh because you couldn’t get anything better. I’ve been congratulated for getting out of Ayrshire. I’ve been laughed at for my voice and accent and tutorials and seminars when I’m trying to make academic points that are quite serious about gender, colonialism, war. “Oh, I understand nothing.”
>“I don’t understand a single word that’s come out of your mouth, but I love your accent. Just keep talking.”
>Obviously, doesn’t quite match up with the ‘covert’ snobbery at the University of Edinburgh as it was so cleverly put by somebody in that video. She then asked me, do you think that it’s just Scottish students that experience this snobbery or do you think it’s also working English students?
>To which I was slightly offended because I don’t think I look that stupid of a person. Obviously, is what I have to say to that. Like, obviously. I didn’t. I was quite polite about it.
>I didn’t say any of that. I didn’t affirm the fact that the conversation we’re having is because of the tab and the fact that the tab, set up a marginalization against Scottish students in particular. I was very polite. I talked about pollock halls. The fact that everybody migrates to Pollock halls in particular from London, all knowing each other and have known each other from the age of 12.
>And if you don’t also know them or circulate in those same kind of friend groups and circles in London, then you’re gonna be excluded when you come here as well. I do just think it’s fundamentally bad journalism. Of course, it’s a class issue. Of course, it’s an issue perpetuated by the upper class elite who are continually coming into this university setting because they can pay for it. Obviously, all of those issues exist.
>I’m not stupid. Neither are the viewers of the BBC. Everybody knows that that’s what the case is here. I don’t think I thought it was a very patronizing question to ask me. And then finally, the cherry on top, she asked me if there was anything I thought the university could do to help the issues, that we’re facing at the University of Edinburgh.
>And I said, absolutely. I think the university can revert to an earlier time in society where you go into university on academic merit rather than how much money you could offer the university body. And that was that. So all in all, BBC, you should be ashamed of yourself. You perpetuate all of these classes, the ideas that are seen in the University of Edinburgh, which is probably no surprise given that the majority of the people that work for you come from there anyway.
>And I shouldn’t be surprised and disappointed yet I am because I find myself annotated by the shocking journalism that you have exhibited. Do better next time.
I saw a video of which claims they left out actual Scottish students that were asked, and was very critical on it.
They can’t find any Scottish kids to ask
Is being “snobby” towards Scots just a polite BBC way of saying anti Scottish?
Haud the bus. Did they really just ask posh English folk and a token American if they’ve experienced snobbery as Scottish working class students? Omfg
To be fair, being asked which school you went to is a core Edinburgh experience. Same in Glasgow, but different reasons.
Working class young people experiencing snobbery at elite university is not news.
University administrating trying to tackle that is also not news.
When I went to uni there the private school kids were referred to as the ‘yahs’, as in okay yah, daddy has a landcover, yah.
Love all of the strong Scottish accents 😍😍😍
That’s really quite sad.
I did my masters at Eds and love my year there. I think the maturity also helped, because my coursemates were all great.
Knowing how silly first year was at my old uni, though, I imagine the snobs are turbocharged given Edinburgh’s prestige. It’s a shame the uni is having to belt out a reminder about this rather than the students themselves not being self-aware enough.
I didn’t exactly board at Harrow, but I remember in my first year moaning about the lack of dishwasher. The total blank stares I got for that made me learn pretty quickly that a dishwasher isn’t a default machine in everybody’s household.
These posh students just need some pushback rather than sticking with their cliques.
I’m from near Glasgow and worked at Edinburgh uni as a postdoc. The amount of staff who loved to point out I was from near Glasgow and sounded very Glaswegian was crazy. Who gives a shit?!? Apart from these arseholes. So glad to get the hell out of there. Have also worked overseas and at Glasgow uni and only Edinburgh was my accent and background (ie from near Glasgow) a problem.
Tell them you’re going to heriot watt and you won’t be long in finding some snobbery.
I did have something tell me they went to Eaton in the first sentence I met them. I’m Irish, so my latent republicism was triggered by his explanation of which royals went there.
It’s not new. I started as an undergraduate in 2002. I had lecturers weekly use my school as an example of a bad school, my area as a toxic wasteland. I was told I hadn’t earned my place there by students. Completed my degree out of spite and hated all four years of it.
All of these people sound posh af.
