My view on ExeHonestly
After continued pressure from the University of Exeter’s student newspaper, Exeposé, and affected students that has lead to wider coverage from Devon Live, the BBC and more, the university’s Facebook “confessions” page known as ExeHonestly has closed. This closure has taken place amidst a police investigation that is treating some of the page’s posts as a “hate incident”. Those aforementioned posts include Nazi propaganda, racism and white supremacy.
What prompted me to write this blog post is the surge of support for ExeHonestly after its closure, as well as the so-called “last ExeHonestly post ever” in which the page admins seemingly tried to present themselves as the true victims.
In that post and their email conversation with the university that has been attached to it, the admins were evidently trying to make the page seem as harmless as possible in order to fit their agenda and enable the page to continue. While I doubt those admins had any malicious intentions with the page or its “last post”, it is important that they understand the harmful impact it can have, especially in a university environment such as the one in Exeter, where racism appears to be a bigger issue than most, if not all other universities in the UK. Claims that the page is needed to provide “a sense of campus-wide community” and “raise issues which people felt the university was not dealing with” anonymously are dubious considering the page has been primarily seen as a source of (oft-inappropriate) ‘banter’ and in-jokes. As a black student at the university, I found the following two sentences in the post angering:
“The University in their latest response has said that they care about ‘addressing serious issues of racism and mental health’; however, the impact of their needless escalation to genuine mistakes has been enormous. Not only that, but we are one of the most ethnically diverse student groups in Exeter, so there is an irony that the University is pursuing multiple BME students for not realising something was racist towards themselves.”
It is both selfish and ignorant to appoint yourself as a spokesperson for other people and the effect certain things have on them, even if your skin is the same colour as theirs. Terms such as BAME, BME and POC are seen as counterproductive by myself and many others because while all people who can be referred to by those terms do suffer from discrimination based on their race and colour, the type and extent of that discrimination does depend on race and colour in addition to the circumstances of it too. So that already discounts any non-black person speaking on the experiences of a black person, but that does not mean a black person can speak for another black person on their experiences either, as they too can be apologists for racism and purposefully discount their peers’ experiences of it.
Therefore, I would like to be clear about how ExeHonestly and the posts on it have made me feel as a black student from a low-income background at the university of Exeter, and also express solidarity for one of my friends at Exeposé who has received a plethora of threats and abuse whenever they have spoken out against ExeHonestly. Those threats and abuse have affected their mental health and at times caused them to hide their social media profiles as a protective measure. That highlights how much ExeHonestly is empowering racists. Regarding my personal experience of ExeHonestly, it began as lighthearted and humourous relief from the pressures of university life, but over time evolved into a cesspit of abhorrent views and political debates. Seeing such posts and the comments underneath them on a regular basis has both alarmed and scared me by showing that racism at this university is an even bigger problem than I realised and made me feel less accepted here. I do sympathise with the ExeHonestly admins to a certain extent because of the impact the situation has had on their mental health, but the harsh irony of that is that they are being ignorant to how the page has affected the mental health of many others.
To conclude this blog post I would like to address a few more things very briefly:
- Some are already suggesting the page’s closure represents a fight against freedom of speech. That is false. The notion of freedom of speech does not mean you should have a platform to express certain opinions or that you can direct such opinions at an individual or group.
- Some may respond to this post by telling me something along the lines of “if you don’t like it here, then just leave”. As with any other place there are things I like about here as well as things I dislike, I want to be educated at one of the UK’s top universities and I see no point in shying away from issues and leaving someone else to deal with them.
- I would like to commend the University of Exeter for their eventual response and for reporting things to the police.
Thank you for reading.
