Nathan Roberts, Queen’s ex-JCR President, has been pressurised to stand down from his position as a result of a dissatisfactory result in prelims.
Following below average results in his Trinity collections, the PPE student was given the target of obtaining at least 60 in all Prelims papers by the Tutorial Review Committee(TRC). He was told if he failed to meet the target he would lose the presidency.
Roberts obtained a mid-2:2, yet he refused to resign from his position. He explained, “I informed the Senior
Tutor I would not resign and asked to present to the TRC again before returning to Oxford. I had spoken briefly
once so far on the issue and felt it important that I could make the case outlined in the letter.”
However, Roberts claimed that the TRC did not wish to see him and he was informed that if he did not resign he would face rustication or expulsion.
“I was also told that I would not be able to attend this meeting, not because of formal procedure, but at the committee’s discretion”, he added.
The ex-President concluded, “It is my opinion that the decision made by College has not been the right one, nor has it been legitimate. There is nothing in college literature that specifies that the President or any
other Exec member can be removed.”
The second year PPEist met with the college executive last week and stood down from his position last weekend.
He declined to officially comment on the situation until the extraordinary meeting of the JCR on 11th October,
the Sunday of first week.
Rebecca Mackintosh, acting Queen’s JCR President and ex-Vicepresident said, “The JCR executive met on Sunday and reviewed and approved the hard work of Nathan Roberts and as such the executive passed a vote of confidence.”
Joyce Millar, the academic administrator at The Queen’s college, refused to comment on individual cases.
However she added, “It’s an academic institution and we have to concentrate on academics. We review each
case individually.”
Many students disagreed with the decision taken by the college. One Queen’s student commented, “They
don’t seem to be applying the rules uniformly. I find it difficult to believe that there were other people getting
2:2s who were also stopped doing extra- curricular activities.”
