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Degrading is Degrading Campaign

Sign the Petition

You can now sign our petition. The petition is Raven protected as we for the university to take the petition seriously we need to demonstrate how many members of the university (students and staff) have signed.

New campaign, please bear with us

Just a quick note to say that this campaign is very new if you want to be kept up to date with what's going on you can sign up to the announce list (there's also a discussion list).

About the campaign

We are kicking of a new campaign, Degrading is Degrading, which looks at a lot of the aspects of the degrading process (when a undergraduate student intermits from their course due to health or personal reasons - yes that's really what it's called) and some of the horribly degrading aspects of this process (starting with the name). A few examples include:

  • This can include rules that require a student to leave Cambridge for the duration that they are degraded, despite that probably being the focus of their friendship network or if they are allowed to live in Cambridge they are banned from their college, and have been verbally abused on return or fined because of not picking up mail sent only to their college pigeon hole.
  • There are also rules about only being able to leave if you are not fit to work, which can prevent students supporting themselves while they are away from college.
  • Rules that require and work on the assumption that students are studying full time until they are granted permission to degrade, in some cases students have be forced and pushed into attending lectures when far too ill and at cost to their health
  • Difficulties with medical evidence which is very white and black where you are required at the end of each degraded period to either proof you are unfit to return or that you are fit to return.
  • We have heard of potential plans to limit degrading to two years except in exceptional circumstances, potentially leading to students returning when ill or being excluded from their degree.
  • Whilst the DRC are sometimes informed by colleges, there is no consistent and established process across the colleges for sharing information with Disability Resource Centre if a student degrades (even if it is for disability-related reasons), or for informing the DRC when they are expected to return, which means that students often have little or no support in place at a time that can be extremely difficult already. This is particularly the case where the student may be entitled to support as a disabled student, because of an invisible condition, such as a long term mental health condition.

And this is a few examples. We plan to campaign for a fairer, less degrading system giving students needing to intermit the respect they deserve.

Get involved:

  • If you've experienced issues: We'll be looking for statements from people who have degraded or have otherwise interacted with the degrading system, at any point to provide examples of the kind of treatments that exist. Please email us at the dedicated address (please do not use this for purposes) if you'd be willing to do this. Once received the statement can be separated from your address and all statements will be treated anonymously. Alternatively we'll be setting up fully anonymous webbased systems shortly.

  • If you would like to help: We're setting up a Degrading is Degrading working group so if you want to help, from having ideas for posters or a logo or just wanting to lend a hand, you can get in contact to find out more or join the group.We've already got lots of people involved so it isn't much of a commitment at all, and with anyone being involved in the Disabled Students' Campaign it's understood that people have their own impairments and time constraints and will be limited in what they can offer.

  • Want to find out more: We'll be putting up more informating here shortly including our petition once the wording is finalised, if you want to find out more you can get in contact or if you want to be kept informed about the campaign, or be involved in discussions about it you can sign up to our email lists below

Mailing lists and where to find us

For people not on the working group (if you think you'd like to join the working group email us) and a couple of places to find us on facebook:

  • The announce list is for updates on the campaign, we'll post here when the petition is available, about events and when materials are available you might be intereted in, it'll be a relatively low volume list.
  • The discussion list is for people more interested in the campaign and helping out or contributing to the direction of the campaign, we have the working group to avoid this list being high volume however. You can also sign up to other DSC lists.
  • We have a facebook page for the campaign and a facebook event for signing the petition to enable easy sharing by facebook users and we'll send some news out by that routes though we do recommend the announce list for that.