NO ONE LIKES A MAD WOMAN — YOU MADE HER LIKE THAT

Anonymous

While there are both minor and significant alterations that could be made to the doctoral program in order to begin addressing the various crises of representation in HE, I am hesitant to offer my reflections to the institution comprised of academics who have repeatedly made unwarranted comments on my admission to MPhil and PhD programmes, my studentships and my area of study. As a first-generation student from a low-income background, I have been patronised, gaslighted and paraded around as the prize-winning widening participation pony by both peers and senior members of the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. Why should I offer an opinion on preferable practices when doing so absolves this machine of inequality from the creative and imaginative work that precedes institutional and societal transformation? If (and considering the extent of the Faculty’s explicit and widely known unjust practices, this “if” feels like a big one) the Faculty of Education is dedicated to improving its representational failures, then this improvement begins with creating a space where everybody can flourish, where they are not held back by the naïve words and actions of others. This is hardly idea is hardly a new one and I am sure it is known to the reader of this text as “critical pedagogy”. Maybe the faculty should familiarise itself with the contemporary debates and accompanying body of research surrounding this notion?

Or maybe, and apologies if this is a radical suggestion (though it is not), the faculty should familiarise itself with, call upon and hire experts in the field of UK HE who have conducted large scale research projects on belonging, inequality and access? I wonder why it hasn’t done this. I wonder if this has anything to do with the backgrounds of these experts. I wonder if it is because these experts want nothing to do with such a racist, classist, ableist, exploitative and frankly dire institution?

That is all I have to say on the matter. The faculty does not need me to hold its hand through representational “issues”. It has the tools to hand — it just lacks the initiative to do something with them. What I will say, however, is this: Thank you, dear faculty, for the opportunity, for the funding, for the ‘leg up’ you so clearly think you have given me. But it seems you left me on the margins. You were so busy celebrating your apparent role in my admission that you failed to consider all the ways in which your actions, including your celebrations, remained alienating. You are not privy to my ideas and I owe you absolutely nothing.