If you were online at all this October, you will likely be familiar with The Edinburgh Tab controversy. If not, allow me to catch you up: their student-run TikTok page came under fire for a number of comments they made about the presence of Scottish students.
On a video where a commenter said “Not a Scot in sight”, the Tab replied “As God intended”. Funny, isn’t it? Following on from this, the media outlet made another video, captioned “Me after enraging the 4 Scottish people that actually go to Edinburgh Uni”. Understandably, people were not best pleased.
The University of Edinburgh is plagued by low Scottish admission rates, as home students can attend for free through the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS); the university’s money is made off of English and international learners. This leaves less room for Scottish students – in 2021, Scottish students made up only 33 percent of attendees. This seems to have fostered a rancid environment for other (predominantly English) students with an online platform to isolate a minority even further.
An innate disliking for the very people whose country you reside in, whose services you utilise and whose clubs you vomit in is ungrateful at best and xenophobic at worst. It also breeds a culture of casual classism that transcends online barriers and seeps into the real world. Many Scottish students have since spoken out about the way they are treated by non-Scottish students in lectures and seminars, making fun of their accents and where they’re from.
Sadly, this is not an isolated event. The Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews have also come under fire in the wake of the controversy, as well as universities in the north of England. Universities such as Durham, Newcastle and York are often bashed online for their large southern intake, and many northern students have similar experiences of being made fun of or misunderstood due to their dialect.
Student journalists are central to this issue. Although we are the bane of university staff, local mayors and the passerby on the street, we also have an important responsibility to inform and educate. As one keenly embedded in this tribe, I feel confident in pointing out how easy it is for some to take the power they’ve got and wield it like Arthur wielded the sword in the stone.
With articles such as “Clubber of the Week” – containing sub-section ‘Wanker of the Week’ and captions such as ‘Please stop, you make me feel physically ill’ – and “Second hand fashion: A trend or a necessity?” that fails to acknowledge that many students are forced to rely on fast fashion for financial reasons, The Edinburgh Tab is abusing its power. Posting classist and xenophobic content online, no matter how subtle, normalises the views expressed within it. We are trained not to believe everything we read online, but it is difficult not to be influenced. Surely if an article can get through the process of publication for a national media outlet unscathed, it must be okay? Right?
The Edinburgh Tab is not the only perpetrator (although it is a big one). You will be hard pressed to find many writers for The Tab who attend their university city’s non-Russell Group institution, limiting representation from the start. If we are only reading about the experiences of a select few students at a Russell Group who, whether by choice or not, probably do not stop to consider the experiences of their non-Russell Group counterparts, then certain precedents get set.
I recently read a student article that rubbed me the wrong way and, alongside The Edinburgh Tab debacle, inspired me to write this piece. It was a listicle on items of clothing that you should never ever wear on campus and, if you do, you’re “beyond help.” Whilst I doubt that it was the author’s intention to offend, making the argument that “pyjamas”, “joggers” and “a hoodie” make you look like “a prison escapee” can come across as slightly questionable. Whether you agree that content like this helps feed into a culture of casual classism or not, I do believe that it can be, at the very least, harmful – perpetuating fine-drawn ideas of elitism and bully behaviour.
This is not to say that the burden lies entirely on student journalists! We’re all just trying to build up our portfolios. This is also far from an attack on a more informal style of journalism; God knows I’ve written my fair share of listicles. However, as journalists, we need to realise the weight of our words. As much as our housemates may tease us, our work does get read. Using it to platform negative stereotypes is – unsurprisingly – not great.
So is student journalism facing a crisis of classism? I think it probably is. And we can be the ones to change that.