I studied at King’s College London and one of the boys in a computer lab one day, in the presence of other students (couple of them black), started telling his friends how he would love to own some slaves. He said he’d treat them with kindness of course, so that makes it OK I suppose.
I used to work in different hospitality places around Edinburgh Uni and the snobby, usually english students were the worst to serve.
Barely a single Scottish accent audible, and no doubts that none of them went to state school let alone being working class. Imagine a documentary which claimed it wanted to hear from black voices on the issue of racism in London’s education system whilst only asking a bunch of white toffs. This is no different, and I’m sick of hearing the same, braying whine of the yahs which day on day pollute our capital whilst agast whenever they hear a slight rolled R, as if genuine Scots in their own national capital is a crime.
These wankers will never know poverty, never know what it takes just to get into a prestigious university from a lower class background let alone have to endure their company. We don’t tolerate racism or sexism in society, yet we let classism run rampant. Where’s our Hate Crime Bill now? Why is this not being investigated? I don’t see the Yousafs of the Scottish political circuit running to condemn this blatant elitism. This is an endemic problem that, once confined to the campus, has now grown arms and legs as the Oxbridge Rejects come North to gentrify and colonise the place.
In years to come, there won’t be an Edinburgh, just a Southern English outpost, growing ever more resemblant to the inner City of London whilst the natives have been evicted to the amenity-deprived tundra of commuter belt towns and schemes.
Fucking right I did. We constantly put up with Eton tossers in bars smoking pipes and harassing Scottish people.
Most of the people in this vid seem snobbish though
The comments from the Scottish person left out of the video describe my experience at Edinburgh Uni. I was there pre-independence vote studying Politics and the discussions around Scottish politics were ridiculous, just patronising and tone-deaf. I actually transferred back to Glasgow because I was sick of being the only Scottish person in my classes and being ridiculed for it.
Totes covert, like I summer in like the South of France in pa pas estate totes amaze if I didn’t like see any snobbery
Nothing new/unexpected. Anyone who’s been at Edinburgh for their studies will know of the ‘Oxbridge reject’ type.
Mostly from the home counties, mostly found living in Marchmont or Bruntsfield. The ladies (‘yahs’) can be found shopping for groceries at the closest Margiotta’s, pyjama bottoms and daddy’s vintage Barbour on. Messy blonde hair and loud, very loud. The boys spend their time at Teviot organising the Edinburgh Uni Hillwalking society’s trips.
My memories of Edinburgh university
1: Dickhead of a lecturer at an open day saying I was wasting my time applying for pharmacology with BBBC in my highers.
2. Lothian and Borders Equal Access Program (LEAPs). Great bunch, but I think only one person in my cohort actually went to Edinburgh uni after going to the residential.
The absolute nonsense chats I heard when living in Newington pretty much solidified that Edinburgh uni is little more than an outpost for privately educated Chinese mainland and privately educated British students. Edinburgh state school educated students are probably at Heriot Watt, Napier, Queen Margaret or somewhere else entirely.
Post graduate is probably different.
Speaking as a schemey witn a degree from Moray House, the students werny the problem. The lecturers are a crowd of snobs at best, and class traitors at worst.
We had a lecturer that prided himself on the fact that he was a bus mechanic in his previous life but couldn’t wrap his heid aroond the fact that £750 a month student loans wasn’t enough to sustain yourself enough to make studying your full time vocation, to the extent that he spent 4 years trying to have me removed front the course despite the fact I was passing assessments with A’s and B’s.
Snobby students are easily sorted with a swift slap but when it’s institutional that’s when you proper experience targeted harassment.
I’m not Scottish but from what I have seen online, it’s pretty much southern English and posh people moving up to Scotland and pretty much treating the locals like second class citizens in their own city.
The same thing has happened in my northern English city, this is an issue that needs to be spoken about more and I’m glad the Scot’s are doing so.
The irony here is unreal.🤣
I went to St Andrews not long ago and it was incredibly snobby. It was also 50% aristo English cunts and some Americans too. I was looking forward to spending some time in Scotland and meeting and chatting with Scottish people but they were really hard to find.
Flocculating, I had to google what that meant, thats a good word, I’m going to use that.
Those that haven’t seen it…are the snobs.
Imagine *flocking* to Pollock fucking Halls!
10 grand a year with a shared bathroom…
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