St Hugh’s students have this week lodged complaints against a decanal system whose procedures they have described as “active deaning.”
St Hugh’s students have this week lodged complaints against a decanal system whose procedures they have described as “active deaning.”
Many have complained that the team of Junior Deans are trying to catch students out rather than help them, as one third year stated, “Their role is to protect the welfare of students, not to target them.”
One second year told Cherwell that he had been falsely accused of physically threatening a junior dean. He received an email stating that he had “engaged in an altercation which concluded with [his] purposefully shoving a member of the decanal team” but claimed that he had merely left a gathering in a student’s room without a fuss.
A biologist at St Hugh’s added, “Many people find the junior deans rude, sour and abrasive; I think that most students resent their presence around here. They treat us like children and they aren’t even welfare trained.”
Anger has also been expressed over high fines. Mathematician Sam Johnston was fined £100 when junior deans had to return to his room to tell him to keep the volume down on a bop night.
English student Tom Adams commented, “The fining system is thoroughly absurd, serving only to damage students’ (often already precarious) financial situations, without demonstrating any evidence of preventing further ‘offences’.” Adams has been fined almost £1,000 over his time as an undergraduate.
He reflected, “Given that I’ve done nothing criminal nor anything to the ongoing detriment of the College or its members, this figure is absolutely shocking.” Adams added, “The problem as I see it is that the ‘Law’ is de facto on the College’s side, and the process by which decanal issues are handled flies in the face of anything that could conceivably be called ‘democratic’. The Dean is, so to speak, judge, jury and executioner, and he need only appeal to his own authority to dole out whatever rulings and punishments he sees fit. The Disciplinary Code which putatively underpins all this is purposefully obscure.”
St Hugh’s Dean, Professor Peter Mitchell, responded, “I do not comment on anything that may or may not appear in the student press regarding the internal procedures of this college.”
