Thursday 27-01-2022 - 14:00

Trust means transparency.

Yesterday’s Durham University statement on the Luckhurst scandal confirms two things that are important to students: that recommendations have been made, and that due process is taking place. 

If the investigation has made recommendations which will help our community to learn from the incident, and prevent hijacking of student social events for staff’s personal political crusades in the future, then these can't remain confidential. Changing culture requires trust and trust requires transparency, participation and action.

So, where recommendations don't relate to an ongoing disciplinary process involving Luckhurst's misconduct, we see no reason why these should remain confidential. We expect these to be made publicly available as soon as possible so the Durham community, can reflect and respond, together. As a Student Union it is our responsibility to hold the university to account and we can’t do that without transparency.

Durham SU remains of the view that, while Luckhurst is subject to an internal HR process, that process must run absolutely according to the rules to ensure a fair outcome. However, this issue is being made to look more complex because Luckhurst and his culture warrior friends continue to pretend this is about freedom of speech and not straightforward misconduct in a senior role. We refuse to let this process create a martyr, so we must let things play out carefully. We hope the DU leadership demonstrate their commitment that nobody is untouchable and we are prepared for this to take the time it needs: the Macnaughton Report is not the end of this process.

That doesn’t mean students can or should accept ‘you will never know what happened’. Luckhurst hazed South College students, in their home, at their Christmas Party, and tried to protect himself by pretending it was a purposeful educational intervention rather than his personal political crusade. He, and his guests, then attacked students for pointing out his nonsense, and the tabloid press piled on our students, chilling their freedom of speech and threatening their personal safety. A month on from the incident and student leaders are still receiving targeted abuse.

This misconduct is a matter of public interest. Durham University is entitled to students’ patience whilst it carries out a HR process but not to keep us ignorant of their response to this scandal and how they safeguard against incidents like this in the future.

Students are rightly angry and frustrated because the process wasn’t made clear from the start. At this stage of the process, we ask students to make demands on the University to share their institutional recommendations and their plan for how they will be implemented.