A scandal is brewing at the LSE. Tom Martin was a 39 year old student who signed up to do an MA in Gender, Media and Culture at the LSE. Six weeks later he quit. He has recently initiated legal action against the university for £50,000, claiming anti-male discrimination and false advertising.
You can read his website here ( http://www.sexismbusters.org/ ) and his twitter feed here ( @sexismbusters ). We’re not linking directly because we have no great desire to find ourselves on his shit list (life is too short for it to be worth the effort). It’s worth having a look through some of the interesting claims he’s made on twitter though. At heart he seems to see the law suit as an attempt to, in his own words, “suing gender studies for pretending most men are rapists”. He claims gender studies systematically ignores “men’s issues” because of its institutionalised hatred.
This is a video he posted on Twitter to support his case. Draw your own conclusions:
There was a Guardian article by a former academic in the LSE department which you can view here. Read Tom’s response to it here.
Beyond the particular issue in question, this seems an extremely worrying case because of the precedent it sets. As increasingly assertive and vocal student-consumers, now encumbering themselves with massively increased debt for UK degrees, meet a strained, underfunded and stressed higher education system in the UK, what action will they take to try and rectify their grievances? This is undoubtedly an extreme case but perhaps, though an outlier, it is a foretaste of things to come?
Mark Carrigan 