Post 76 – 03/11/24 – Royal Holloway Answers Residents’ Concerns: Well, Not Really. (15 Minute Read)
I’ll get straight to it as this Post is quite a long read…
As you may recall, we invited Royal Holloway’s Provost and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Tracy Bhamra, to take part in a Q&A session with local residents. This was to be part of our series of mini-events that we held on Saturday 8th June. She declined to attend (or send a representative) and reminded us that the correct channel to raise concerns/ ask questions was through the Royal Holloway and Runnymede Consultative Group meeting. (RHRCG.)
Somewhat disappointed, we in turn asked residents to submit their questions for Royal Holloway at the Q&A that we held. We also invited members of this group to send in their questions via email.
As WNTTARH does not have a seat at the RHRCG meeting, we asked EGVRA to submit the collated questions on behalf of us, the local residents.
In September, EGVRA received the answers to those questions. Please see the link below.
To give a short synopsis of our views on the handling of this, we feel that the decision for Royal Holloway to treat the residents’ questions as a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request and to hide behind the FOI mechanism is far from transparent.
In fact, we think it demonstrates a complete lack of compassion for local residents. We don’t think the questions were ever intended to be treated as FOI requests but to answer genuine concerns. The lack of empathy about the issues we feel demonstrates the true scale of the contempt that Royal Holloway’s Senior Leadership Team has for the local community. And from a marketing perspective, we think a complete disaster for Royal Holloway, let alone a responsible approach when tensions feel like they are at an all time high.
As mentioned in last week’s Post, Royal Holloway has recently started marketing itself as a ‘University of Social Purpose’ and, only a matter of a few weeks after these events, signed a new ‘Civic Agreement for Surrey’ which include priorities such as:
‘Reinvigorate our relationship with local residents to ensure that they participate, engage with and have a voice in how things are done, on matters that impact them and the place where they live’ and to ‘Develop new approaches to local engagement and operational delivery that bring residents together with local government, other public services and broader partners to decide priorities, tackle local issues and grasp opportunities within Surrey communities’
A university of Social Purpose? A university of hypocrisy hellbent on growth to maximise profit more like, camouflaging itself behind new slogans as something more soft and cuddly than it actually is.
We have therefore decided to write to the College Council to highlight our concerns about the Senior Leadership Team. (The College Council is responsible for overall strategy and policy-making: it also includes safeguarding Royal Holloway’s good name.) We will share this letter here and their subsequent response.
Best wishes,
We Need To Talk About Royal Holloway
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- Upcoming Posts: A Sorry Police Story: Royal Holloway’s Marketing Machine.